Someone Could Have Filibustered the Damn Thing

Senate approves Bush's "detainee bill"-- the "worst law ever".

THE SILENT PARTY

You worthless passel of cowards. They're laughing at you. You know that, right?

The national Democratic Party is no longer worth the cement needed to sink it to the bottom of the sea. For an entire week, it allowed a debate on changing the soul of the country to be conducted intramurally between the Torture Porn and Useful Idiot wings of the Republican Party, the latter best exemplified by John McCain, who keeps fashioning his apparently fathomless ambition into a pair of clown shoes with which he can do the monkey dance across the national stage. They're laughing at him, too.

The New York Times has the right of it here, limning the pathetic gullibility at the heart of the "compromise." There is nothing in this bill that President Thumbscrews can't ignore. There is nothing in this bill that reins in his feckless and dangerous reinterpretation of the powers of his office. There is nothing in this bill that requires him to take it -- or its congressional authors -- seriously. Two weeks ago, John Yoo set down in The New York Times the precise philosophical basis on which the administration will sign this bill and then ignore it. The president will decide what a "lesser breach" of the Geneva Conventions is? How can anyone over the age of five give this president that power? And wait until you see the atrocity that I guarantee you is coming down the tracks concerning the fact that the president committed at least 40 impeachable offenses with regard to illegal wiretapping.

And the Democratic Party was nowhere in this debate. It contributed nothing. On the question of whether or not the United States will reconfigure itself as a nation which tortures its purported enemies and then grants itself absolution through adjectives -- "Aggressive interrogation techniques" -- the Democratic Party had…no opinion. On the issue of allowing a demonstrably incompetent president as many of the de facto powers of a despot that you could wedge into a bill without having the Constitution spontaneously combust in the Archives, well, the Democratic Party was more pissed off at Hugo Chavez.

This was as tactically idiotic as it was morally blind. On the subject of what kind of a nation we are, and to what extent we will live up to the best of our ideals, the Democratic Party was as mute and neutral as a stone. Human rights no longer have a viable political constituency in the United States of America. Be enough of a coward, though, and cable news will fit you for a toga.

However, because I know it is vital for the Democrats to "recapture" the good Christian folks, there's a passage from Scripture that seems apropos: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."

-- Charles P. Pierce

Message to Dems: "Put Down the Economy Crack Pipe"

Arianna:

In poll after poll, voters place Iraq well above the economy when asked which issue will most affect their vote this year. And when you combine concerns about the war with concerns about terrorism/national security, it's the economy that is "a distant reality."

Yet Democrats keep returning to the same domestic-issues-uber-alles thinking that cost them the elections in 2002 and 2004. They can't really believe that people are more interested in raising the minimum wage, middle class tax relief, and college affordability than they are in who's going to keep them from being blown up, can they? The Dems are like a bunch of crack addicts who know that the stuff is killing them, but keep reaching for the pipe. The closer they get to Election Day, the more they desperately crave a hit of "It's the economy, stupid!"

Or maybe they have fallen prey to the war fatigue Chris Matthews thinks is responsible for the appalling lack of Iraq coverage on TV -- and the smile on Karl Rove's face.

This is a crying shame. The 2006 election -- and with it control of the House and the power to investigate the Bush administration's abundant outrages -- is there for the taking... if only Democrats would put down the economy crack pipe and put their energy into hammering Bush and the GOP for their many tragic foreign policy and national security failures, which have combined to make America far less safe.

Basically, the Dems seem to be capitulating in every possible way to the evil machinations of the Bush regime's empire building, and are playing as soft opposition on domestic politics.

Fake Opposition (Actually, NO Opposition) on War Crimes

Sadly NO!--

Why are Republican Senators the only people taking a visible public stand against Bush’s attempt to create kangroo courts? Check it:

Several Republican senators are stepping up their opposition to the Bush administration’s plan to authorize military trials for suspected terrorists, with one calling a key part of the bill “ill-advised.” […]

Among other provisions, the administration’s bill would redefine the U.S. interpretation of part of the Geneva Conventions — a move Graham called “ill-advised.”

“I’m begging we don’t cross that line, because we need not to,” said Graham, who serves as a judge in the Air Force Reserve.

McCain’s office also released a letter from retired Army Gen. John Vessey, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Reagan administration, opposing the administration bill. Vessey told McCain the measure “would undermine the moral basis which has generally guided our conduct in war throughout our history.”

“In my short 46 years in the armed forces, Americans confronted the horrors of the prison camps of the Japanese during World War II, the North Koreans in 1950-53 and the North Vietnamese in the long years of the Vietnam War, as well as knowledge of the Nazis’ Holocaust depredations in World War II,” he wrote. “Though those years, we held to our own values. We should continue to do so.”

Say, it’d be nice if a Democrat could forcefully make this exact same argument and stick to it. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

P.S.- I don’t want to hear any excuses from you guys about not wanting to look “weak on terror.” Y’know what makes you guys look really weak? Letting Republicans take the lead in keeping Bush in check. That is pathetic. Grow a pair and stand up for your beliefs.