WINGNUT WORD OF THE YEAR?

TBogg made this connection last night: Ex-Senator Rick Santorum is now taking a position at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, where he'll head a program called "America's Enemies"; the Santorum announcement comes just days after we learned that Sean Hannity's new weekly Fox News show will regularly highlight an "Enemy of the State." Now today we have Fox's Gretchen Carlson -- an anchor, not even a commentator -- calling Ted Kennedy a "hostile enemy" of the United States.

So "enemy" is the new wingnut word, a catch-all for terrorists, insurgents, fighters of the Iraqi civil war ... and Democrats. Wonder how much Frank Luntz or some Luntz wannabe was paid to focus-group that.

(And no, I'm not impressed that White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the administration doesn't view Kennedy as a hostile enemy. That's just the Bushies letting other people do their dirty work for them.)