Of all the silly stunts that happen in politics, it is hard to think of a stranger way for Howard Dean to kick off his tenure as chairman of the Democratic National Committee than to call for the resignation of the chairman of the New York State Republican Party, Stephen Minarik. What seems to have annoyed Dr. Dean is Mr. Minarik’s comment that the Democrats “can be accurately called the party of Barbara Boxer, Lynne Stewart and Howard Dean.” This, according to the Associated Press, was too much even for Governor Pataki, who declared that Mr. Minarik’s comment was not “within the realm of appropriate political discourse.”

Well, let’s talk for a moment about appropriate political discourse. The Dean DNC’s Web log yesterday was linking directly to one site, named for Oliver Willis, that was trafficking an anonymously sourced report about whether a current White House staffer had been sighted at “a gay bar in Austin Texas on March 19, 1995.” The DNC was also was linking to another site, that of Juan Cole, which calls the no. 3 civilian official in the Defense Department, Douglas Feith, “a fanatical Jewish American Likudnik” and says, “I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party. … I don’t think there is anything a priori wrong with Feith being so devoted to the Likud Party. That is his prerogative. But as an American, I don’t want a person with those sentiments to serve as the number 3 man in the Pentagon. I frankly don’t trust him to put America first.”

As for Stewart, the lawyer convicted by a federal court last week of aiding terrorists, the New York City Board of Elections confirmed to us that she is a registered Democrat. If Dr. Dean wants to throw her out of his party, it’d be fine with us. But until he does, the decent thing would be to stop bawling about Mr. Minarik’s pointing out what is an unassailable fact. And while he’s at it, let his party get behind the war effort. And Mr. Pataki, instead of attacking his own party chairman for pointing out the obvious, could take the battle to the Democrats and challenge Dr. Dean to clean the filthy links off the DNC’s Web site.