http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/mccain-repudiates-hussein-obama-remarks/

[McCain] called Mr. Obama a “man of integrity” and said he was someone he had come to know “pretty well and I admire.”

He also said that it was not appropriate to invoke Mr. Obama’s middle name in the course of the campaign.

“I absolutely repudiate such comments,” he said. “It will never happen again.”

Mr. Obama’s middle name, which is Muslim in origin, comes from his late father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a Kenyan.

Mr. Obama’s campaign has been dogged by whispered rumors that he is a Muslim—he is actually a practicing Christian. Periodically, his full name has been bandied about by conservatives critics, drawing indignation from Mr. Obama’s campaign and others.

WHAT? Invoking a presidential candidate’s NAME is off limits? Using his full name is disparaging to his integrity? It’s something you have to APOLOGIZE for?

McCain is going to lose and lose big if this is the kind of nitpicky, touchy-feely stuff he feels compelled to apologize for.

I realize that people are trying to use Obama’s name to try to cast him as some kind of closet muslim. It’s stupid and pointless. There’s enough about Obama’s REAL religious connections to criticize. But you can’t go around apologizing for OTHER people calling your opponent by his full name.

And Obama better get over his thin-skinned whininess about people using his middle name or making fun of his ears. God shall not be mocked.