But Ray cared nothing for the refighting of an old war, and he had always changed the subject.

In this final refighting of the classic battle, both sides lost nearly 60% as outright killed and wounded, an unthinkably high attrition rate in real-world combat.

Diggs had come over for a chat with Colonel Hamm, then found himself embroiled in the millionth refighting of the Civil War.

That the right can whip itself into a rage about an American left so small and marginalized suggests that it, too, is unhinged by fear, and can only displace it by a knee-jerk refighting of yesterday's cold war culture wars.

The decision today - only 14 pages long, in Chief Justice Rehnquist's typically spare style - brought an abrupt end to one of the odder episodes in the court's recent history, an intense and strangely delayed refighting of a previous generation's battle over the rights of criminal suspects.