How Democrats can win back the White House.

In the Feb. 21 Weekly Standard, Katherine Mangu-Ward claims that Moore "emphatically denies that he will challenge Bush this year, 'period,' " and that the Constitution party already has a candidate. But Chatterbox does not trust and will not accept Shermanesque statements rendered in paraphrase. As for the candidate the Constitution party has purportedly chosen--one Michael Anthony Peroutka—he is described by Constitution Party President Jim Clymer as merely a "stand-in ... for ballot-access purposes."

Mangu-Ward can't be trusted on the subject of Roy Moore because she so obviously wants him to go away. Moore "might have provided a diverting rhetorical sideshow in a race full of verbal gaffes," she writes, "but would otherwise have been unlikely to make or break the Bush campaign's ongoing efforts to keep conservatives happily in the fold." She even makes fun of his poetry. Judge Moore, are you going to take this from ... a girl?  They're laughing at you, Judge. Bill Kristol, Bill Pryor, and Karl Rove are laughing at you. Bet that fair-weather-Christian of a president's laughing at you, too. They might as well be laughing at the Ten Commandments. Are you going to just sit there and let them laugh at the Ten Commandments?

[Update, Feb. 24: Is Bush's endorsement of the constitutional amendment banning gay marriages an attempt to strangle Moore's presidential candidacy in the crib? Discuss.]