Natural-Born Shillers

I have come to the conclusion that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Democrat National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are twin sons of different mothers.

First came Dirty Harry's latest verbal eructation from last Thursday evening, which was telegraphed in the news story reporting on it by the phrase, "strayed from his prepared remarks":

Minority Leader Harry Reid strayed from his prepared remarks on the Senate floor yesterday and promised to continue opposing one of President Bush's judicial nominees based on "a problem" he said is in the nominee's "confidential report from the FBI."

Those highly confidential reports are filed on all judicial nominees, and severe sanctions apply to anyone who discloses their contents. Less clear is whether a senator could face sanctions for characterizing the content of such files.

"Henry Saad would have been filibustered anyway," Mr. Reid said on the floor yesterday, about the Michigan Appeals Court judge who is nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

"All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and I think we would all agree that there is a problem there," Mr. Reid continued.

The article adds that Reid's foray into undiluted McCarthyism "created a firestorm of outrage on the GOP side of the aisle." As well it might; shall we count the ways?

Judicial nominees are not allowed to defend themselves during the confirmation process. Consequently, anything detrimental that a senator says about a nominee cannot be answered by him/her directly; s/he can only be defended by another senator.

Now here comes Harry Reid slyly suggesting that Judge Saad "has a problem" based upon the raw data in his FBI file, a background dossier compiled on anybody who is appointed to the Judicial or Executive branches, to which the nominee does not have access. Anything anybody may ever have said about a nominee is in that file, regardless of whether or not it's true. If a nominee has made enemies in the past, that is where those enemies will try to exact their revenge, and there's nothing a nominee can do about it except seeth in silence and twist slowly in the wind as their reputation is fed through the proverbial shredder.

What makes this instance even more heinous is that by Senate rules, Reid isn't supposed to have access to any nominee's FBI file. Only members of the Judiciary Committee and the nominee's home-state senators are granted access, a restriction borne of past such smears. And, still worse, that same restriction hampers non-Judiciary Republicans inclined to defend Judge Saad precisely because they don't know what's in his FBI file.

And to top all of that off, Reid's despicable innuendo is almost certainly false, because Judge Saad's background check was done over two years ago, and if the FBI had found any genuine "problem," it would certainly have been reported up the chain of command to the White House, and his nomination accordingly withdrawn.

As Ed Morrissey concluded,

Reid just conducted nothing short of a Joe McCarthy-style character assassination, a tradition that Senate Democrats had come close to recreating on judicial nominations over the past few months anyway. Talking vaguely about information in secret files showing that Saad has some unnamed unfitness for office differs in no way from waving around a sheet of paper and claiming to possess a list of Communist sympathizers in the Army. He has now publicly smeared Saad in a manner that absolutely allows no public defense. No matter what happens, people will always wonder if Saad is hiding something, especially with an Arabic-sounding surname.

Reid won't be, as Cap'n Ed urges, stripped of his leadership post and committee assignments, because he's only doing the bidding of his party's left-wing extremist base. His disgraceful smear of Judge Saad is of a piece with the insults he's spewed against the President ("loser"), Justice Clarence Thomas ("illiterate"), and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan ("political hack") over the past few months. The crazy proletarians have completely taken over the Democrat Party, this is the conduct and rhetoric they demand, and any Donk who doesn't conform will not only see their fundraising spigots shut off but a tsunami of those resources turned against them. Poor, dumb, hapless schlemiels like Dirty Harry, who used to be within hailing distance of the political center at one time, are the ones caught in the middle, without the integrity or strength of character to stand up to these insurgents and tell them to go jump in the nearest septic tank.

Case in point: Senator Reid's "twin," Dr. Demented.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Party, said yesterday that the US House majority leader, Tom DeLay, ''ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence," referring to allegations of unethical conduct against the Republican leader.

Not to advocate violence, but how is it that nobody has punched this asshole's lights out before now?

How beyond the pale was Chairman How's latest slur? Dem Representative Barney Frank slapped him back for it.

Dean's remark, in a speech to Massachusetts Democrats at their party convention, drew an immediate rebuke from US Representative Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat and one of DeLay's harshest critics. ''That's just wrong," Frank said in an interview on the convention floor. ''I think Howard Dean was out of line talking about DeLay. The man has not been indicted. I don't like him, I disagree with some of what he does, but I don't think you, in a political speech, talk about a man as a criminal or his jail sentence."

A party's leaders come from its own ranks. Senate Dems elected Harry Reid, and the Dem grassroots elected Howie Dean (House Dems elected Crazy Nancy Pelosi as well, who has only been keeping a low profile of late because her attempt to smear Congressman DeLay has backfired on her and her caucus so spectacularly). So it can hardly be said that the party rank & file are without culpability in this unhinged rhetoric. Doesn't it have to be causing serious damage to whatever tatters of credibility they have left?

Brother Hinderaker says, on balance, no, it doesn't:

The Democrats generally don't pay a price for ths kind of misconduct, mainly because the press covers for them. They are also helped, obviously, by the fact that not many people are paying attention to politics at the moment.

But it can't be a good thing for a party to be led by men who have so little judgment or self-control.

One thing it should do, however, is finally get it through the thick craniums of Senate RINOs that compromise with such pariahs is neither possible nor desirable, and that freeing the confirmation process from the parliamentary terrorists holding it hostage by breaking the filibuster once and for all - as Republicans were elected to do last November - is the only sane and reasonable option left.

If Dirty Harry then brings the entire Senate to a standstill, as his extremist superiors will certainly demand, I say let him - I look foward to it. The backlash it triggers against the minority may be the only thing left that can actually shut them up.

And no silence will be more blessed.