Howard Unhinged

Whatever you may think about Howard Dean you have to admit that he's good for laughs. Consider this CNS News article on Mr. Dean's recent speech to the College Democrats of America:

[Dean] said the president was partly responsible for a recent Supreme Court decision involving eminent domain [The Kelo decision].

"The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is 'okay' to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is," Dean said, not mentioning that until he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court this week, Bush had not appointed anyone to the high court.

Dean's reference to the "right-wing" court was...erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the fourth dissenter.

The court's liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer combined with Justice Anthony Kennedy to form the majority opinion, allowing the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize private properties for commercial development.

"We think that eminent domain does not belong in the private sector. It is for public use only," Dean said.

Evidently, Mr. Dean has an unhappy relationship with the facts, but we shouldn't quibble. It's just like conservatives, after all, to throw cold water on a good speech by insisting that its claims be factually correct. Why let facts stand in the way of a rousing stem-winder? So what if Mr. Dean has no idea what he's talking about? So what if he's the guy who claimed to be the head of the "reality-based" party? Do you think anyone in his audience cared? Truth is so twentieth century.

After lambasting the Republicans for their lack of moral values and praising Democrats for their moral virtue in pushing for a strong public education system, balancing the budget, and, he implies, winking at illegal immigration, he shouted that he is "sick of being divided."

It's not clear what he meant by this, but he was apparently referring to the gap between what he says and what is objectively the case. Or maybe he suffers from multiple personality disorder. At any rate, it's telling that he didn't list honesty in his peculiar catalogue of Democrats' moral values.