N Korea So Riled at Ros-Lehtinen It Confuses Gender

North Korea is so riled about Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s heading the House Foreign Affairs Committee that its official newspaper launched a tirade so unhinged that it even misstated the Florida Republican’s gender, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire political blog. The Korean Central News Agency, the house organ for Pyongyang’s secretive Stalinist government, identified her as the “man representing the U.S. conservative hard-liners” and went on to brand him — uh, her — as “human scum” and “an anti-communist fanatic.

“He is a political illiterate,” the editorial continued.

Ros-Lehtinen, who was elected to Congress in 1989, is a Cuban-American from Miami who prefers sanctions over engagement with adversaries such as North Korea and Iran. Her appointment probably signals a tougher tone in Congress on foreign policy matters and more skepticism toward the Obama administration’s State Department.

“Rogue regimes never respond to anything less than hardball,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement after colleagues named her Foreign Affairs chairwoman. She declined comment on North Korea’s editorial slurs.