Jim Webb Calls Allen's Bluff

Immediately after Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) suggested Tuesday that his Democratic challenger James Webb was unpatriotic for opposing a constitutional ban on flag-burning, Webb was in Allen's metaphorical face calling HIM a coward for avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War. Allen spent the war "playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada," said the spokesman for Webb. (While he was a student at the University of Virginia, Allen did work summers at ranches in the Southwest. Webb, meanwhile, was carrying a rifle for the Marines in 'Nam.)

You know it's going to be a brawl when they start using your middle name. The spokesman for Webb kept referring to Sen. Allen as "Felix," the middle name the senator is known to detest.

And damn if it didn't work. A spokesman for Sen. Allen began backpedaling fast: "They're saying we questioned his patriotism, and that's a lie. We just raised a legitimate question about whether he supports a flag amendment or not. How is that questioning his patriotism?"

Our kind of Democrat, James Webb! He reminds us of that Sean Connery character in "The Untouchables" (1987): "You wanna know how you do it? Here's how: they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?"

Mark down James Webb as one Democrat who's ready.