STOP! THIEF! I got your pre-emptive strike right here. With James Wolcott having declared war on this particular piece of soon-to-be-published-by-the-soulless offal, I feel it incumbent upon me to note that, if Dinesh D'Souza is passing off that cheap wisecrack about Tip O'Neill resembling the federal government ("big, fat, and out of control") as his own, he's not only a disreputable intellectual vandal, he's a dishonest one, as well. The line famously originated with John Leboutillier, a crackpot rightist legacy millionnaire from Long Island who served one term in Congress before the voters fired him, apparently on the very simple grounds that he was a horse's ass. This contemporary account contains the remark in question. Now, "The Boot" went on to nibble on even bigger lumps of the Crazy Cheese, as this story makes pretty plain. Nevertheless, his snarkery about O'Neill was probably his most lasting contribution to American politics, and he deserves better than having it appropriated by a no-talent think-tank grifter.
--Charles P. Pierce
