They say you can judge a person by his or her enemies, and if that is the criterion to use, then Emma Sullivan belongs on the United States Supreme Court. Not only did she get the Great and Powerful Brownback and his internet-scouring minions ticked off enough to try and squish her via her own high school principal (and the latter personage is a true profile in spinelessness for letting Brownback’s machine lean on him in that way), and not only has she likely ticked them off even more by exposing their jackassery to the world with such thoroughness that they were forced to backpedal big-time, but she’s managed to cause Ruth Marcus to bestir from a befogged slumber long enough to lob a truly stupid column Emma’s way.

As I told Rick Klein and David Chalian on TopLine yesterday, if you don’t think the endangered Freshmen and Sophomores in the House are driving the car right now, think again. Remember that magic number of 39 Democratic votes needed to join with the Republican for a majority? Well, that’s how many Freshmen and Sophomores were willing to ban together in the “oust Rangel” effort — rather than have the issue hung around their necks as a millstone in 2010:

Joe Crowley, an ally of Rangel who has also played a leadership role at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is leading the whip count efforts on Rangel, acting as a go-between between the vulnerable freshman and sophomore Democrats, on the one hand, and Rangel and Democratic leadership on the other.

They were willing to buck leadership to oust the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee to keep their seats.

Think about that.

WaPo’s Ruth Marcus is the latest to lament that the barely-acceptable is the enemy of the godawful, both on the air and in print.