So what’s the wingnut parrot’s chorus freaking out about today? A quick look at the right wing echo chamber reveals that they’re all lathered up about this idiotic story from Weekly Standard fake outrage peddler Daniel Halper:

OBAMA FAILS TO SALUTE MARINE! | the Weekly Standard

Under gray skies and intermittent drizzle, President Obama boarded Marine One at 9:30 a.m. EDT in an open press event.

A few White House regulars were atwitter (and on Twitter) when the President walked directly up the steps of Marine One without saluting the Marine on duty. He soon came out of the helicopter, walked down the steps, shook hands with the Marine and engaged in a brief conversation.

They’re all slobbering over this one: Jim Hoft, Dan Riehl, Doug Ross, Breitbart, the entire moron squad, all shrieking in unison about “OBAMA’S DISRESPECT FOR THE MILITARY!”

The fake story apparently originated with CBS’s Mark Knoller:

Pres Obama chats with and shakes hand of US Marine whose salute he didn’t return on boarding Marine One today. twitter.com/markknoller/st…

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 24, 2013

This right wing fake outrage has come up before, of course, and it doesn’t smell any better this time around. There is no “tradition” of Presidents saluting military members, and in fact it used to be considered against military protocol — until Ronnie Reagan decided to play soldier.

As David Alexander of Reuters noted in 2008:

Reagan’s decision raised eyebrows at the time….

John Kline, then Reagan’s military aide and now a Minnesota congressman, advised him that it went against military protocol for presidents to return salutes.

Kline said in a 2004 op-ed piece in The Hill that Reagan ultimately took up the issue with Gen. Robert Barrow, then commandant of the Marine Corps.

Barrow told Reagan that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he was entitled to offer a salute — or any sign of respect he wished — to anyone he wished, Kline wrote.

Another day, another huge outbreak of idiocy in the right wing blogosphere.