Guess who the Enemy of the Week should be? According to Ms. Jean Toles, who on May 6 sent us a mysterious communique from an undisclosed location, none other than “R. Emmett Tyrrell himself.” He doesn’t even get to share the prize. This creates quite an ethical dilemma for Enemy Central. Are we to be good little Stalinoids and do in our own benefactor? Is Tyrrell deserving of the fate of a Bukharin or Yezhov or Beria or Gorky? We worry it’d be like sentencing President Bush to hard labor at Guantanamo.

It does appear that Ms. Toles is a firm believer in class struggle, which is where Mr. Tyrrell falls short, if we understand the part of her indictment that reads: “Probably the only difference between former President Clinton and George W. Bush is that the Bush family is rich enough to squash things that George did, or frighten people into not verifying anything.” She’s also firmly anti-McCarthyite, noting that “Bill and Hillary are far from being ‘Marxists.'” Rather incisively she declares, “No group of people is more clever at twisting the truth and out and out lying than the Republican Party and George W. Bush.” But generously she does offer Mr. Tyrrell a chance to utter a final prayer: “Are you a Christian?” she asks us to ask him. “If so, what would Jesus say about ‘Judge not that thou shall be judged'”? We suspect He wouldn’t dare disagree with what she says in her final judgment: “Bill Clinton was a better president than George W. Bush will ever be despite what you say.” Case closed. Next.

Some best-laid plans have gone awry, all because a mean little man won the presidency in France. It was going to work this way: a confederation of mature, competent women would lead their countries to heights male rule could never scale. So thus we’d have a string of beauties starting with Michelle Bachelet in progressive Chile, moving on to Hillary in the U.S., jumping to Segolene Royal in France, joining Angela Merkel in Germany, and concluding with Tzipi Livni in Israel, assuming its current prime minister resigns as she has demanded he do. For now, though, it’s back to the ironing board.

Luckily Hillary isn’t all we have here at home, even though we’ve lost Kathleen Blanco to post-Katrina backwash. That’s because the nation has just been introduced to Kathleen Sebelius, the awesome governor of Kansas who blamed the Bush administration for her inability to respond to a tornado that leveled a small town in her state. So much for being as corny as Kansas in August.

For a time it was assumed that Gov. Sebelius had a friend in Sen. Barack Obama when he lamented the death of 10,000 in that tornado…only to discover that he was off by some 9,988 lives. That’ll teach him to rely on Democratic voter rolls from a town with 1,500 residents.

Truth be told, Sen. Obama did not respond well to his miscalculation. “There are going to be times when I get tired,” he said. “There are going to be times when I get weary. There are going to be times when I make mistakes.” There are going to be times when we get nauseous. There are going to be times when we ask FEMA to bail him out. There are going to be times we’ll go with a real man even if her name is Hillary. (Hat tip: Bruce Bartlett.)

Then there’s Oprah. For the first time since becoming a kind of Don Imus, she has endorsed someone for president and by luck of the draw he happens to be mistake-prone Barack Obama. Her reasoning? Because she knows him “personally.” What kind of criterion is that? Imagine whom Paris Hilton could endorse on those grounds. He might even be a prison warden.

Republicans also know each other personally, which is why they’re all geared up for civil war. It’s hard to know who’s been bloodied the most. Perhaps Rudy, not just by McCain and other leakers, but by Laura Ingraham, who took a page from Sheryl Crow to remind a terrified Mayor Rudy that she’s a citizen too. Meanwhile, McCain and Mitt haven’t spared the Republican incumbent. As the mysterious Ms. Toles would concur, Republicans are the most grievous sinners imaginable, recklessly disregarding the 11th Commandment in order to win favor with the Devil.

So who has bailed them out this time? One of the Devil’s own, naturally, the dirtiest old man since Strom Thurmond. Did Mike Wallace really have to ask the Romneys about their pre-marital life? Oprah would have been more discreet. But there we have it: Mike’s this week’s skunk. Ms. Toles will be mighty disappointed.

Send your Enemy of the Week nominations to Enemy Central c/o editor@spectator.org.