http://twitter.com/#!/SonnyBunch/status/204545549972676608

Mitt Romney didn’t just perform an unauthorized haircut 40 years ago. He’s also a member of the religion responsible for the “first 9/11.” (Cue the scary attack ad music.)

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”

Thanks, WashPost, for a half-page A6 article about a Mormon militia massacre from 1857 with "Romney's faith" in the headline.

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) May 21, 2012

The "objective" @WashingtonPost is so zealous to support Obama, that they're attacking Romney over the Mormon Militia from *150 years ago*

— Ed Shahzade (@Ed) May 21, 2012

Yes, more than 150 years later, the Washington Post reports on this tragedy in an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history.

There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.

You know who likes to spread the idea that Mormonism is a cult deserving of “antipathy”? Obama donor Bill Maher.

Has writer Sandhya Somashekhar reported on Maher’s anti-Mormon bigotry? Or is she too busy writing disdainfully about the backwards rubes in this community “where people teach their children to hunt raccoons” and are “”related to their neighbors”?

Funny, she didn’t include this tidbit:

Study: Conservatives who were told about Romney's Mormon faith were much more likely to support the candidate http://t.co/Fnj9iKhw

— Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) May 21, 2012

And as it turns out, Somashekhar is ultimately forced to admit that people in the region probably won’t base their votes on Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith.

None of that history, though, including the massacre, may make much of a difference at the polls.

Then why bring it up at all? Just asking questions again, WaPo?

https://twitter.com/#!/MrPartisan/status/204559777957818369

Just so we’re clear, the media position is that Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American views are off-limits. But the 1857 slaughter of 120 people—authorized by a renegade militia, not Mormon leaders—is part of the vetting process?

The @washingtonpost now going back to 1857 to smear Romney. Well played, #LapDogMedia. http://t.co/ineV1xgD

— Slublog (@Slublog) May 21, 2012

Obama’s media lapdogs have been pushing to make attacks on Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith fair game. Apparently, that push is no longer necessary. Now, anything goes in the quest to tarnish Obama’s opponent, including the not-so-subtle bigotry of dredging up this horrible incident that occurred 90 years before Romney was born.

If an author wrote a fictional account of a biased news organization and based it on the disgraceful Washington Post, reviewers would call the plot implausible. The book would be panned as another example of unfounded right-wing hysteria about the corrupt media.

But there’s no need for such a book. That story plays out every day in the pages of the Washington Post.

Lead story in every issue of the @WashingtonPost through Nov. 6 will be either "OMG! Mitt's Mormon!" or "OMG! Romney's Rich!"

— jon gabriel (@exjon) May 21, 2012

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2012/05/21/wapo-hey-isnt-it-time-we-linked-romney-to-an-1857-mormon-militia-massacre/