Wow, nice tryMarcello.  Predictably, this has devolved into a flame fest, with the predominant target being Dave.  First of all, to all you manly men issuing your smug pronuncimentios on Mr. McCowen, I daresay each and every one of you would be squealing like a stuck pig if you had blundered into a similar situation.  That's just a personal opinion, perhaps you're all highly disciplined stoics with a flawless personal history, I don't know.  Undoubtedly, NONE of you bleat and moan here over issues which you consider unfair and which have never had the stark personal impact of jail time for YOU.  Undoubtedly.
That said, Dave, you do bring much of this on yourself with your over the top posting style.  Your own cherished views are subverted by your bombast.
HOWEVER, a cursory glance through this thread would lead an uniformed observer to conclude that Dave McCowen is the sole problem here.  That, friends, is laughable.
Who namecalls more?  Which side?  Well, it is generally considered that P&N membership favors the "left", 70-30.
Here is our first quantitative REALITY CHECK:
Using the search function, the dread epithet NEOCON appears in 500+ current P&N posts.
Using the self-same function, the dread epithet LIBERAL appears in 1200+ current posts.
Each "right" poster lumps his oppostion into this one lazy, derisive epithet that the OP would wish banned more than 5 times as often as each "left' poster does so, by this admittedly crude measure.
Crude it may be, but 5 times more often?
The easily vilified Mr. McCowen aside, I, ummm, sense a trend.