Censure hearings point to at least one new supporter

If the Republicans were really anxious to highlight the pure insanity of Sen. [tag]Russ Feingold[/tag]’s [tag]censure resolution[/tag], they shouldn’t have picked a Friday afternoon hearing. It was engaging political theater, but some of the actors didn’t show up.

The Senate Judiciary Committee opened a bitter if lopsided debate on Friday over whether Congress should [tag]censure[/tag] President Bush for his domestic eavesdropping program.

Although few Senate Democrats have embraced the censure proposal and almost no one expects the Senate to adopt it, the notion that Democrats may seek to punish Mr. Bush has become a rallying cause to partisans on both sides of the political divide. Republicans called the hearing to give the proposal a full airing as their party sought to use the threat of Democratic punishment of the president to rally their conservative base.

Five Republicans at the hearing took turns attacking the idea as a reckless stunt that could embolden terrorists. Just two Democrats showed up to defend it, arguing that Congress needed to rein in the White House’s expansive view of presidential power. The Democrats’ star witness was [tag]John W. Dean[/tag], the former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon who divulged many of the details in the Watergate scandal.

Dean was, indeed, the star. The former White House counsel, who served time in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, was testifying before the Senate for the first time since the Watergate hearings more than 30 years ago. He made the best of the opportunity.

“This is a part of a very consistent, long-term, early announced policy of this presidency that they are seeking to build presidential power for the sake of presidential power,” Dean said.

Cornyn, noting that Dean was a “convicted felon,” said it “strikes me as very odd that the Judiciary Committee is giving” Dean an opportunity to market his latest book.

Dean said his new book wouldn’t be in stores until summer, adding mischievously that Cornyn would be in it.

Asked later to elaborate, Dean said: “I have a book coming out in July called `Conservatives Without Conscience.’ He happens to be mentioned in the book.”

Dean added that Bush’s conduct with warrantless searches was actually worse than Nixon’s during [tag]Watergate[/tag], arguing, “I appear today because I believe, with good reason, that the situation is even more serious.”

Republicans obviously aren’t prone to see the merit in censure or the benefits of the rule of law, but the hearings did produce one small bit of news: another Senate Dem appears ready to vote for the resolution.

…Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the panel’s senior Democrat, said he was “inclined to believe” that censure by Congress is appropriate for Bush.

“We know the president broke the law,” Leahy said. “Now we need to know why.”

Sounds reasonable.

In a broader sense, I’m glad the hearings were held, if for no other reason, that it lends the resolution credibility. Yesterday’s discussion suggests to the public that this is a serious issue, not some pie-in-the-sky stunt, and that earnest experts believe this is a subject worthy of exploration.

“If it is discussed in at all a reasonable way, that may add to its credibility,” Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political analyst, said. “When you have presidential approval ratings this bad, you have a public that is not predisposed to rally to the president and not predisposed to reject the criticism.”

In other words, it seems to me that if Republicans hoped a Judiciary Committee hearing would expose the censure resolution as abject nonsense, I think the plan may have backfired.

I wish more Dems would get behind the censure. It forces repubs who are dying to distance themselves from this trainwreck of administration to defend it. The lower Bush’s numbers go, the dumber they sound defending him. Let them head into the midterms wearing every Bush failure around their necks.

  • JoeW makes a good point about associating Bush’s failures with the Republican Party. Howard Dean and Capitol Hill Democrats, are you listening?

  • I am geting sick and freakin’ tired to the “embolden the terrorists” meme. Next thing they will say is turning off the light or choosing a certain tie will “embolden the terrorists.”

    I would say that they can use that phrase over and over and over until, like a record, it is broken but whats the point.

  • This is just depressing. Only two Democratic senators — Feingold and Leahy — show up. And while I’m happy Leahy is open to censure, there are now only five Democrats to my knowledge who have openly expressed support for censure. At this rate, Bush will be out of the White House, safely ensconced at his Texas ranch, and be finished with his double-wide “presidential library” before Democrats get it together.

    Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, a judiciary committee member, is still hung up on the goddamn ports deal and thinks Feingold stole the Democrats’ thunder:

    http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/03/31/reason-30452-to-give-to-ned-lamont/

    This points to a bigger problem: Capitol Hill Democrats just aren’t responding quickly enough. On the Dubai Ports Deal, they didn’t have momentum on their side. More press was given to the “dissident” Republicans. There’s enough polling data to suggest that voters are open to censuring Bush, but they can’t get behind it because it’s not in the script. To make matters worse, the entire nation has been engrossed in a debate about immigration for a week. Again the Republicans capture the media spotlight with infighting, but the Democrats are MIA.

    Blame it on the quick news cycle and the the public’s short attention span, but Democrats must try to keep up and learn to multitask, otherwise another promising election season is going to slip away.

  • “…the notion that Democrats may seek to punish Mr. Bush has become a rallying cause to partisans on both sides of the political divide” – CB

    Poor downtrodden RepubCo. Dragging their broken wing behind them and seeking some safety from the heavy Dem boot poised to flatten their birdbrain commander. Their credibility capital may be getting stretched a bit thin.

