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Apparently, sky's the limit when it comes to admirers helping Rush Limbaugh redeem himself from his "phony soldiers" screed. It's obvious he pulled this stunt to overshadow his verbal diarrhea, which anyone with half a brain recognized for what it was even though he couldn't own up to it.

Perhaps the auction was his way of apologizing, unless his foundation has a litmus test against the families of what he calls "phony soldiers". You know, these:

I was talking about a genuine phony soldier. And by the way, Jesse MacBeth's not the only one. How about this guy Scott Thomas [Beauchamp] who was writing fraudulent, phony things in The New Republic about atrocities he saw that never happened? How about Jack Murtha blanketly accepting the notion that Marines at Haditha engaged in wanton murder of innocent children and civilians?

Now Jesse Macbeth did falsely claim to have been an Army Ranger and a veteran of the Iraq war. Certainly as phony as phony gets.

But Scott Thomas Beauchamp is still serving in Iraq; I have no clue how Limbaugh can definitively claim that his accounts never happened because some of his fellow soldiers substantiate the events he recounted and the military refused access to him or to their investigative reports on him. Jack Murtha is a retired colonel from the Marine Corps Reserves who received the American Spirit Honor Medal, Bronze Star with Valor Device, two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. Oops, guess Limbaugh forgot to include John Kerry and triple-amputee Max Cleland.

They're all soldiers who've served and who could've died in the line of duty. In fact, soldiers like them have died in the line of duty. Soldiers like Pat Tillman who said the war in Iraq was "so f-- illegal". Soldiers like Omar Mora and Yance Gray, who along with five other soldiers publicly contradicted Petraeus' status report on the surge. Do they sound like Jesse Macbeth "phony soldiers" to you? Can "phony soldiers" get killed in war?

But of course, in the veritable bonfire of inanities where the Limbaugh kind of conservatives hang out, drivel that only the simpleminded would buy -- like calling those who voice dissent as "phony soldiers", anti-military, or traitorous haters of America -- are swallowed whole without hesitation.