Oh, Come On Now!

WASHINGTON - Sen. Rick Santorum says he "meant no offense" by referring to Adolf Hitler while defending the GOP's right to ban judicial filibusters as Senate leaders prepared to start a countdown Friday to a vote over whether to stop minority senators from blocking President Bush's judicial nominees.

"Referencing Hitler was meant to dramatize the principle of an argument, not to characterize my Democratic colleagues," Santorum, the No. 3 Republican in the GOP leadership in the Senate, said of his remarks Thursday.

So it was like he was saying, "You're acting like an archetype of evil, a totalitarian despot responsible for genocide and the death of millions, no offense?" Is there any way to compare someone to Hitler that isn't, ipso facto, offensive?

Do Republicans actually speak English, or some other language that just has a remarkable number of "false friends"?