A widening fissure

Some of the cracks in the conservative movement's crackup are breaking in healthy ways. It's high time to see this happening at Breitbart:

Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro have tendered their resignations to the management at Breitbart.com over the site’s handling of the Corey Lewandowski/Michelle Fields imbroglio, Rosie Gray and McKay Coppins of BuzzFeed News reported late Sunday night. And more resignations are likely in the coming days and weeks, according to their report.

Fields and Shapiro join Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella, who left the company on Friday, citing as his reason the website's inadequate handling of Donald Trump’s campaign manager’s alleged assault on Fields last week.

Bardella told CNN's Don Lemon on Saturday that he thought the website has been "looking for a reason to disprove something" even though the evidence strongly supports Fields' version of the story. When Lemon asked Bardella if he thought Breitbart was lying, he bluntly answered, "Yes, I am."

BuzzFeed reports that Fields and Shapiro informed Breitbart's chairman, Steve Bannon, of their decisions Sunday night.

In his own statement, Shapiro said the episode was emblematic of how he believes the site’s management has sold out the legacy of its founder and namesake, the late Andrew Breitbart.

“Andrew’s life mission has been betrayed,” Shapiro wrote. “Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle.”

You either stand for conservative principles or you're something other than a conservative.

In a world rife with phonies, Ben and Michelle are the real deal.

UPDATE: The Squirrel-Hair-bots dominate the comment thread underneath the linked article and, as always, pollute it with juvenile, ill-informed ad hominem attacks.