On Thursday night, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general.
The 53-40 majority included all the Republicans present and six Democrats who crossed over. Love of power, privilege, and punishment express the soul of the Republican party today.
The Democrats are a sadder story. When you have given up this much, what is there left for you to be?
Four Democratic senators were not present to cast a vote: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama. One of three Republicans who did not vote was John McCain.
When the Kansas-Nebraska Act legitimated the expansion of slavery, Abraham Lincoln said in a great speech of 1854: "Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it." He had in mind a retrogression in the manners of American democracy, which showed in a new contempt for the meaning of the words "all men are created equal."
By Cheney and Bush, our republican robe has been soiled, and trailed in the dust. They have done it by contempt for the unavoidable meaning of the words of the Bill of Rights: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The founders knew what they meant by cruel and unusual punishments; and what they meant was torture.
Within the category of torture, they included the drowning torture; and they knew about the drowning torture because it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition.
They knew it as an instrument of tyranny and "the dark religions." They banished it because of what it meant, and because of what it was.
And now we find ourselves watching, as our representatives are reduced to a set of men and women who are also merely watching. They took an oath to uphold the laws, but they shift and rearrange, and ask a nominee to high office whether he will consider saying that torture is torture.
Nobody can know better than John McCain the humiliation of the victim and the degradation of the victor that come with the infliction of torture. When the president asked Judge Mukasey to refuse to condemn the drowning torture, McCain knew that the president had made the United States as dirty in the eyes of the world as his North Vietnamese captors were dirty in the eyes of John McCain.
And McCain did speak the truth about the torture; but then, with his party, he threw himself on the "hope" that the nominee would change his mind when once in office. Thus McCain abetted his party's drive to place in charge of the laws a man who--by his sworn testimony--will be compelled to prevent the prosecution of the torturers of an Arab John McCain.
Obama, Clinton, Biden and Dodd had declared their opposition to Mukasey earlier in the week. They could not find the time to leave their campaigns for an election a year away, to show up for a vote more critical than any they are likely to see for months. Nor did they use this occasion for a major statement. Their formulae of dissent afforded no larger view of the meaning of such acts of acquiescence by the Senate.
Patrick Leahy is one of the few Democrats with a constitutional bone in his body; and he voted against Mukasey. Yet Leahy when provoked, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, appears able to pass only from irritation to extreme "disappointment" with the breakers of the law in government. He has not yet used his power to enforce the subpoena of high officials to testify under oath about the things they have done and hidden. His disapproval of Mukasey stayed within the bounds of decorous and formal protest.
Brutal measures for a brutal time is the message of George W. Bush. And it is a simple and intelligible message. The lesser members of the Republican swarm approve. This is what they have been taught, in many cases it is all they know, and they could not imagine ever dissenting. But what can explain the continued passiveness of so many Democrats and moderates?
It seems likely that many deplore the message and posture of this president who would by no means wish his actions undone.
Given the chance to resist as a formed majority, their opposition has, in less than a year, been whittled down to ceremonial remonstrance. And the pattern is now almost ingrained. After all, this was the first president in our history to boast of assassinations: "All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries," he said in his State of the Union address of 2003. "Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way--they are no longer a problem." President Bush, in his own words, told us that he was talking about suspects, not men convicted on evidence of a crime. The president made us all his accomplices when he remarked that the murdered men had not been given a legal process. That easy slide into the argot of hoodlums by the leader of the free world was noticed by a few at the time. But it still echoes in the minds of the Democrats, because it puts a question to them. Do they have as convincing a cry? A summons to nobility and principle that could rival the coarse efficiency of the snarl of vengeance?
While they dispute the merits of several plans of medical care and the licensing of immigrant drivers, a more passionate subject has been emerging.
Rudolph Giuliani aspires to lead an administration that will resemble that of George W. Bush without the self-restraint. Giuliani would enter office with his emergency in place: a war-without-end against Terror. To this war, both parties have given their assent, and the executive branch is poised to bequeath to the next chief executive a handsome array of arbitrary powers.
