Exactly what did, and didn't, happen?

Coulter, while arguing that liberal attacks on ex-White House reporter Jeff Gannon, formerly of Talon News, were a response to the "public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan," also took a shot at longtime Washington correspondent Thomas (who, by the way, called Condi Rice a "monster" and a "goddamn liar").

Coulter wrote, "Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president."

Although Universal removed the "Arab" reference before sending the column to Coulter's 110 newspaper clients, the politicians are upset because Coulter kept "Arab" in the version of the column that appeared on her Web site, AnnCoulter.com. The politicos point out that she also kept the Universal copyright under the column and didn't include a disclaimer explaining that the column was worded differently from the one syndicated by Universal.

They wrote: "Just as we would expect that similar slights against African-Americans, Jews, or Hispanics would not be tolerated, equal disapproval should be shown toward these repeated slanders directed at Arab-Americans," adding, "Loyal Arab-Americans have made heroic contributions to our military, intelligence, and Homeland Security efforts."

As a result of the stir, Coulter and Universal have reached an agreement on removing Universal's copyright from columns on AnnCoulter.com that differ from columns sent to newspapers.

Until now, the line under Coulter's columns said "copyright Universal Press Syndicate." Under the agreement, all columns on AnnCoulter.com will say "distributed by Universal Press Syndicate (c) Ann Coulter" if the print and Web versions of the column are the same.

If the versions are not the same, the line will say "(c) Ann Coulter" only. "This applies to columns that may be of different lengths, with different headlines, and with different copy from the edited version," Kerr said.

Using a Coulter copyright "corrects a longstanding error," said Kathie Kerr, director of communications for Universal. "Universal does not hold the copyright on Ann's columns."

However, as this story was being posted, Coulter had yet to drop the Universal copyright from the Feb. 23 column on her site. "We fully expect it will be removed," Kerr told Editor and Publisher.

Kerr added that she knew of no newspapers canceling Coulter’s popular column because of her "old Arab" remark.

Nor should they. It is an "opinion" column, after all, is it not? And this is still America, is it not?

Editor's note: