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All right, I admit it. It's not especially polite to take pot shots at the president during a memorial service.

Especially when the president happens to be sitting right behind you. And the president's wife, the usually unflappably sweet Laura Bush, is sitting next to him.

At today's memorial service honoring Coretta Scott King, the Reverend Joseph Lowery's tribute to King included this clever segue:

"She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there."

The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation...

"But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.

Laura's trademark sweet smile became a scowl that could stop a bus.

A little later, former President Jimmy Carter managed to slip into his tribute to King some thinly disguised criticism of the Bush administration, by condemning the FBI's "secret government wiretaps" of Martin Luther King, and by pointing out that Hurricane Katrina proved racial inequality still exists in America today.

No doubt the Limbaugh crowd will launch a withering counterattack against Lowery and Carter that will make them wish they had simply published some caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in the New York Times. And some of the criticism will be justified. A memorial service isn't the place to be taking swipes at someone.

On the other hand, this president is kept so insulated and isolated that you have to take your swipes wherever and whenever you can.