Open mouth, insert foot

It didn't generate as much attention as his comment about the Iraq mission being "lost," but Harry Reid's reaction to last week's Supreme Court ruling on partial-birth abortion was another embarrassing example of the Senate majority leader's growing foot-in-mouth problem.

On Wednesday, the high court upheld a 2003 federal law banning partial-birth abortion, which is used to end late-term pregnancies. One of the justices voting with the 5-4 majority was Samuel Alito, who recently replaced Sandra Day O'Connor.

In response, top Democrat Reid opined, "I would only say that this isn't the only decision a lot of us wish that Alito weren't there and O'Connor were there."

Now, most people hearing such as utterance might infer that Sen. Reid opposed the Supreme Court's ruling, that he and other Democrats yearned for the presence of a Justice O'Connor to tip the scales 5-4 in favor of tossing out the ban on partial-birth abortion.

But within hours of making his comment, Sen. Reid apparently remembered a salient fact: He had actually voted in support of the 2003 legislation outlawing the abortion procedure! Oops.

As they did in response to the senator's Iraq comment last week, Reid and his office went into their increasingly common posture: damage control.

Sen. Reid does indeed support the high-court's decision on partial-birth abortion, an aide said. His comment was simply an "off-handed remark" designed to highlight the fact that Sen. Reid "continues to disagree with Chief Justice (John) Roberts and Justice Alito on many issues and that is why he opposed their confirmation."

OK. Whatever.