Mixed feelings on Feingold's censure resolution

[Skinner]

My heart is with Senator Feingold on this. It seems obvious to me that Bush has been breaking the law with his warrantless domestic wiretapping program. Presidents are not above the law. When a president breaks the law, he should be held accountable. At the very least, he deserves to be censured by the Congress. In fact, his punishment should probably a lot worse than that.

Democratic leaders in Washington have had ample time to come up with some sort of response to Bush's blatant lawbreaking, and so far they have done nothing. In fact, it has become apparent that they don't really have any intention of doing anything about it. Presumably they thought it all out in their heads and decided, once again, that the risk of "appearing weak" outweighed the possible advantage that could be gained from attacking the president -- even when he's wildly unpopular and has been caught violating the law and (perhaps) the Constitution itself. Never mind the fact that if you're too chicken-shit to take on an unpopular president when he breaks the law, then you probably *are* weak, in both appearance and reality.

Against this backdrop of Democratic fear, weakness, and inaction, Senator Feingold deserves a lot of credit for taking concrete action to hold the president accountable. At the very least, he has put the issue of Bush's lawbreaking back on the front pages. But more importantly, he is doing what any right-thinking American officeholder (or citizen) should do. I don't care if you're liberal or conservative or whatever: if you believe in the rule of law, if you believe in protecting the rights of the individual against the state, if you support the Constitution of the United States, and if you are alarmed by the application of unchecked executive power then you should support holding the president accountable.

And therein lies the problem. They're not supporting it.

I support Senator Feingold's censure resolution. But I have mixed feelings about it because right now it appears poised to fail. And when I say "fail" I don't mean "lose on a party-line vote" -- The resolution is poised to fail in a spectacular and public way, with a substantial number of elected Democrats too afraid to take even a small stand in favor of what is right.

If this thing loses with a large number of Democrats defecting, then Bush's supporters are going to paint this as a victory for Bush -- and not only that. They are going to claim that this vindicates his warrantless domestic spying program. They are going to claim that this is "proof" that the program is lawful, and has the support of Congress. And that would not be so great.

I do not know how hard Feingold worked behind the scenes to line up support for his resolution. If he has put a lot of effort into it, then good for him and shame on the Dems who refused to support him. But if he's doing this in a half-assed way and didn't really try to get other Democrats to support it, then I am a little nervous about what might happen. I can't help wondering if we might have better helped our cause by simply introducing a generic "sense of the Senate" resolution which forces Senators to express their support or opposition to the principle that "the government of the United States should not spy on its own citizens without a warrant," or to the principle that "the president of the United States is not above the law."

Or, I suppose Democrats in Congress could do the right thing and actually support the censure resolution. A party-line vote would be a victory for us. But I'm not holding my breath.