Feingold calls for Senate to censure the "Wartime Preznit"

A liberal Democrat and potential White House contender is proposing that the Senate censure President Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping, saying the White House misled Americans about its legality.

"The president has broken the law, and, in some way, he must be held accountable," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said.

A censure resolution, which simply would scold the president, has been used just once -- against Andrew Jackson in 1834 over a dispute about banking.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called the proposal "a crazy political move" that would weaken the United States during wartime.

The five-page resolution to be introduced today contends that Bush violated the law when he set up the eavesdropping program within the National Security Agency. Bush says that his authority as commander in chief and a September 2001 congressional authorization to use force in the fight against terrorism gave him the power to authorize the surveillance.

The White House had no immediate response.

In the House, Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is pushing legislation that would call on Congress to determine whether there are grounds for impeachment.

The program gave intelligence officers the power to monitor -- without court approval -- the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents, when those officers suspect terrorism may be involved.

Frist, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said that he hoped al-Qaeda and other U.S. enemies were not listening to the infighting.

"The signal that it sends, that there is in any way a lack of support for our commander in chief who is leading us with a bold vision in a way that is making our homeland safer, is wrong," Frist said.

Feingold was the only senator to vote in 2001 against the USA Patriot Act, expanding the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers.

I've heard dozens of right wing jag-offs on TV pushing their books which accuse the press of having a gigantic so-called "liberal bias". Of course, even conservatives know this is a joke, but it sells well in the sticks and serves their purposes.

One of these nit-wit's favorite lazy method of "documenting" this imagined bias is to do a Lexis/Nexis search (a service which archives everything in print) and pull numbers out which seem to prove their point. One notorious attempt made by Ann Coulter or some similar fruitcake was to say that newspapers and TV news shows identified conservatives as "conservative" much more often than they did liberals. For instance, they'd say that out of 100 mentions of Tom Delay, 30 times he was described as "conservative congressman Tom Delay", while they didn't label the people they consider liberal as "liberal" as many times.

Besides being proven false, this was an utterly stupid way of trying to prove some sort of bias.

The reason I mention this is that the piece above refers to the subject of the article as "A liberal Democrat" right out of the box, before they even bother to name him.

In this instance, I do think this is a little much. First of all, it implies that Feingold is some fringe character, largely due to the incredibly negative conotation the right has managed to attach to the label "liberal", and it also seems to have some sort of ideological tilt by adding "Democrat". It appears that the paper has taken the advise of the RNC to never use the word "liberal" without attaching "Democrat" to it.

Is there such a thing as a "liberal Republican"? It's as if they wanted to be double sure to tar Feingold before presenting the serious issue which he brings forward. It dismisses his views before they even get to what they are.

I think Feingold is a a progressive politician and one to watch. He's been right on just about everything, and isn't one of the tu-tu wearing Dems who have routinely caved in to the perception that they better go along with the right or face certain death.

And he's been successful as well. The fact that someone has got the cojones to stand up and say what millions and millions of people believe and support is something to be admired and supported. It doesn't take much courage or integrity to continue to capitulate to the powers that be and bow and scrape before a minority of the country while totally ignoring the views and feelings of the majority of the country. But thank God Feingold see that, far from believing the country reflects the views of the far right, that most people identify with more liberal views, especially if given the chance!

And Frist? Talk about a moonbat. He really worries that if Al Queda finds out some people think Bush is a crook (like that's a state secret) that it will really harm our efforts? This crap is so tedious, so phony, and so dumb and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of all these thugs trying to suggest that any dissent against this goverment is somehow helping the enemy. Can't they come up with some other phony excuse to attack dissent?