Expanding on the Law Jedi’s observation about Karl Rove’s latest statement, HughHewitt.com has the goods from Ken Mehlman: A long, damning list of statements from MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and George Soros underscoring exactly Rove’s point.

As a factual matter, this is an open-and-shut case.

Here’s where the Rove trap is sprung: Democrats as a whole, did not behave like the far-left establishment in the aftermath of September 11. Democrats acted like pretty much everyone else in America.

It was the far left–the group which has hijacked American liberalism–that reacted with such sourness. But in the intervening years, the far left has somehow convinced us that they and the Democratic party are one in the same–all numerical and electoral evidence to the contrary.

To be sure, Republicans have tried to help sell this notion, but now it seems that the Democratic party itself confused as to who it really is. Rove has just goaded them into self-identifying with a bunch of nuts who really don’t represent the party’s mainstream.

I mean, do Democrats want to keep losing elections?

P.S. Thanks to Al for catching my Freudian slip.

Also, I notice that Danny Glover has a new blog up at National Journal‘s Tech Daily, called Beltway Blogroll. It should be a great contribution.

I’ve been very remiss in not noting the two biggest–and best–additions to the web in a very long time.

The first is 610 WIP. After years of waiting, Philadelphia ex-pats can now get 610 on their desktops. It’s only the best radio station in America. Go ahead, give it a listen. Just not during Howard Eskin’s show. If only 610 could replace him with Tony Kornheiser . . .

The other new site–and this will be of much greater interest to most of you–is FaithAndJustice.org, a very smart project being run out of the University of Chicago by a group of liberal students interested in taking religion seriously, instead of using it as a punching bag. I’d be surprised if anything but good comes from their experiment.

The Law Jedi thinks that Rove has set a trap for Democrats–and that they’ve taken the bait by reflixively identifying themselves as “liberals.”

Via another Daily Standard comes this story:

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A 73-year-old Kenyan grandfather reached into the mouth of an attacking leopard and tore out its tongue to kill it, authorities said Wednesday.

Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

“It let out a blood-curdling snarl that made the birds stop chirping,” he told the daily Standard newspaper of how the leopard came at him and knocked him over.

The leopard sank its teeth into the farmer’s wrist and mauled him with its claws. “A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide open mouth. I obeyed,” M’Mburugu said.

As the leopard was dying, a neighbor heard the screams and arrived to finish it off with a machete.

This goes right up there with the Russian in North Carolina a couple years ago who scared off a shark by beating it with his severed arm.

Television’s biggest jerk is now moving the goalposts. After claiming that his mismanagement of CNN would pay dividends in a year, he how says the network will have to wait 18 months to harvest the fruits of his genius.

Ah, Jon Klein. Maybe we won’t be able to properly appreciate his greatness until he’s gone.

A group of colleges and universities today released a statement proclaiming their commitment intellectual diversity and freedom of political conscience in the classroom. This is response to David Horowitz’s push for an Academic Bill of Rights to ensure and these and other rights. Inside Higher Ed—an excellent resource on the academic scene—has the story here.

Just came across an interesting article, from the American Indian perspective (sorry to be so PC), concerning the ongoing litigation over the Washington Redskins name. Harjo et al had persuaded three trademark judges on the substance of their grievance in 1999; in 2003, a district court overturned their finding. This article cites some detective work by Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford on the point.

Suzan Shown Harjo