Our editorial yesterday chided the political parties for threatening to void the results of the Top Two primary if the state goes ahead with the election next month.

Over at Horses Ass, Goldy is on a tear after Attorney General Rob McKenna for bungling the case. He's alleging that McKenna either made a monumental mistake in not disposing of an old federal court injunction against Top Two before the state proceeded with plans to hold the election – or that he deliberately failed to act because he knew the federal court would not grant a stay.

Such procedural mistakes dogged McKenna's predecessor, Chris Gregoire, in her run for governor four years ago and could become an issue in McKenna's run against Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg this year. That's if procedural mistakes were actually made. I'll leave that to the lawyers to suss out.

But regardless of whether the state dropped the ball, the point remains that the parties should leave next month's election alone. They owe that much to the candidates and to the voters who are proceeding in good faith on the assumption that the election is legal.

UPDATE: Couple of e-mails came in after I posted the item above. The Attorney General's office sent me this letter addressed to the Republican and Democratic party lawyers refuting their argument that the state doesn't have the legal authority to proceed with the Top Two. And here's a press release from the Ladenburg camp: "This is what happens when you have an AG who has never been inside a courtroom before taking office."

We ran a letter Saturday that inspired several readers to respond in defense of John McCain.

The writer said: “I wonder what a Rove-inspired Swift Boater could do with McCain's service record. Suggest he barely graduated from the Naval Academy, crashed five aircraft, was the cause of the 1967 USS Forrestal tragedy, succumbed to torture and produced anti-U.S. propaganda, and still suffers from PTSD and related anger problems?”

Of the responses we received, I selected one by Robert Baldwin of Gig Harbor, who noted he is a retired Navy man. He wrote:

McCain was nearly the first casualty of that catastrophe. He was in the cockpit of his aircraft waiting to be catapulted on a combat mission. A rocket was inadvertently launched from another aircraft in the pack and struck McCain's plane, igniting a fierce fire which ultimately spread to other aircraft and set off several bombs.

McCain managed to scramble from his burning aircraft and joined his shipmates in combating the blaze. Several hours later, after the situation was under control, McCain returned to his squadron ready room, much to the amazement of his squadron mates who were convinced that he could not have survived the rocket impact on his plane. Far from being the cause of the tragedy, McCain heroically joined in the effort to limit the damage.

It turns out, Baldwin isn’t just any Navy retiree. He’s a retired vice-admiral. Regular letter writer Hank Searls, who was a classmate of Baldwin’s at the Naval Academy, notes in a letter today that Baldwin was “too modest to sign his letter with his rank to bolster his facts, but he was about to take command of the USS Forrestal from her previous skipper when John McCain’s plane was hit on the flight deck.” 134 men aboard the Forrestal lost their lives in the catastrophe.

I checked with Baldwin, who corroborates Searls.

Hank Searls' comments on my letter are true. We are Naval Academy classmates and good friends. I did have orders to take command of Forrestal and was about to leave the U.S. to join the ship when the accident happened. Since the ship was returning to Norfolk for repairs, I waited there.

I intentionally did not put my rank in the letter to you, but I should have mentioned that I was slated to take command of the ship, which explains my rather detailed knowledge of the circumstances. I wrote the letter not as an endorsement of John McCain but merely as an effort to set the record straight.