If you haven't already made up your mind how to vote on Bellevue's alcohol referendum, you really should make the effort to read and listen to many of its proponents.

More than any evenly presented recitation of facts and opinion about the future of a "wet" Bellevue, the paranoid, delusional, downright incorrect ramblings of some of these people will have you steering way clear of the "yes" button on the voting machine.

Right off the bat, I want to exclude Mark Helbling from this group of lunatics. Mark has been one of the few voices of reason in a crowd in which that trait is sadly lacking. He has been respectful of differences of opinion, and stuck to debating the issues without resorting to personal attacks.

Unfortunately, his group of activists apparently does not have the ability to do the same.

I have always framed this issue as one that requires a full airing of both facts and opinions, arguments pro and con, so that the people of Bellevue can make up their minds about it. The Citizen has taken no editorial position on the matter so far, and I have not even expressed my personal opinion here or in the paper.

I have gone to extremes to make sure both sides get their forum in the newspaper to express their views. At any other newspaper, most of the letters to the editor published this week would have been thrown in the trash, and the others reduced to a couple paragraphs. But I printed as much of every letter as I could in the space available, and then published the full versions on our Web site.

This week's paper also included interviews with representatives of both sides of the debate. They were given the space to state their positions fully. Much of that article was in the form of direct quotes from the two men interviewed.

So what horrendous violation of journalistic standards might I have committed? Well, it seems that when the article was transferred to The Citizen's Web site, there was a space in the "wet" side's Web site address that prevented the address from appearing on-line as a direct link to their site. Or, as one genius put it, the anti side's Web address was blue and theirs wasn't.

This was quickly viewed as a complete lack of "journalistic integrity."

Oddly enough, the problem was quickly fixed within minutes of me receiving notice of it from...wait for it...someone on the anti-referendum side. The pro side was much too busy trying to link me to the Kennedy assasination.

I am quite offended, I have to tell you. Not because my integrity has been questioned by people who have no grasp of the concept, but because they really think that -- after three years in law school, 10 years in a courtroom and 10 years publishing a newspaper -- the best I could come up with to torpedo an entire issue is...a typo?

I mean, really?