I hate to say it, but a reporter I hired at The Herald-Sun years ago has embarrassed himself. His name is Ben Evans and he now works for The Associated Press, which may explain how his formerly good training turned soft and brown. He’s the reporter who first reported on Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell’s comment in a debate yesterday that the First Amendment does not call for a separation of church and state, only for a freedom of religion.

Predictably, liberals hee-hawed, as did Ben in his story, or as much as one can hee-haw without breaking AP’s rules on “objectivity.” Even the law students at Widener Law School snickered at her response. But conservative jurists and constitutional law professors later came to her defense, saying she was completely correct. The “separation” has come over years of questionable Supreme Court decisions. It did not come from the Constitution.

Not only that, but AP seemingly was so embarrassed by the story that they completely rewrote it and did not tell readers of their web page, which is a no-no in the world of internet etiquette. The relentless media-criticism blogger Patterico has the story:

How much did the left show its keister on O’Donnell’s alleged gaffe? So much so that the AP/WaPo story on the subject was almost completely rewritten last night, and without an official correction. After the break I will have screen caps and a cut and paste of the text of the article, but let’s start with just the first paragraph.

Before:

WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

After:

WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Christine O’Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.

Literally I ran a document comparison in Word between the original text and every paragraph is completely rewritten. Update (III): At the end of the post I show that 76% of the words in the revised version of this article were not in the original.

Read the whole thing for the two versions of the story. Very embarrassing to the AP and all lefties who instinctively believe that conservatives are idiots. Also very embarrassing to me since I had thought we had trained Ben better.

UPDATE: It gets worse.