THE GULL CAN'T HELP IT.

Midway through Charles C.W. Cooke's latest jet of froth (short version: People hate the Tea Party only because liberals are mean) comes this gem:

When the history of this period in American life comes to be written, historians will almost certainly come to see the hysteria prompted by the rise of the Tea Party as akin to the “Red Scare” of the 1950s — except, that is, that there were actual Communist traitors in America.

This reminds me of the bit in Costa-Gavras' Z in which a fascist general, under prosecution for the murder of a leftist politician, is asked by a reporter if he feels himself to be a new Dreyfus. "Dreyfus was guilty!" cries the general.