Since losing the Republican nomination for president earlier this year, Rick Santorum essentially became a nobody. He’s a private citizen again with little impact on… anything.

That makes it a little odd that both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post would drop his name in their respective editorials today.

From LAT‘s, which looks at a current lawsuit challenging women’s right to serve fully in military combat:

During this year’s Republican presidential primary campaign, former Sen. Rick Santorum said that if women were to take part in combat, their male comrades might neglect the mission because of “the natural instinct to protect someone that’s a female.” It also has been argued that integrating combat units poses logistical difficulties such as the need for separate bathrooms; yet such concerns haven’t prevented women from being placed in the thick of combat operations as part of female engagement teams.

Given the flimsiness of these arguments, the plaintiffs are on solid ground in contending that the exclusion policy fails the Supreme Court’s requirement that laws treating the sexes differently must have an “exceedingly persuasive justification” substantially related to “important governmental objectives.”

And from WaPo‘s, an editorial that calls for the U.S. to adopt a UN treaty on rights for the disabled:

Opposition comes from the far right, led by former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who says he worries that the treaty could force changes in U.S. laws. It wouldn’t.

This would be like the Wall Street Journal writing an editorial against raising tax rates on the wealthy, and citing Howard Dean as the “opposition.”