I promised myself I’d stop writing about the Frost thing, but I love this — an Ezra Klein challenge:

Let’s Debate

"It’s militant leftist bloggers," writes Malkin, "who wouldn’t know a good-faith argument if it bit them in the lip." Let’s have a good faith argument. I will debate Michelle Malkin anytime, anywhere, in any forum (save HotAir TV, which she controls), on the particulars of S-CHIP. We can set the debate at a think tank, on BloggingHeads, over IM. Hell, we can set up the podiums in the shrubbery outside my house, since that seems to be the sort of venue she naturally seeks out. And then if Malkin wants an argument, she can have one. We’ll talk S-CHIP and nothing but — nothing of the Frosts, or Congress, or her blog.

My sense has been that Malkin doesn’t want an argument. Rather, she wants to feed her readers the steady stream of outrage that keeps her traffic numbers up. But I realized tonight that I could be wrong, and I shouldn’t assume Malkin doesn’t want a real argument unless I actually ask her.

So c’mon Michelle: Let’s debate health care. Prove to the world that you really want "a good-faith argument." We can talk crowd-out, and cross-subsidization, and whether lower-middle class entrepreneurs are able to procure health care on the individual market. If this is a policy argument you care so deeply about as to travel to the Frost family’s house to see if they really deserved S-CHIP benefits, surely you’ll want to set up a web cam and talk through the issue.

Malkin will, of course, decline or find some reason to avoid a good-faith debate.  Especailly with Ezra, who knows this shit inside and out.

P.S.  The latest state of play in the blogowar here, from the Orange Devil himself.

NEXT MORNING UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin gets all French and predictably declines in a ranting, frothing, and incoherent screed in which she launches another full-scale attack on Ezra Klein and anyone he’s met, talked to, or sat next to in an airport departure lounge:

On behalf of all liberal bloggers of purported good faith, the Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein has chivalrously stepped up to the plate to challenge me to a debate about S-CHIP.

I’m. Trrrrembling.

With. Laughter.

A good-faith debate would require that Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein actually be a person of good faith. He is treated as such in some elite conservative circles, where his work is linked frequently and intellectual repartee among the Beltway boys’ club is warm and chummy. He is free to continue traveling in those cozy circles where highbrow right-wingers are not so mean and scary.

But I’d just as soon share a stage, physical or virtual, with Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein as I would with Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera, or an overflowing vat of liquid radioactive waste.

***

Good faith, eh? What would Ezra Klein know about it?

Now, run along and thump your chest over your “victory” at BloggingHeadsTV or something.

I have to get back to work. You know, “stalking.” “Assault.” “Savagings.” “Howling. “Braying.” “Hateful orgies.”

That stuff.

It really speaks for itself, and is worthy of a chuckle or two — although it can be summed up in this Pandagon translation:

Having redefined “good faith” arguments as harassing anyone who offers a different political opinion than me and “bad faith” arguments as substantive policy discussions I will lose because I couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with an instruction manual, I decline to debate you. You’ll want to talk about terrible things you should be ashamed of to bring up in public, like the effectiveness of a certain policy at reaching certain goals, instead of important issues for polite company, like what the Frosts did with their kitchen decor and who do they think they are?!