Two entries in the troubling "politics is war by other means" trope -- kind of cynically inverted Clausewitz -- that seems to be particularly active this season:
Wonkette catches Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) saying "Politics in general, in a republic like ours, is a substitute for civil war. It is a very important process."
And Washington Post droids Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei get into the campaign-as-cyberwar rhetoric:
For many Americans, the election will be like a faraway war, witnessed in news reports on television and in newspapers but rarely experienced firsthand. But in the battlegrounds, the bombardment has begun, in the form of television ads from the Bush and Kerry campaigns and from a separate Democratic group called the Media Fund.
I just can't wait to see the infrared gun camera footage of John Kerry's throbbing smart bombs going down George Bush's undefended exhaust hole. Ka-booom!