I can't let Colby King off the hook for his despicable column on Michelle Rhee without forwarding one more slam:

If only a non sequitur were the most egregious part of Colbert I. King's column in Saturday's Washington Post.

The op-ed starts the way you might expect a 9/11 anniversary piece to start, by remembering the lives of people who died on that day nine years ago. King recalls how a group of three teachers from the D.C. public schools accompanied three students on fateful American Airlines Flight 77. King writes, "The group had been in the air less than an hour when, at 9:37 a.m., the Boeing 757, under the control of al-Qaeda hijackers, was intentionally crashed into the western side of the Pentagon, killing all 64 passengers on board and 125 people in the building."

Perfect setup for a discussion of the evils of terrorism, right?

No — a discussion of the evils of D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Seriously. With astonishing word economy, King managed to link one of the nation's greatest tragedies to a top D.C. official who had nothing to do with it. Clever. He wrote that nine years after 9/11, the school system that produced the six DCPSers on Flight 77 had become a "proxy in the struggle over race being played out in our nation's capital."

Try diagramming the logic behind that one.

The culprit in that racial struggle, writes King, is Rhee, who has used "teacher firings, spruced-up buildings, central-office shake-ups and new hires" to reform the schools. Seeking to tar Rhee for boosting racial disharmony in the District, King relies on three arguments, all of them risible. Have a look:

---------------------