Andrew Sullivan for the second day in a row is all giggly and smug and stuff -- though he’s like that every day -- about Howard Dean having used the phrase “the Soviet Union” on Chris Matthews’s little-noticed cable program, “Hardball.”

“Yes, I know Dean means Russia,” Sullivan writes. “But anyone who cannot distinguish between Russia and the Soviet Union has no business running for president of the United States,” he adds in what the English are wont to call “a harrumph,” and a very self-satisfied one at that.

Actually, Sullivan, if we want to get all picky about it, and apparently you do, anyone familiar with the issue, one that has been simmering and occasionally raging for years, knows that world leaders and scientists are concerned about the transfer of arms and technology to rogue Middle Eastern states from several countries, countries that typically are referred to collectively as “the former Soviet Union.”

So actually, Andy, while saying “the Soviet Union” instead of “Russia” is, yes, a slip, but not, as you would have it, a world-peace-threatening gaffe, saying “the Soviet Union” instead of “the former Soviet Union” really isn’t such a big deal at all, is it?

I’d go so far as to say that anyone who cannot distinguish between Russia, the Soviet Union, and the former Soviet Union has no business writing a blog.

[Post-publication addendum: While we’re on the subject of Sullivan -- and it won’t be much longer now, I promise, though it’s hard to get off with of Andy -- stop by Eschaton and check out “Um . . . Andy?”]