Chris Matthews has a bad case of Joe Biden motor-mouth disease, as highlighted in a conversation this past week between Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn:

HH: Mark Steyn, speaking of Sunnis and Shias, I want to play for you Chris Matthews last night on Jay Leno’s show. Here is Mr. MSNBC:

Chris Matthews: Republicans are like the Iraqis. Have you noticed? They’ve got their Shia wing, the fanatics. They’ve got Huckabee…and this is where I get into trouble. This is just where I get into trouble. Huckabee and Thompson are the Shiites, and the Sunni, the more moderate guys are McCain and who else have they got over there? And Rudy Giuliani. And then they’ve got Romney the Kurd.

Jay Leno: Right, right.

CM: I mean, they’re all over the place. Who’s going to unite them?

JL: And Senator Larry Craig is the guy with the sheep.

Hugh Hewitt: What do you think, Mark Steyn?

Mark Steyn: Oh, you need a better writer if you’re going to do Islamic analogies, I think.

HH: (laughing)

MS: The fact is, I mean, I don’t understand how you could have been Chris Matthews, sitting there night after night, and not picked up on the fact that in his thing, what is it, the Shia are Mike Huckabee, they’re the extremists, and the Sunni are the moderates. Now you see, that’s the exact opposite of what it’s been in Iraq.

HH: In Iraq, you’re right.

MS: Yeah, yeah.

HH: You’re right.

MS: And you know, and Mitt Romney being…I don’t even understand. It doesn’t work as an analogy. You can apply those kind of analogies. I used to do that up in Canada for a while, where I said that for the last forty years, Canada had been like Iraq, where you know, the unrepresentative minority had been running the country, and holding all the levers of power. I meant the French Canadians. But you know, you can make those analogies work. But he managed to get it all completely wrong. Astonishing.

Following recent criticism by myself and others about a piece prominently highlighted on The Washington Post’s home page on January 7, which suggested Israel was somehow following in the footsteps of Nazi Germany, the newspaper has issued a rare apology.

The piece, part of the Post’s religion column, was penned by Arun Gandhi, grandson of India’s legendary leader “Mahatma” Gandhi, and was titled “Jewish Identity Can't Depend on Violence.”

The Washington Post has often been criticized by Jewish groups for running pieces highly slanted against Israel, but it is extremely unusual for the paper to acknowledge bias.

In a statement on Friday The Washington Post wrote that readers “found Gandhi’s initial remarks anti-Semitic and his subsequent apology insufficient. When we undertook this project over a year ago, we wrote that our goal was to shed light on a subject – religion – – that too often generates heat. The Gandhi post failed to comply with that mission, and we can only ask our readers to extend ‘On Faith’ a measure of forbearance and tolerance as the site endeavors to conduct a civil and illuminating conversation. We regret the initial posting, and we apologize for the episode.”

Arun Gandhi’s original piece also appeared on the Newsweek website.

Update: Related thoughts from Jewish Journal.com.