'We Didn't Have English Class'
BY JAMES TARANTO
The Best of the Web
Friday, December 23, 2005
Last week Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader, boasted to a Democratic gathering that "we killed the Patriot Act." Perhaps realizing that this was not the most appealing message to send to voters outside the Bush-hating base, Reid took to the Senate floor Monday and offered an apology of sorts (link in PDF):
<<< Mr. President, maybe I didn't have the education of a lot of my friends. I was educated in a little school in Searchlight, NV. We didn't have English class. Maybe my choice of words wasn't perfect. Maybe I should have said we killed the conference report. But the fact is, that is what we had done. People can try to change the words and the meaning of it all they want, but that is what happened. I may not have the ability to express myself like the folks who were educated in all these private schools and fancy schools, but I understand the Senate rules. Everyone knows that cloture was defeated, killed, whatever you want to call it. That means that cloture was defeated and that bill is still before the Senate. >>>
This is the same Harry Reid who, a little over a year ago, called Justice Clarence Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court" because "I think that his opinions are poorly written." If Reid's literacy is as defective as he himself claims it is, doesn't this make him, by his own standard, an embarrassment to the Senate?
Further, if Reid never even had an English class, what qualifies him to evaluate Justice Thomas's writings? Or was he merely stereotyping Thomas as unintelligent because of his race, in the manner of ignorant men throughout history?
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