But it turns out he’s got no balls. They’ve issued an apology.

Confused? Here’s the deal: The Edwards campaign hired two fairly prominent liberal bloggers to run their campaign blog: Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon) and Melissa McEwen (of Shakespeare’s Sister). Both bloggers have been unwavering in their support for, among other things, reproductive rights, and have occasionally — horrors! — used salty language in their postings. Furthermore, they’ve not been shy about pointing out how fundamentally antiwoman restrictive reproductive rights positions are, and that necessarily includes those of the church of Rome.

Disagreeing, even vigorously, with Catholic doctrine does not make one an “anti-catholic bigot,” except in the eyes of the wingnuts.

As if on cue, comes now ubercatholic bigot Bill Donohue, who loves to spew hate and bile about homosexuals and other groups whenever possible, who’s very unhappy that a candidate he’ll never vote for has hired people who don’t like his politics; in fact, his statement demands that Edwards fire the women.

Quickly following that, the right wing noise machine geared up to maumau anything Marcotte or McEwen might have said. We here at Heathen were hoping very much that Edwards would just tell these jackasses to get stuffed, but instead he’s rolled over and issued a namby-pamby pseudo-apology, though in his defense he kept the women on staff.

Even so, the whole tone of the thing is capitulatory — and it’s capitulatory towards an openly bigoted hatemonger like Donohue. The far-right Catholic League wins this encounter, but is still whining that Edwards didn’t fire the two, so at least they’re not actually happy. (They continue to insist that the bloggers are anti-catholic bigots, but it’s been clear to all who’ve read their words that their positions are not anything of the sort; it’s just more noise from the wingnuts.)

It’s going to be a long, long campaign season.