corrente

For some reason, I can't imagine what it might be, yet more Republican thuggery isn't getting any play. Richard Powelson of the Knoxville News reports (via Oliver Willis):

Federal investigators reportedly have seized a staff computer in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office in a probe to find Republican aides who improperly accessed Democrats' memos on opposing judicial nominees.

[Judiciary CommitteeDemocrat's] computer access codes were not set up properly and some Republican staffers knew about the glitch and took advantage of it for two years to view and copy sensitive files relating to the Democratic opposition to some of President Bush's judicial nominees.

Leahy criticized the "cyber theft" of confidential Democratic memoranda.

"This invasion was perpetrated by Republican employees both on and off the committee," he said without naming names. "Members of the Republican staff took things that did not belong to them and passed them around and on to people outside of the Senate. This is no small mistake. It is a serious breach of trust, morals, and possibly the rules and regulations governing the U.S. Senate."

Some kid downloads a song from a filesharing network and a huge corporation sues the kid and the kid's family; Republican operatives steal files from political opponents, and the SCLM yawns...

The story behind the story, though, is this. The Republicans believe they are at war, and are acting that way. After all, theft of the enemy's secrets is a patriotic duty in wartime, yes? The (gutless, feckless) Beltway Dems still think it's business as usual, and are acting that way. As a result, they always end up taking a knife to a gunfight.