Harry Smith hosted Maher on CBS just months ago on his faith-mocking movie "Religulous" and didn't say one discouraging word to him about his caustic remarks about Cheney or his hateful anti-Christian bigotry. Not one word.

But when Ann Coulter speaks, the brass knuckles come out. In 2007, Coulter was heavily criticized for joking that she couldn't talk about John Edwards, since an ABC actor was forced to apologize for saying "faggot" at the Golden Globes. Liberals were furious. Coulter responded by saying next time, she'd echo Bill Maher and just wish Edwards died in a terrorist attack. Elizabeth Edwards then denounced Coulter for suggesting she wanted her husband dead. Harry Smith invited Mrs. Edwards on CBS, offered her brief softballs and let her verbally whack Coulter with a bat.

Smith is an enormous hypocrite. He completely ignored vicious remarks by Mrs. Edwards just days before, in accepting a "Rage for Justice" award, that the Bush administration was waging a class war that compared to slaughters in Darfur:

"The White House has led the charge against working people, in their own class war. The late, great Molly Ivins once wrote: 'If there was class warfare, that war was long over. And it was a massacre ... a genocide to which there have been words of acknowledgment, as there have in Darfur, but as with Darfur, no meaningful action.'"

But when Ann Coulter comes on the set with Smith, the gloves come off.

Ann Coulter's liberal-bashing columns and books and television appearances are fun for conservatives, simply because there's nothing funnier for the right than witnessing CBS putting up on its own screen a Coulter quote about Ted Kennedy and CBS: "Kennedy may be a drunken slob, but unlike CBS News anchors, he is not certifiably insane."

Call Coulter outrageous, call her a bomb-thrower, even state she goes beyond the pale of civility, if that's your read. But do not assign that label to Coulter and then present your on-air love, kisses and giggles to all the public leftist hate-spewing that far exceeds any perceived incivility by Coulter. That is utterly transparent liberalism, and utterly transparent hypocrisy.