Enough is enough, support Feingold – Liberal Street Fighter

One of the few leaders left in the Democratic Party took to the Senate floor today, speaking plainly for a Constitution being strangled by neglect and lawlessness at the highest levels:

Mr. President, when the President of the United States breaks the law, he must be held accountable. That is why today I am introducing a resolution to censure President George W. Bush.

The President authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about the existence and legality of that program. It is up to this body to reaffirm the rule of law by condemning the President’s actions.

All of us in this body took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the same. Fulfilling that oath requires us to speak clearly and forcefully when the President violates the law. This resolution allows us to send a clear message that the President’s conduct was wrong.

From all reports, his principled stand is being met with more lies and criminality from the Republicans, and more cowardice from other Democrats. As the Vichy scum rushed to talk to reporters:

Democrats distanced themselves Monday from Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold’s effort to censure President Bush over domestic spying, preventing a floor vote that could alienate swing voters.[…]

Throughout the day, Feingold’s fellow Democrats said they understood his frustration but they held back overt support for the resolution.

Several said they wanted first to see the Senate Intelligence Committee finish an investigation of the warrantless wiretapping program that Bush authorized as part of his war on terrorism.

Asked at a news conference whether he would vote for the censure resolution, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada declined to endorse it and said he hadn’t read it.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said he had not read it either and wasn’t inclined simply to scold the president.

“I’d prefer to see us solve the problem,” Lieberman told reporters.

Across the Capitol, reaction was similar. Feingold’s censure resolution drew empathy but no outright support from Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi “understands Sen. Feingold’s frustration that the facts about the NSA domestic surveillance program have not been disclosed appropriately to Congress,” her office said in a statement. “Both the House and the Senate must fully investigate the program and assign responsibility for any laws that may have been broken.”

Cowards. Spineless appeasers. What do they need, signed mea culpas and public confessions? Has ANY tyrant ever willingly thrown up his hands and cooperated with those who told him NO MORE?

As columnist Dotty Lynch puts it over on CBSnews.com:

Russ Feingold is used to being alone. He is the one in the 99 to 1 vote in the Senate against the Patriot Act in 2001 and the one lone Democratic to vote against dismissing impeachment charges against President Clinton in 1999.[…]

The outcry from Republicans was matched by the sound of silence from the Democrats. On Sunday Sen. Carl Levin, who is a serious player when it comes to intelligence, said they should wait until the investigation was completed, and on Monday Sens. Reid and Lieberman hemmed and hawed and said they hadn’t had time to read the resolution. When pressed, Lieberman said he thought they should “try to find a solution instead.” Democrats hung together on the faux security issue of the Dubai stewardship of the ports, but on real national security issues, they get nervous.

Par for the course. No suprise. Yet Feingold is doing the work that a Senator who takes his oath of office seriously pursues, a job that sadly almost ALL of our legislators have abdicated:

Juliette Kayyem, a former Clinton administration official and expert on terrorism and homeland security who is now a Harvard’s Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs says that Feingold’s resolution should be taken seriously.

“There is an element of politics in it but the president has violated a federal statute and therefore a move to censure has some merit.” Kayyem says, “The president has to know there are consequences to his actions.”

Kayyem also says that censure may be is a particularly appropriate measure falling between accepting the president’s actions and impeaching him.

And, I might add, a necessary first step to setting a new, leftward and necessary balancing to America’s frightening slide to the right so far since 911. Here’s hoping that Feingold will be able to renew the debate, to set himself apart from the spineless appeasing cowards, the Vichy Democrats, the Quisling Cowards who luxuriate on corporate cash, feasting on the crumbs falling from the Republican/Corporate table. The time is ripe for a populist to speak for working people, for women and minorities and the great mass of Americans who are being left behind by the Party of Davos, the party that wears one face with a Republican bow tie under it and the other,  Democratic one, wearing a fashionable Rep tie … both draped in very expensive hand-tailored suits.

As Feingold stated in his speech from the Senate floor:

As we move forward, Congress will need to consider a range of possible actions, including investigations, independent commissions, legislation, or even impeachment. But, at a minimum, Congress should censure a president who has so plainly broken the law.

Our founders anticipated that these kinds of abuses would occur. Federalist Number 51 speaks of the Constitution’s system of checks and balances:

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Mr. President, we are faced with an executive branch that places itself above the law. The founders understood that the branches must check each other to control abuses of government power. The president’s actions are such an abuse, Mr. President. His actions must be checked, and he should be censured.

This President exploited the climate of anxiety after September 11, 2001, both to push for overly intrusive powers in the Patriot Act, and to take us into a war in Iraq that has been a tragic diversion from the critical fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates. In both of those instances, however, Congress gave its approval to the President’s actions, however mistaken that approval may have been.

That was not the case with the illegal domestic wiretapping program authorized by the President shortly after September 11th. The President violated the law, ignored the Constitution and the other two branches of government, and disregarded the rights and freedoms upon which our country was founded. No one questions whether the government should wiretap suspected terrorists. Of course we should, and we can under current law. If there were a demonstrated need to change that law, Congress could consider that step. But instead the President is refusing to follow that law while offering the flimsiest of arguments to justify his misconduct. He must be held accountable for his actions.

The … President … violated … the … law …

REPEATEDLY.

WHEN will our “lawmakers” do their jobs and stop him? WHY does one principled man have to fight this fight for our way of life all but alone?

Support Senator Feingold. Contact your Senator and demand he/she support him too. Come this fall, if the Vichy Dems continue their way, withhold your vote. We need to get Senator Feingold more help, and sadly the Democratic Party is so corrupt it may be necessary to let more of them fall to defeat before we can either retake the party for the people or replace it with a party that WILL fight for average Americans.

Update [2006-3-14 7:1:59 by Madman in the Marketplace]:

Take a look at that picture from this morning’s New York Times – “Democrats Beat Quick Retreat on Call to Censure President”. Look at that body language. Look at the minority “leader”, a study in cowardice, trying to avoid conflict, trying to press Feingold to abandon the people’s work.

Senate Democrats on Monday blocked an immediate vote on a call by one of their own to censure President Bush for his eavesdropping program.

They acted after Republicans said they were eager to pass judgment on a proposal that they portrayed as baseless and disruptive to the antiterror effort.

Minutes before Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, formally introduced his resolution reprimanding Mr. Bush, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said Republicans were ready to vote by day’s end or Tuesday.

“When we’re talking about censure of the president of the United States at a time of war, when this president is out defending the American people with a very good, lawful, constitutional program, it is serious business,” Mr. Frist said. “If they want to make an issue out of it, we’re willing to do just that.”

Democrats, while distancing themselves from Mr. Feingold’s assertion that the president “plainly broke the law” in approving surveillance without warrants, said his proposal merited more consideration than a hasty vote.

“To try to limit debate on this most important matter that Senator Feingold is going to put before the Senate is not appropriate,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader.

MORON. The whole POINT of a move like this is to get Senators on the record. The American people, more and more, know the score. The people KNOW that this administration has run amok. Yet this hack, this old, appeasing, pathetic Republicrat, happy with his power-sharing agreements with Ensign, once again tries to avoid conflict, avoid the supposed party-of-the-left from TAKING A STAND.

LOOK AT THAT PHOTO.

THAT is “your” party.