The Censure Resolution
I admire Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., for moving ahead with his call to censure President Bush for his illegal domestic spying program, and I commend Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who I don't always agree with, for having the guts to hold a formal hearing on the resolution yesterday. Specter doesn't like domestic spying. Feingold has been denounced by the Republican right and their talk show chorus for treason for daring to call the King, er, Bush, to account. This isn't even an impeachment resolution, but the wingnuts are frothing at the mouth. Southern Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Jon Cornyn of Texas rushed to accuse Feingold of supporting terrorism and not supporting our troops. Blah, blah, blah. But the hearing got really good when Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, struggled to distinguish Bush from President Richard M. Nixon. Bush, he said, acted in "good faith" in mounting a domestic spying operation, and Nixon didn't in doing all the things that got him booted out of the White House in 1974. So let me get this straight--as long as Bush, in the face of a clear federal law that said he was wrong, "thought" he was in the right, he can't be held to account? Cue the laugh track, Lisa.
Feingold won't succeed, of course. That would require too much Democratic backbone. But he has drawn a line, and we may look back on this in years to come as the beginning of the end for Bush. We can only hope.