J'accuse Ass is an irregular department. It recognizes a public accusation, complaint, insinuation, alarm, or whining notable for its arrogance, irrelevance, spite, stridency, obtuseness, or mendacity.

This week, the J'accuse Ass recognizes Rep. Joseph Hoeffel (D-PA).

Mr. Hoeffel represents Montgomery county, just North of Delaware county, where I live. He will be the Democrat opponent of whoever wins the Republican primary tomorrow--Spectre or Toomey. He was one of the Democratic candidates who was embarrassed into removing his advertisements from the Daily Kos, after Markos Zuniga rejoiced in the murder and mutilation of four US contractors in Iraq.

Mr. Hoeffel is a founder and mover of the congressional Iraq Watch, which reserves time every week to "debate (blather) on the House floor". A transcript of a recent discussion has this gem of conspiracy thinking. After Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) quoted an account of Churchill's and the British administration's idea in the 1920s that Mesopotamia was the key to the Middle East, Rep. Hoeffel interrupted:

Mr. HOEFFEL. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, is the gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Abercrombie) suggesting that there is some similarity between the behavior of the British 90 years ago and their colonial ways and the behavior of America in Iraq?
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I am suggesting there is a direct parallel. I am suggesting that the history of the Middle East is not something that just suddenly occurred in 1990, or 1989 and 1990, with Saddam Hussein moving into what is now Kuwait.

I suggest that there is a history here, a long history here, a detailed history here. I suggest that mistakes were made in the past as to what could and could not be done in the Middle East, particularly in the area known as Mesopotamia; in other words, modern-day Iraq. And they are well on the way to making the same mistakes over again for the same reasons that they were made before, because we think that we can impose a United States' version of a 21st-century imperialism, and that all of the cards will fall on the table in place, that everything will operate as we wish it to operate and that we can in fact control events.

During the primaries, Howard Dean declared, John Ashcroft "is no patriot. He's a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy" and John Kerry declared that Bush's economic policies are "unpatriotic." When pressed on such statements, the Democrats routinely cite Bush's record on this or that.
Get it? If I point out John Kerry voted against, say, the MX Missile, I'm questioning his patriotism. But when John Kerry questions Bush's patriotism, he's merely criticizing Bush's record.