Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan: John Edwards' BIG Mistake

John Edwards thought the uproar over the anti-Catholic bloggers he hired to work on his campaign had passed last week.

He promised that the vulgar, bigoted Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan would behave.

OOPS!

Didn't happen!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Sen. John Edwards on Thursday stood by two bloggers after a conservative Catholic group demanded they be fired for posting what it called "anti-Catholic" blog entries before joining his presidential campaign.

Notice the Catholic League is called a "conservative" Catholic group -- code for extreme, wacko.

Catholic League President William Donohue issued a statement this week calling the two bloggers -- Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen -- "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash talking bigots."

In response to the criticism, the North Carolina Democrat said that "the tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwen's posts personally offended me."

"It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people," Edwards said in a statement.

"But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word."

Read Edwards' Statement on Campaign Bloggers.

Aw, shucks!

Edwards believes that Marcotte and McEwan deserve a "fair shake."

He seems to be operating without a decency meter. I wonder if he thinks other haters (skinheads, KKK members) deserve "fair shakes," too.

Edwards says, "We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked."

What is that?

It sounds as if Edwards is accusing the Catholic League of "hijacking" his campaign plans and he doesn't like the group messing with his precious little hand-picked employees.

Are we to believe that Edwards actually believes that Marcotte and McEwan really didn't mean to offend Catholics and Christians?

If Edwards believes that, then he would believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pursuing a purely peaceful nuclear program, and Kim Jong Il is just a wee bit eccentric.

In statements also released by the Edwards campaign, Marcotte and McEwen said they did not mean to offend anyone's personal beliefs.

If you've read what these two women have written about Catholics and Christian beliefs, then you know that just can't be true. They most certainly trashed people's personal beliefs in a shockingly vile manner.

They did so knowingly.

Read some of Marcotte and McEwan's greatest hits.

(Warning: They are extremely vulgar and offensive.)

It's stunning that Edwards took these women at their word. Truly stunning.

On Monday, the Catholic League issued another statement calling for Marcotte to be fired.

It turns out that she didn't behave after Edwards promised that she would.

What a fool! Edwards should not have trusted her -- a terrible lack of judgment on his part.

One of the two women who got John Edwards into hot water by making vulgar anti-Christian comments has struck again. Yesterday, Amanda Marcotte reviewed a movie, "Children of Men," on the blogsite Pandagon.

"The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal," she said, "where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels."

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, commented as follows:

"On February 8, John Edwards addressed the writings of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan saying 'that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor or anything else.' On February 11, Marcotte struck again.

"Anyone who actually believes that the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary is 'generally interpreted' as being a sexist exercise obviously lives in an anti-Christian ghetto. The 85 percent of Americans who are Christian do not believe this, and most of the other 15 percent do not either. Only those who think ill of Christianity could write such insulting commentary.

"John Edwards had better fire Marcotte and McEwan immediately. As I said last week on TV, these two foul-mouthed bigots are loose cannons with no particular loyalty to Edwards. I was just proven right."

Well, well, well. This is a surprise.

Today, Marcotte "quit." She's no longer working for Edwards' campaign.

One of the chief campaign bloggers for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards quit Monday after conservative critics raised questions about her history of provocative online messages.

Amanda Marcotte posted on her personal blog, Pandagon, that the criticism "was creating a situation where I felt that every time I coughed, I was risking the Edwards campaign." Marcotte said she resigned from her position Monday, and that her resignation was accepted by the campaign.

..."No matter what you think about the campaign, I signed on to be a supporter and a tireless employee for them, and if I can't do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn't have anything better to do with his time than harass me, then I won't do it," Marcotte wrote Monday night.

Poor baby.

Marcotte was so persecuted by Bill Donohue that she felt it was necessary to resign.

I doubt that's true.

I think the Edwards campaign knew that Marcotte would be a distraction that wasn't going to go away.

So she was forced to resign. Clearly, she didn't want to leave the campaign. She was fired. She should just admit it.

Irreparable damage has been done to Edwards. He stood by this vulgar, hateful woman.

It was easy to get rid of Marcotte.

Getting of rid of the reality that presidential hopeful Edwards employed Marcotte and gave her a "fair shake" even after he was fully aware of her offensive writings isn't going to be so easy.

What was he thinking?

Now there's still that matter of McEwan....