When Johnny Lindh Comes Marching Home

Condi Rice saw the people comparing the War on Islamoterrobinladenfascism to World War II and decided to up the ante.

Secretary of State Rice compared the Iraq war with the American Civil War, telling a magazine that slavery might have lasted longer in this country if the North had decided to end the fight early.

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

The migration period of an idea from the Weekly Standard wading pool to the Bush cabinet? Nine months.

I have no great love for Pennsylvania state treasurer Bob Casey, who's running against Sen. Rick Santorum, but I liked his response at a Sunday debate after Santorum jawed on about how the war against a few thousand terrorists was the new war on fascism.

You've heard him a lot talking about the terminology of, of the war on terror. He calls it Islamic fascism and, and he, and he talks about the terminology and changing the terms. What we need, Rick, is not a change in the terminology, we need to change the tactics. And we've got to make sure that even as you're debating whether or not we call Osama bin Laden a terrorist or a fascist, I don't think that really matters. We need a plan. You're in the Senate, you have votes, you should be leading that effort. And I, I think after it's over, after you get the terminology right, maybe you can have a seminar in Washington about whether bin Laden, whom we should be finding and killing, whether he's a dead terrorist or a dead fascist.