Time for another spinal transplant

This hesitance to censure Bush is flatly absurd. If Democrats roll over *yet again*, honestly, what hope is there? Still keeping that powder dry? I'm beginning to suspect that there *is* no powder.

In the New York Times, there is an editorial by Russ Feingold:

The president broke the law, and Congress must hold the president accountable.

You are right that the nation deserves to know more details about the National Security Agency's spying program, but there's nothing we could learn that would change the fact that by authorizing the program, the president broke the law.

Member of both parties who have concerns about the legality of the N.S.A.'s program, and there are quite a few, should not try to avoid that central issue while offering proposals to legalize the president's conduct.

I strongly support wiretapping terrorists to protect our national security, which current law allows.

The president needs to follow that law, or inform Congress of any reasons he thinks that law should be changed. He has a responsibility to obey the laws that Congress passes.

There must be no equivocation on that central tenet of our system of government.

I applauded Senator Harry Reid's effort to take the Senate into closed session to get answers on the intelligence and policy failures leading up to the Iraq war. But to suggest that such a maneuver is our only recourse now ignores the role the founders expected Congress to play when a president commits such a flagrant abuse of power.

We don't need a closed session to highlight the president's lawbreaking; we need an open debate and an expression of the Senate's judgment.

Members of Congress do need to "fulfill their sworn duty," as you suggest, and that means censuring a president who so plainly broke the law and violated the trust of the American people.

Russell Feingold
U.S. Senator from Wisconsin
Washington, March 17, 2006

I think it is really important that we "have his back" on this, but I'm also beginning to feel hopeless, because we've seen the Dems cave again and again. But I'm also pretty sure that a lot of Democrats, and even some Republicans, are on record with some tough "talk" about the wiretapping. What say we track these quotes down so that we can throw them back at the people who are suddenly so cautious now that Russ Feingold wants to do more than talk?

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