In a video clip just shown on MSNBC, Senate Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said of the health-care reform bill:

"The insurance companies hate this, like one old senator once said, like the devil hates Holy Water."

Isn't this rhetoric remarkable? Recent polls show a majority of people are against this bill. But Sen. Durbin refers to the bill's opponents as 'the insurance industry.' And it probably can't be emphasized enough that rhetoric likening the bill's opponents to "the devil" and the bill itself to "Holy Water" speaks volumes about either how stupid Durbin thinks the voters are, or as I suspect, how dim-witted Durbin is.

And to think that Illinois was once represented in my lifetime in the US Senate -- simultaneously -- by Everett McKinley Dirksen and Paul Douglas. Every time I see Durbin, I think: How far we have fallen...