It's About Time

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats demanded Thursday that President Bush order a halt to personal attacks on the party's leader, Sen. Harry Reid, and expressed regret that they had failed to mount a stronger defense for his defeated predecessor.

"This is a new Democratic Party," Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a news conference called to release a letter telling Bush to muzzle his "political operatives."

"It says to the president, 'You will not intimidate us,' " said Schumer, who likened the attacks on Reid to political knee-cappings.

The letter itself was written in milder terms. "We urge you to keep your word about being a uniter and publicly halt these counterproductive attacks so that we are able to work together in a bipartisan manner and debate issues on the merits," it says.

Bush and the White House have denied responsibility for the attacks.

Those would be the attacks directly from the Republican National Committee. Mr. Bush wants us to believe that the RNC is running around doing political attacks against the Senate Minority Leader without first clearing it with the head of their party, and his political advisor Karl Rove. Riiiiight.

Attacking Reid, a soft-spoken, pro-life moderate, reveals the hypocrisy of the "bipartisan uniter" noise. It's nice to see the Democrats calling him on it.