Blogger Billy Yates sends along today’s neologism:

Durbinize, verb.

1. To make, either explicitly or implicitly, a moral, political, or factual equivalence between two situations which in reality have little or nothing in common. (After U. S. Senator Richard Durbin (D, ILL) who compared the alleged abusive treatment of a terrorist detainee held at Guantanamo Bay with the depraved horrors of the Nazis, Soviet gulags, and Pol Pot’s mass murders, thereby equating the U. S. personnel with these murderous despots.)

2. To apparently apologize without actually doing so by subtly placing the blame for legitimate objections to the actions of definition 1 on the objectors. This may be accomplished by expressing disappointment that the objectors have “misunderstood” the speaker’s remarks or by stating the speaker’s sorrow that feelings were hurt. In reality, the speaker is implying that the objectors are too stupid to understand plain English or are insufficiently educated or mature to accept the speaker’s remarks as truth.

On a related note, one of my favorite New Media cartoonists, Day by Day’s Chris Muir, sends his hot-off-the-press offering on the Dems’ anti-Rovian ravings. Enjoy: