Got an email from the Dems the other day asking me to 'sign the unity pledge.' Uhh, no thanks. They include a quote from John Kerry as their 'quote of the week.' It included the following sentence:

We will stand up for the fundamental fairness of health care as a right and not a privilege.

He's getting better at cutting back on the Senatorese of his comments, but it's still evident. Why stand up for the fundamental fairness of X, when you could just stand up for X itself? Fairness is easier to stand up for than health care, I suppose.

I think I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of overly-qualified rhetoric because I have to use it in the writing that I do for my job; so, I tend to immediately notice hedges and qualifiers.