C-J's Joe Gerth takes issue with RGA ad, concludes it didn't the truth.

Joe Gerth, Courier-Journal Columnist, has a piece, The whole truth?, in which he concluded that "[t]hings aren't always what they seem."

Case in point? Well, according to Gerth, as excerpted here: [w]hen the Republican Governors Association began running a television ad critical of Democrat Steve Beshear last week, it made a claim that "he voted to let violent criminals out of jail early."

When I asked for documentation to back it up, the association sent me a copy of a story that Al Cross wrote for this newspaper during the 1996 Senate campaign, parsing an ad that Sen. Mitch McConnell ran against Beshear making the same claim.

Beshear did it. No question.

But folks who watch lawyer TV shows know that prosecutors have to turn over exculpatory evidence -- evidence that would help the accused.

The association didn't do that. In fact, it cut from the text this sentence from Cross' story:

"In his defense, Beshear notes that he proposed doing away with parole for violent criminals when he was state attorney general in 1979-83, and supports 'truth in sentencing,' in which juries are informed how soon a convict may be paroled."

My view: Lacking the complete truth is NOT the only thing wrong with that ad; it is also l-a-m-e, as I earlier pointed out.