Yesterday a bunch of Tea Party anti-healthcare protesters called black and gay lawmakers 'nigger' and 'faggot'. Today the right-wing blogs want an apology — from the lawmakers, to the protesters.

Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, targeted his ire at James Clyburn, the Congressman and veteran of the civil rights movement. (The capitals, inevitably, are his.) "DOES CLYBURN OWE TEA PARTY PROTESTERS AN APOLOGY? The bogus racism card has been played so often that I no longer find such charges very credible. I'm sure, however, that, true or not, they'll be played much more loudly than the indisputably true statements about the antiwar movement."

Conservative blogger Ann Althouse is more magnanimous and forgiving of the lawmakers. She doesn't want them to apologise. But she does feel that "it's outrageous for them to pose as victims without very good cause. So what if some idiot said a bad word?"

Meanwhile GOP chairman Michael Steele and House Minority Leader John Boehner condemned the protesters. The same protesters who they encourage and inspire with dog whistle phrases and sly hints.

UPDATE: Reddy Tuxpin in the comments below points out that the Tea Partyers — bravely soldiering on without an apology — are Twitter-reported to be calling Barney Frank 'faggot' again today. Oddly, the slurs against Frank are not being condemned or even mentioned alongside the racial slurs (at least on the parts of cable news that I'm watching). Matt Kibbe, the President and CEO of Freedomworks, who helped organize the Tea Party protests, did not mention homophobia in a bizarre semi-apology on MSNBC. Neither did any of MSNBC's pundits, or the Republican leadership. Is 'faggot' less appalling than 'nigger'?