Cal Thomas is an idiot.

I don't normally read Cal Thomas, but he was featured on Daily Kos today, so I read this article.
Let me say right off the bat that I know that both sides of the political spectrum have their political hacks, and will grant that there's room in the world for them. Not all of them are all bad (Tucker Carlson, for example, is a hack, but is also fairly entertaining on a regular basis). But I don't ever read Cal Thomas, and it's because of stupid, sloppy stuff like this:

The narrow primary defeat of veteran Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary is more than a loss for one man. It is a loss for his party and for the country. It completes the capture of the Democratic Party by its Taliban wing.

They used to be "San Francisco Democrats," a phrase coined by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick to describe the party's 1984 convention. But they have now morphed into Taliban Democrats because they are willing to "kill" one of their own, if he does not conform to the narrow and rigid agenda of the party's kook fringe.

Now, just ignoring Cal's over-the-top inflammatory language and ridiculous accusations of antisemitism (has he taken a good look at the Republican party and their Christofascists lately? If he wants to find an American Taliban, he can stop looking right there!), let's instead focus on the part where the pot calls the kettle black. Here's something I read in our own little hometown paper just this morning (from the AP):

Fresh off their first victory over a Republican incumbent, GOP conservatives seeking party purity on taxes and spending are focused on ousting moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

The Club for Growth and its 36,000 members spent around $1 million to help challenger Tim Walberg unseat first-term Rep. Joe Schwarz in Michigan's Republican primary on Tuesday. The win came despite Schwarz's support from President Bush and the National Rifle Association.

Can Cal not even read his own freakin' paper? At the very least, couldn't he time his stupid rant for a day when the exact same behavior by his own party is not highlighted in the news? Sheesh. I've got no use for boneheads like Cal Thomas.

UPDATE: Is it possible that Cal's just blinded by panic?

Incidentally, this is all happening -- the coordinated attacks from Tony Snow to Dick Cheney to Cal Thomas to every other war supporter, calling those Connecticut voters who voted for Lamont "al Qaeda supporters", or Taliban members, or all the rest of the very virulent crap we've heard yesterday and today -- because the Iraq War propaganda campaigns and failed policies are falling apart around their ears.

The arrests in the U.K. were very significant, in the public zeitgeist, because they very much reminded everyone of the dynamic of al Qaeda -- you know, the enemy we were supposed to be fighting, and the enemy that actually attacked us, and may again. But those arrests demonstrated once again, at a very inopportune time (heading into election season) that the Iraq War didn't make us safer. In fact, the Iraq War didn't have anything to do with the actual enemy -- actual terrorism -- at all.