I'm watching NBC's "Meet the Press" and about five minutes in I think I've watched all I can of it. One of the panelists there to talk about the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison in former Democrat presidential hopeful and retired Gen. Wesley Clark.

If there's any question whether or not Clark is a Democrat, they should be laid to rest now with the following statement:

Well, I'm very encouraged that the Congress is taking a very strong look at this. I think there are systemic failures here. But I think it does come, as Senator Levin says, from a broader perception, an announcement within the administration, really, that international law is not that important. It's legalisms. What counts is American force. And, you know, those Geneva Conventions were put in place to protect Americans. They were put in place to protect our men and women in case they be taken. And the people who were detained in Iraq, the prisoners there, the detainees, they were all covered under the Geneva Convention--they should have been.

And so there's more than a systemic failure. There's a failure of leadership that goes right to the top. This is a presidential leadership problem. He is the commander in chief. He announces it virtually every day on the campaign trail and he, himself, must take responsibility for this because it reflects his command influence.

That's right! These soldiers who are E-2s or E-3s in their early 20s behaved inappropriately because of a lack of leadership on President Bush's part. Bush should've been on TV each and every day railing against stripping Iraqi prisoners naked and having them stacked in piles.

Yep, it goes right to the top.

And it gets better. More from Clark:

I think it would be very patriotic if Secretary Rumsfeld resigned.

So, the fact that Rumsfeld hasn't resigned means he's unpatriotic?

How do they get away with this? Time after time, day after day, Democrats claim to have their patriotism questioned -- but it never actually is. Then they get a free pass from the media to question Republicans' patriotism. (For more on this issue, check out this article by Fred Barnes.)