Liberal blogger Ezra Klein is often referred to as a “respectable” foe by his ideological opponents and simultaneously lauded by fellow progressives and mainstream media bloggers for being a smart voice in the blogosphere.

However, he recently was the source of some ridicule in the conservative blogosphere for this post on Obama’s post-Iowa victory speech. Although the post was written in well-crafted prose, it attempted to put Obama’s speech in a larger historical perspective by comparing it to recent speeches by … John Edwards, Bill Clinton and Howard Dean.

Of course, some criticism is expected when you’re a high-profile blogger like Klein and there’s plenty of evidence his fans enjoyed the post, regardless of whatever it lacked in context. Much like Obama’s speech, it at least sounded nice, whether or not you thought the substance was equally persuasive. After all, hyperbole is often the main course in a blogger's political diet.

But there’s nothing positive or professional to be taken from Klein’s commentary on last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, sponsored by MSNBC. Klein was clearly upset by the line of questioning directed at the Democratic candidates by moderator Tim Russert and Brian Williams, declaring, fairly ridiculously:

It’s almost impossible for me to convey the damage Tim Russert and Brian Williams are doing to the republic this evening.

But far worse, the conservative blog Unpopular Front captured a Twitter offering from Klein that drops below the standards of professionalism for any working writer or reporter, even if that person’s primary outlet is a blog. The language is aggressively foul, so I will not re-print it here, but you can see it here (link removed).

If this were just a random missive, it would be forgettable, albeit tasteless. But as Unpopular Front points out, Klein is a regular guest on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” which falls under the stewardship of Russert, NBC’s main man in DC.

So, should Klein be banned from “Hardball” and other MSNBC programming as Unpopular Front suggests?

UPDATE: Klein writes in to note that his Twitter message was intended as private. Twitter has a function allowing you set your content to private, which Klein has now activated, but was not in use until his message began receiving attention. By journalistic standards, that makes his post fair game. Nonetheless, as a professional courtesy, I've removed the offending link, which in full disclosure, can be now be found at a number of other sites. And to avoid any potential misunderstanding of my post, I have no opinion on whether Klein should continue as a guest on MSNBC.