CNN got caught with their pants down. It turns out that Col. Keith Kerr is on the LGBT Americans For Hillary Steering Committee.

It takes away from the issue because Kerr's question was very good, but it hurts CNN's credibility even more with Republicans.

But Hunter and Huckabee's answers were still troubling and down right bigoted.

[UPDATE - 4:04pm] I'm willing to buy CNN's reply on this, simply because it was a very good question and it needed to be asked:

“There’s no way that was a plant. There were 5,000 questions. There were many gay questions. This was a very good one.

“If you’re going to go into the topic of gays in the military, where there’s some interesting nuance among these candidates, it’s a pretty good way to do it — through a brigadier general with 43 years of experience,” Bohrman said.

I don't care whether their gay, straight, Muslim, Jewish, Christian or atheist...if someone wants to serve their country, they should have that option.

[UPDATE - 6:18pm] Red State is taking this thing way too far. They just sent out a e-mail blast calling for firings at CNN:

RedState is calling for CNN to fire Sam Feist, their political director; and David Bohrman, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of the debate.

During last night's debate, which CNN billed as "a Republican debate, and the goal was to let Republican voters see their candidates," CNN either knowingly or incompetently allowed hardcore left wing activists to plant questions and Anderson Cooper willingly gave one of those activists a soapbox so he could harass the Republican candidates about military policy.

The post about this at Red State asks all Republican presidential candidates and viewers to boycott CNN.

[UPDATE - 6:43pm] It apparently this goes further than I realized:

A 20-year-old student from Texas who asked the candidates about criminalizing abortion openly backs Edwards, a former North Carolina senator.

A Florida man who asked why a gay Republican group should support each candidate and whether the candidates would accept its support is a backer of Obama, an Illinois senator.

And a mother who asked the candidates about what they’d do to limit the importation of dangerous goods from China works for a union that has endorsed Edwards.

Additionally, a Californian who asked a question about crop subsidies in 2004 interned for Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who is backing Clinton, a New York senator.

I do like how the Politico worded this though:

[CNN Political Director Sam Feist] asserted that conservative bloggers like Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin, who has led the way in probing the backgrounds of questioners at the GOP debate, “are trying to distract from the issues.

“It’s interesting to see our critics really focusing on the questioners, but not really focusing on the questions. You haven’t heard them say that these were not useful questions.”

A couple of those questions have been useful and needed to be asked. Should CNN have done some background checking? Maybe, ultimately I don't think that is what matters as long as the questions had substance and most of them did.