Hitchens: The Patrician and the Grunts, What we can learn from John Kerry's latest flub - 'Regrettable though it might be for the United States military to become an untouchable "third rail" in American politics, there can be little sympathy for someone who keeps on brushing against that rail just to see what will happen. One could have assumed that Sen. John Kerry, who has reason enough to wake up whimpering and biting his knuckles when he reflects on past embarrassments, had learned this lesson. He's almost spoiled for choice in the matter--from the cringe-making "reporting for duty" to the sickly discovery that he had been part of a "band of brothers" rather than a bunch of killers, to the phantom "Christmas in Cambodia." Yet of all the days that he might want to have back and do over again, last week's clumsy appearance in Pasadena must be the most whimper-inducing of all...'