Dana Milbank and Charles Babington point out that Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman and New York Senator Chuck Schumer went to the same Brooklyn high school, James Madison. However, it appears that neither share that old school spirit with each other any longer, especially after Coleman singled out Schumer for "partisan attacks" in the Plame case:

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn and James Madison High Class of '66, took off Thursday after another nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn and James Madison High Class of '67, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). "The chairman of the Democratic Senate campaign committee" -- that would be Schumer -- is "sucking the oxygen out of that atmosphere of collegiality and constructive cooperation by trying to make a partisan issue of something that is being handled by a special counsel today," Coleman said in a news conference on the Wilson-Plame-Rove CIA leak imbroglio. "Stop the partisan attacks," Coleman said. "Let's get away from the gotcha politics of Washington today."

Schumer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fired back an hour later: "Norm Coleman is paying back his political patrons Karl Rove and George Bush today, picking up the hatchet for the White House and doing its dirty work."

That's about par for the Democrats these days. When a Republican says that a Democrat has been too aggressively partisan and obsessed with gotcha politics, the response from the Democrat is that the Republican must be corrupt and part of a dark conspiracy. The problem for this Democratic leadership isn't partisanship -- it's paranoia. They have become so unhinged that they truly believe that Karl Rove controls everything, and that all Republicans operate off of his talking points. John Hinderaker, Mitch Berg and I joked about this on our weekly radio broadcast yesterday, but the Democrats and their supporters increasingly demonstrate this.

On the other hand, as Babington and Milbank point out, occasionally the Democrats get caught using their own canned talking points. If some confused Senator Daniel Akaka's remarks on the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor with those of Harry Reid's, it's because they had the same writer:

Akaka read an eight-sentence statement that turned out to be virtually identical to a statement released earlier that day by Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who was in Nevada.

Three of Akaka's sentences matched those in Reid's statement word for word. Three others differed only slightly. Reid's statement said, "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has been an inspirational figure to all Americans"; Akaka made it "for all Americans." Reid said, "As the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, she blazed a trail that many will follow." Akaka ended the sentence, "for many to follow." Reid said, "It is vital that she be replaced by someone like her, someone who embodies the fundamental American values of freedom, equality and fairness." Akaka dropped the word "American."

The explanation? His staff accidentally gave Akaka Reid's speech. I guess that Akaka couldn't come up with his own reaction to the expected retirement of a Supreme Court justice.

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Tom Maguire came out with the obvious conclusion the Plame/Wilson scandal will wither away now that it is clear Rove did nothing more than answer reporter questions on the subject they brought up. But the media can’t let go. They are too far o... [Read More]

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