John Kerry’s lies about Vietnam are finally breaking out into mainstream media; the Houston Chronicle is the latest paper to show some guts. Today they published an op-ed by Chronicle special projects editor and Vietnam veteran Lee Cearnal—and to be complete, the story must now also include mainstream media’s appalling reluctance to cover it: Where’s my colleagues’ interest in Kerry’s war records?

The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry’s military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former.

Kerry has made his four months and 11 days in Vietnam the central theme of his presidential campaign. This is entirely understandable given his 20 years as the Senate’s leading dove. He needs the cover that Vietnam can give him.

Just last week, one of his more fatuous claims came a cropper. Beginning in 1979, with an op-ed for the Boston Herald, Kerry has claimed repeatedly that he spent Christmas Eve of 1968 on a secret — and illegal — mission in Cambodia aboard his swift boat.