(Crossposted at Mercury Rising.)

I’m a little confused here. Can anyone help me with reconciling the following events?

– White-supremacist loony tunes with guns were plotting to kill Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The FBI wanted them charged, but Troy Eid — Colorado’s US Attorney, who was picked for the job by none other than Karl Rove — flatly refused.

– Meanwhile, Mr. Eid turned his full prosecutorial wrath on a black man who sent material instantly identifiable as harmless baby powder to John McCain as part of a faked, not a real, attack on John McCain.

– Oh, and the hundreds of arrested RNC protesters in Saint Paul? Unlike the white supremacists plotting to take out Obama, none of them had any guns — in fact, some of the arrested people weren’t even protesters as such but pamphleteers and documenters of police actions at other protests — but that didn’t stop the local cops from heaving them into jail for days if not weeks at a time.Is it just me, or is there an unwholesome pattern here?