John Conyers tried to censure the President before and failed. Now, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is giving it a shot in the Senate. In response to the recent revelation that the President has misled Congress and authorized the NSA to spy on American citizens, Feingold yesterday said, “The President must be held accountable for authorizing a program that clearly violates the law.” At present, it’s not clear how many other Senators will join him in the effort. (If you support the move to censure, call your Seantors, or, at the very least, sign the MoveOn petition.) Some Dems are apparently pissed that Feingold went off on his own and introduced the idea of censure, but, then again, most Dems, as former Senate hopeful Paul Hackett will tell you, are completely ball-less.
Here’s a quote from Feingold:
I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide… Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues… [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists…
True to form, Republicans have responded by suggesting that Feingold, in asking that the President be held accountable for ignoring the Constitution, is “siding with the terrorists.”
Was Fiengold right to call for censure? Yes. With each day that passes, it looks less and less likely that the Republican held Congress will do anything to stop the President from extending his reach for power and continuing the use of warrentless wiretaps against American citizens in violation of U.S. law. This was one of the only tools available to Democrats to demonstrate on the historical record that we know that what our President is doing is illegal. The effort may not bear fruit, but the important thing is that his actions are on the record.
[Tonight’s post was brought to you by the writers and producers of Boston Legal, who apparently know the fucking score.]
One Comment
This is the real reason that Republicans oppose stem cell research. They are afraid that Democrats will be able to grow replacement testicles in petri dishes.