The politician who has spoken the strongest words against the recklessness of Giuliani is not a Democrat, but Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. It was Hagel who had the nerve to denounce the self-indulgence of Giuliani, when the latter pushed hard to outbid the president in rhetorical posturing against Iran. This was speaking of war in such a way as to make a war inevitable, said Hagel; and it put our own soldiers at risk. Hagel rightly included Hillary Clinton in his condemnation. For her vote to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, and her scorn of the "naivete" of talking to Iran, added up to another attempt to overmatch the president in the game of who is the toughest.
One other thing sets Hagel apart from Clinton and Giuliani, as it also sets him apart from Cheney and Bush. He has fought in a war, a war on the ground, and has seen what it is for soldiers and civilians to die.
Somewhere shortly after emerging from the voting booth in '06, everything I thought I heard, everything I thought I'd read, came to mean nothing....
and the anger on your part and the anger on my part is justified.
To be a Democrat today is like no other time in my life that it has been like to be a Democrat.
While democrats have never been fully united on anything, we could count on a majority of them to make the right decision on basic issues. Now, they lack the discipline of the republican party that, while it is wrong on most issues, is at least united to vote the same way on most issues - usually the wrong way. But they are united!
The democrats lack apparent leadership and committment to our Constitution right now. For example, by taking impeachment off the table they are playing crass politics for themselves, not doing their duty for the nation. And, even though the argument on water boarding was incorrectly framed, why couldn't they whip up support since the public outrage was so great?
Democrats talk tough, but are spineless when it comes to making proper decisions. "My kingdom for a spine!"
Democrats don't want to be blamed, e.g. for not supporting our troops in an illegal war started by an egomaniacal bully - why not? They allowed it to happen. And let's stop the nonsense about having a veto-free vote on any issue.
Why are they afraid of a filibuster - Lord knows they started many in the past? Americans would love to see a good fight for a change!
Don't the democrats have any competent PR people who can drum up support like the republicans do? Can't they imitate the republicans at least in this one thing?
As I said at the beginning of this rant - it is frustrating being a democrat today!
empathize with people who suffer? This conflict
in Iraq is reported to be improving for the US
military, but not for Iraqis. Bush has moved on to his other goal of distroying Iran, and does
not understand the scope of suffering he leaves
in Iraq.
Maybe the Presidential hopefuls who missed an
important moment to decide how the legal issues
of policy in the US will be decided, have also
disconnected. Maybe that is also what happens
in Congress.
When Americans lose the last remaining freedoms
we still have, it will be far too late to
re-connect with reality.
The media makes the truth opaque. They lie and scheme to enable the GOP to hold on to power.
Until Americans, individually and collectively, make the hard sacrifices necessary to regain control of our Nation and restore the rule of law as envisioned by the Founders and which many, better men and women have already fought and died for, the American "experiment" is over. Orwell's 1984 is now seen as a laughably benign if not downright naive vision of totalitarian authoritarian rule. The main reason that Americans are not out in the streets, building a "people power" revolution instead of leaving it to a very limited number of easily identified and monitored "fringe" intellectuals to debate is simple. We've spent the last 30-40 years (since either 1967 or 1974, depending on your reckoning) systematically destroying our people's ability to think, to reason critically, and therefore their motivation to take effective action against evil.
Talk to your "average American" these days about all the problems in the country, and he'll say "yeah, somebody really ought to do something about that. Oh, wait - can you excuse me? They're showing the Survivor rerun where that girl I really don't like gets voted off the island."
We've "voted" *ourselves* off the island, and the rest of human history will pay the price.
The problems are far greater than the absence of those five.
Demoxcratic Party for these reasons: no serious call for impeachments,allowing the Iran "scare"to go unchallenged in a meaningful way , no subpeonas of those responsible for the torture,death and detainment without regard to international and US Constitutional law.I am now an Independent,
That alone is reason why I would never vote for any of those people to lead our country.
Kucinich is also busy on the campaign, yet he took the time to DO his job and protect the Constitution by forcing the issue Pelosi refuses to put on the table - IMPEACH CHENEY.
I consider myself Independent and vote depending on who I think will be the best one for the job. There are no Republican candidates I like and there are very few Democrats I respect enough, Kucinich and Richardson being the only ones.
This country does not really belong to us anymore. It belongs to rich corporations who bought the media and put its puppets in place to do their bidding. Why bother voting if a person without real merit will get in and NOT represent you?