Getting tired of the double standard. Biden can insult with abandon, and even hurl a racist slur when politically convenient. Yet let someone slam back…

“At a gala dinner hosted by the American Spectator Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. cracked wise at Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s expense, raising the Delaware senator’s past brushes with academic dishonesty to the delight of his conservative audience.

Recalling an incident in which an article he submitted to the Spectator was rejected for publication, Alito began by joking that his unpublished piece had detailed how he would vote on the most controversial issues facing the Supreme Court.

Then — in the process of suggesting things had turned out well for him despite this rejection — Alito trained his sights on Barack Obama’s running mate.

“To coin a phrase, in the spirit of the vice president-elect,” Alito began, “you don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.”

Alito paused before continuing: “Did somebody say that before?”

The justice’s delivery was clumsy, but to the laughing audience his joke was clear.

Biden, who clashed with Alito during the associate justice’s 2005 confirmation hearings, dropped out of the 1988 Democratic nominating contest amid allegations that he had plagiarized both law school papers and his campaign trail stump speech.

Alito’s comment — “you don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need” — was a rough paraphrase of the famous Rolling Stones song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

Via Ann Althouse, let’s review Biden’s assaholic routine during Alito’s confirmation.

“I understand, Judge, I am the only one standing between you and lunch, so I’ll try to make this painless,” he began, with some promise.

Mr. Biden then dived into a soliloquy on Judge Alito’s failure to recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard mutual fund company, which managed the judge’s investments. After 2 minutes 50 seconds – short for the senator – Mr. Biden did appear to veer toward a question, but abandoned it to cite Judge Alito’s membership in a conservative Princeton alumni group. Mr. Biden discoursed on that for a moment, then interrupted himself with an aside about his son who “ended up going to that other university, the University of Pennsylvania.”

Judge Alito, who had been sitting without expression through Mr. Biden’s musings, interrupted the senator midword, got out three sentences, then settled in for nearly 26 minutes more of Mr. Biden, with the senator doing most of the talking. With less than a minute to spare, Mr. Biden concluded, thanked Judge Alito for “being responsive,” then said to Mr. Specter that “I want to note that for maybe the first time in history, Biden is 40 seconds under his time.”

Like I said, the windbag deserves it.