    It seems easy to lose the point of the censure in the discussion of the censure. It’s still about the warrantless spying and that issue is worthy of creating yet one more streamer of failure/falsehood/distortion/stupidity to staple to Shruby’s sloping forehead. He should look like a pinata festooned with brightly colored f’ups.

    But America doesn’t care what the Dem’s are going to do about Shruby. They want to know what the Dem’s are going to do for them.

  • prm is right. The Democrats, as usual, are Missing In Action. They’ve gone to sleep, drowsily happy with what they can still suck from the hind tits of the Federal government, afraid to rock their temporarily comfortable boat.

    Only Feingold and Leahy bothered to show up? I’d love to know the whereabouts (and the wherefors) of Reid, Shumer, Clinton, Boxer, Harkin, (my own Senators) Murray and Cantwell, and all the rest these worthless nogoods. Every time I think of the limp-dick and mealy-mouthed, cowardly silent Democrats in Congress I get nauseated.

    Are they really the best we can do? If so, it’s not that the Democrats deserve their loser status so much as it’s that the country is already well on its way into the corporate dustbin of history.

  • The Republicans (and press) just can’t seem to stop talking about this. Though their intention is to raise support against it, just mentioning it keeps reminding the public that Bush can’t be trusted. So why should the Dems do anything more for now? It’s not like this would actually have a chance in hell of passing.

  • Mr Fein was the most compelling witness. His responses displayed an intellect and depth on the subjects like no other. He was HUGE!

  • The reason Cornyn is a “conservative without a conscience” is because it takes having a brain in order to know right from wrong. Cornyn is the living embodiment of every bad thing ever said about Texans since the first bunch of bank robbers, con artists, wanted crooks on the run, slave catchers, thieves, back-alley assassins, drunks, and failed politicians went down and stole the place from Mexico.

  • As much as I’d love to see President Bush censured, I think this is just bad politics and a waste of time. No wonder the Dems have been running away from it; I hated the idea as soon as I heard it.

    Are the Democrats ready to vote to stop the wiretaps? No. They support the wiretaps, but just think the justification is incorrect.

    To me it sounds like charging the fire department with traspassing after they’ve put a fire out at your house. “Thanks for putting out the fire, but I don’t like the legal justification you used to come into my yard.”

    I would much rather see a sensure resolution on something like holding prisoners indefinitely without charges or condoning torture. In these cases the President also assumed questionable authority, but they’re things that most people clearly find objectionable.

    The wiretap issue had all but died out until Feingold attempted to revive the issue. I just can’t see the public getting worked up about it now.

  • I can’t see the public getting worked up about illegal wiretapping (or much of anything except the NCAA at the moment), but that’s why we have elected representatives whom we require to take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That’s what the Feingold censure proposal calls attention to: the fact that the Regal Moron – blatantly, in our face – placed himself above the 4th Amendment and the FISA rules. The fact that all but three Dems scurry away like cockroaches exposed to light says a great deal about our Senators. It also gives me further reason to wonder why we bother electing them at all, whether we’re not already a doomed nation.

  • I, too, am sick of the Democrats and their reluctance to stand up against the fraud and illegalities of this administration.
    I get a lot of emails from various branches and people in the party looking for money with the approach of the 2006 campaign, and I’m going to notify them that until the Democrats show some guts, they won’t get a penny from me.
    Why bother? If the Democrats can’t vigorously protest the vandalization of America by the Bush administration, why would I want to send money to them to elect more Democrats?
    They don’t have to succeed in upsetting the apple cart since they aren’t a majority, but they could CERTAINLY take strong en masse stands about wiretapping, torture, and Bush’s stated intentions to do just what he pleases no matter what the law requires of him.
    When the Democrats in both houses of Congress do that, then they deserve our money, not before then.

  • The Republicans have no spine. They’ve let this President just run ripshod all over them, as if they were standing still .

  • “Are the Democrats ready to vote to stop the wiretaps? No. They support the wiretaps, but just think the justification is incorrect.” – PWalker

    Well, I don’t speak for the Democratic party, but the problem is that not the justification, but the failure to get a legal warrant. These wiretaps are covered by the FISA law because it covers all Foreign Intelligence searches. But Bush, Gonzales and Gen Michael Hayden didn’t want to actually get the FISC to give them warrants.

    And they have a good reason, out of thousands of these searches that have been used to provide tips to the FBI, they have produced maybe TWO real cases, including one where a guy thought of cutting down the Broklyn Bridge with a blow torch, then decided that would be impractical.

    Not only that, but the FBI claims to have already been following both these cases.

    So the program is unconstitutional, illegal, wasteful, and stupid.

    But come the next attack, this time the NSA will be able to say they had been doing everything possible to protect America. Their failure to translate intercepted phone calls from the 9/11 highjackers was one of the critical ‘points’ that let the Bush administration leave 3000+ Americans to their fate.

  • Lance,

    I thought the government was claiming only one. That “Brooklyn Bridge terrorist” is a fellow who’s apparently mentally ill named Iyman Faris. He was not identified by the US through any NSA surveillance, though the administration has made that claim. He was fingered by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when Mohammed was captured and interrogated in Pakistan by US intelligence about a year ago.

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