It's probably in the nature of a "reader advocate" that more often than not, I'm criticizing the Telegraph.

But, stepping out of character for once, I want to note that the Telegraph did a great service by pointing out, in their Election day editorial, the less than honorable tactics used in New Hampshire, for a second time, by the national Republican Party.

The editorial noted that in 2002, the Republicans had engaged a company to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines. For that, more than one GOP operative has been judged guilty of a crime.

This year, an arm of the national Republican Party paid for deceptive, and possibly illegal recorded phone calls to residents of the 2nd Congressional District. These calls started in such a way that a listener would think the call was sponsored by Democrat Paul Hodes; only at the end (after Hodes had been thoroughly trashed) did the listener find out that the call was sponsored by the national Republican Congressional campaign committee. If the listener, discerning it was a recorded call, hung up before the end, he got called back, repeatedly.

So it was a win-win; if you hung up, you got called back and presumably got angry at the Hodes campaign; if you listened to the end, the harsh criticism of Hodes was heard. In New Hampshire, such calls to people on the federal Do Not Call list are illegal, which brought the Attorney General into the picture. Later, reports indicated that the rules for such calls say the identity of the organization sponsoring the call should be stated early in the call, which was not the case here, from all reports.

It should also be noted that these calls were arranged for and paid for independent of the Bass campaign. That is what is required by campaign finance law.

These tactics were more or less ignored by much of the so-called "mainstream media," though they caused a considerable stir on the internet.

So I appreciated, as hope the readers do, the willingness of the Telegraph to ignore the conventional wisdom (which apparently was to ignore the issue) and strongly denounce these types of tactics.

It's important to remember that these tactics have nothing to do with political campaigning. They have nothing to do with informing voters about issues. They are poison poured into the roots of the tree of liberty and our system of democracy.

That is what makes the Telegraph editorial so important. The fact that the issue drew little attention in the national press makes the Telegraph's editorial stand that much more laudable.