UNHAPPY IS THE LAND THAT NEEDS A HERO. I see Senator Durbin has finally bowed to political necessity and retracted his perfectly sensible comments of last week.

Some chest-beating types are calling Durbin's retraction a defeat for "the leftie blogosphere," as it has "cut them off at the knees." Because I am a grown man, the forced recantation of a professional vote-grubber does not cut me, particularly, at the knees or anywhere else.

I still assert that Durbin's original remarks are unobjectionable to people who do not misread them, willfully or otherwise. That a sufficient number of people pretended to be offended, and stirred the ill-informed to actual offense, to score a political hit doesn't change that.

Common sense is its own reward.