Instapundit Watch

Shorter Glenn Reynolds: "When Democrats attack the president for arguing that two plus two equals five, they're only feeding into the public perception that they're soft on the war on arithmetic. Personally, I think there ought to be more of a debate about this, but it's difficult to have one given the way that addition has become so politicized."

Andrew Sullivan, Cincinnatus, and Jesse Taylor (scroll down) agree, each in his own way.

I'll have loads more to say about the shameful things Glenn and his compatriots are doing to the English language. Torture would be an apt description if "tortured language" weren't already a cliche.

Longer Glenn Reynolds (for those interested):

I was out running errands today and my sense is that the GOP is thrilled with the idea of Congressional hearings in which Democrats can be characterized as soft on terror. It's the old "soft on criminals" routine revisited. How did that work out again?

I've been against torture since Alan Dershowitz was pushing it back in the fall of 2001. (Okay, actually I was against torture even before Dershowitz was pushing it). But I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today's hype becoming tomorrow's reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats. And the highly politicized way in which the issue is raised is likely to ensure that there's no useful discussion of exactly how, in terms of incarceration, etc., we should treat potentially very dangerous people who do not fall readily within the laws of war.