Unleashing stern looks.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Off the Map - Column

What a surprise: Republicans feverishly exploiting their echo chamber to pound out a familiar percussive drumbeat that Democrats are weenie girly men who can't be trusted to keep their frilly underwear unsoiled, much less protect this country from terrorists. The very frightening GOP mole Joseph Lieberman parroting the same crass cross-party line when he whined that Ned Lamont's win was a victory for the kind of people involved in the British airline bomb plot. One CNN news anchor called Lamont the "Al Qaeda candidate." Democrats have vowed to mount a vigorous defense. Soon. Maybe. Once they rinse out their underwear. And by vigorous they mean ready to unleash a variety of stern looks.

What is wrong with these guys? They got to get out there. Now. No. Now is too late. They got to build a time machine. Go back a couple weeks to the day after the liquid bomb scare. Issue predated press releases. And drag everyone along with them. Dig up a couple of dead Dems, the three-initialed hero kind like JFK and FDR. Get Lucas or Spielberg or one of those Hollywood guys who wants to stick it to Mel Gibson to animate their corpses and send them out on tour. Do whatever it takes to keep the GOP from locking them into the sissy box. Again. Get Al Gore to put together a PowerPoint presentation and use bar graphs to display exactly which party is at fault for America being less safe now. And slap him silly until he grows his he-man Grizzly Adams beard again.

It's time to fight back. Time to start slamming Bush and his toadies for diverting money for research to screen for liquid bombs to fight a war against the wrong people. We got to remember 60 percent of us aren't happy about invading the wrong country. And 98 percent of Iraqi Sunni Arabs want us out of there. And you can't tell me that's good.

With only weeks left before the midterms, Democrats have to trot out their history of proposing security legislation that...