Over the weekend, it was reported that Pennsylvania's Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll crashed the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq. As Glenn Reynolds wrote:

IN THE VERDICT, PAUL NEWMAN VISITED FUNERALS to hand out his business card and try to boost his flagging career. Apparently, he's not the only one to try this approach: "The family of a Marine who was killed in Iraq is furious with Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll for showing up uninvited at his funeral this week, handing out her business card and then saying 'our government' is against the war."

After the bits hit the fan via local Pennsylvania news sites and the Blogosphere, Michelle Malkin writes that Baker has issued her apology in a personal letter to Sgt. Goodrich's wife....sent as a press release and containing the usual boilerplate:

Sergeant Goodrich’s service was beyond the call of duty. If my regard for his family’s grief was seen another way, it is thoroughly regrettable. The fact that you have been offended deserves and receives my most profound apology.

I will continue to support our troops in my role as Lt. Governor and support our President as an American. That I somehow conveyed an impression that was interpreted as other than that will forever be saddening and upsetting to me.

It's the old, "if you were offended, I'm sorry" routine, that Dick Durbin sampled from, on his way to a slightly better, if no less believable apology. Who, me do something wrong? Never! But I'm sorry if it was percieved by you that way, poor sod.

But Knoll's original line during the funeral--As I wrote above, Knoll was quoted as saying "our government" is against the war--has deeper implications for the Rendell administration that she serves within. As Dennis Prager wrote earlier this month:

Liberals, Democrats and others on the Left frequently state that they "support the troops." For most of them, whether they realize it or not, this is not true. They feel they must say this because the majority of Americans would find any other position unacceptable. Indeed, for most liberals, the thought that they really do not support the troops is unacceptable even to them.

Lest this argument be dismissed as an attack on leftist Americans' patriotism, let it be clear that leftists' patriotism is not the issue here. Their honesty is.

In order to understand this, we need to first have a working definition of the term "support the troops." Presumably it means that one supports what the troops are doing and rooting for them to succeed. What else could "support the troops" mean? If you say, for example, that you support the Yankees or the Dodgers, we assume it means you want them to win.

But most of the Left does not want the troops to win in Iraq. The Left's message is this: "You troops may think you are winning; you may think you are doing good and moral things in Iraq; you may believe you are fighting the worst human beings of our age and protecting us against the scourge of Islamic terror. But we on the Left believe none of that. We believe this war is being fought for oil and for Halliburton and other corporations; we believe you are waging a war that is both illegal and immoral; we believe you have invaded a country for no good reason and have killed a hundred thousand Iraqis [the Left's generally mentioned number] for no good reason; but, hey, we sure do support you."

Honest people on the Left need to understand that the two positions are not reconcilable. A German citizen during World War II could not have argued: "The Nazi regime's army is engaged in an evil war of aggression and is slaughtering millions of innocent people, and I therefore completely oppose this war, but I sure do support the Nazi troops."

One example is the claim made by Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and almost all other Democrats and liberals that the war in Iraq is "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." How does one support troops that are fighting a wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time? A few leftist writers have been honest enough to say, "Nothing personal, guys, but I sure don't support you." But the vast majority of the Left and all Democratic politicians have not been honest on this matter.

A second example is the oft-repeated line, found on liberal bumper stickers, "War is not the answer." Aside from the idiocy of this claim -- war has solved slavery, ended the Holocaust, destroyed Japanese Fascism, preserved half the Korean peninsula from near-genocide, and saved Israel from extinction, among other noble achievements -- the claim offers no support to those who do engage in war.

How could one believe that "war is not the answer" and also claim to "support the troops," the very people waging what is "not the answer"? The answer is, by being dishonest.

I'm sure that Knoll would say that if she somehow conveyed an impression that was interpreted that way, it will forever be saddening and upsetting to her.

Meanwhile, columnist Jack Kelly (via Black Five) looks at the Michael Moore connection:

What, besides an excessive fondness for groceries, do Catherine Baker Knoll, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, and ultra-left wing film maker Michael Moore have in common?

Air Force Major Gregory Stone, an air liaison officer with the 101st Airborne Division, was killed in Kuwait in March, 2003, when Sgt. Hasan Akbar rolled a grenade into the tent where he was quartered.
Moore used footage of Maj. Stone’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in his antiwar propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11. He did so without the permission of Maj. Stone’s family.

The family was not pleased. Maj. Stone’s mother called Moore a “maggot that eats off the dead.”

Catherine Baker Knoll has done Moore one better (or worse).

Read the rest.