Murtha says his constituents aren't racists after all. Just "rednecks."

John Murtha was once a war hero who, more recently, has busied himself slandering American Marines.

He was one of the chief publicizers of the Haditha incident, in which a firefight between American forces and Iraqi insurgents resulted in the deaths of numerous Iraqi civilians caught in the middle. In this miscarriage of justice he ws aided and abetted by one of the most irresponsible pieces of sensationalistic journalism in modern times- a TIME hatchet job which presented the incident as precisely what Murtha claimed: a massacre by berserk Americans. In fairness, the initial NCIS investigation came to the same conclusion.

Since then, all but one of the Marines involved has been formally exhonerated, and it has become clear that this was, indeed, a case of their simply having defended themselves in an ambush. Murtha, however, stands by his slander.Now he's also slandering his constituents.

After only recently apologizing for calling the Western Pennsylvania voters he represents racists, he has now referred to the folks back home as "rednecks."

And they keep re-electing him...