My favorite bit of all the prankery, far funnier than removing the Ws from keyboards, was the hanging of signs on various doors that said things like "Office of Strategery."

But, consider that this White House team, led by Karl Rove, is the same bunch that ran--with success, sadly--a vicious whisper campaign against John McCain during the South Carolina primary suggesting that he, well, maybe wasn't too right in the head due to having been tortured in Vietnam.

Tortured in Vietnam, mind you, at the same time George Walker Bush was sitting out the war in an Air National Guard assignment that he never really had to show up for, courtesy of Daddy.

So is it any wonder that Rove and his bunch privately encouraged the rumors of vandalism, providing journalists with alleged details of the vandalism--"on background," mind you--while publicly downplaying the scandal with a quick wink and a nudge, saying they wouldn't get into all that because their boy is a uniter, not a divider, and came to change the acrimonious tone in Washington--all while never bothering to admit that none of it was true, and while fueling the fire behind the scenes.

So apparently, this--along with the way they treated Jeffords and other moderate Republicans--is what they meant by "compassionate conservatism." I'd been wondering.

Shad