Via Katie Pavlich, at least the man’s consistent. His trademark, evinced most famously when he smeared Romney over his taxes, is his willingness to stoop a bit lower than most in scoring a point on his opponents. Most Democrats are content to demagogue the GOP with the “Washington Monument strategy.” Never to be outdone, Reid prefers to suggest that Republicans are kinda sorta fragging U.S. troops:

HARRY REID: As I indicated, it was quite a big explosion. We’ll follow this news very closely. I will do whatever I can going forward to support the United States military and the families of the fallen Marines.

Mr. President, it’s very important we continue training our military, so important. But one of the things in sequester is we cut back in training and maintenance. That’s the way sequester was written. Now, the bill that’s on the floor, we hope to pass today helps that a little bit. At least in the next six months, it allows the military some degree of ability to move things around a little bit. Flexibility, we call it, and that’s good. But we have to be very vigilant. This sequester should go away. We have cut already huge amounts of money in deficit reduction. It’s just not appropriate, Mr. President, that our military can’t train and do the maintenance necessary.

These men and women, our Marines were training there in Hawthorne. And with this sequester, it’s going to cut back this stuff. I just hope everyone understands the sacrifices made by our military. They are significant, being away from home, away from families, away from their country.

So the Corps, due to budget cutbacks, is sending Marines out on exercises with live explosives without the necessary training? Good lord. That sounds like dereliction of duty, if not criminal negligence. Don’t they care about the lives of their men? Watch the NBC report below from Jim Miklaszewski, via News Busters. They do care and they’re none too pleased that the Senate majority leader is using dead Marines to push his talking points, especially since the training accident had nothing to do with spending cuts. And when you’re done with that, go here and watch the version of Reid’s floor speech that was posted to YouTube by his own staff. Note where it cuts off. Evidently someone in his office does have a modicum of shame. Not Harry, obviously, but it’s a comfort to know that someone there does.

Elsewhere in sequester news today, the head of ICE admitted that he could have avoided releasing those illegal-immigrant detainees if he’d asked Congress for flexibility to reallocate spending priorities inside the agency. But, just as the “Washington Monument strategy” calls for, he didn’t. Go figure.