Rick Santorum - pictured above with supportive K Street lobbyists - is going slightly mad.

At least, that's the conclusion reasonable people could draw from this piece on Salon.com, in which the Senator is quoted as follows:

In an interview with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, embattled Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has equated the war in Iraq with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." According to the paper, Santorum said that the United States has avoided terrorist attacks at home over the past five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has been focused on Iraq instead.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said. "It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

We're sure that we wouldn't either, if only we had the slightest idea of what Santorum was saying.

I'd argue for a classic case of projection, given that the eye of Mordor seems firmly ensconced in the West Wing these days. To stay in the metaphor, take a look at what the brave hobbits over at Act Now are up to these days; it seems they're on a quest of some kind, involving not rings or towers, but bus trips to the Senator's state. Won't you help them drive Santorum and his Orcs out of Middle Earth turn Pennsylvania a brilliant shade of blue?