SSDD (Same Speech, Different Day)

Today Bush offered nothing new in his attempt to shore up support for his failed Iraq policy unless you count some nebulous tie to Iran. Doubtlessly Iran would love to have a Shiite Islamic republic next door. With the same foresight that brought us the Dubai ports deal, no one in the Bush administration seems to have foreseen this. Meanwhile, support for this radical Republican administration has ebbed to its lowest level yet so Bush resorts to his favorite tactic, appearance over substance. He's learned to say nothing in twenty minutes or more and he's sticking to that tactic. Meanwhile, the same 25 percent who supported Nixon in the last days of his failed Presidency form about 70 percent of the current failed Presidency's support.

But who in their right mind would support impeachment of the President? Then we'd have President Cheney. Stupid and incompetent are one thing but in Cheney we'd have evil and competent, a much worse combination than our current one. Russ Feingold's effort to censure the President is misplaced, as well. For one, the Democrats don't have the collective backbone to support it in defiance of all logic, which probably is a good indicator of why they don't win elections. For another, it's meaningless. The Shrub doesn't care that his approval rating is lower than Clinton's ever was and he won't care that the Congress he leads by the balls should say naughty boy. Wasting time on censuring Bush, regardless of the fact that he fully deserves it, is exactly that.

I'm forced to agree with Liebermann: Solve the problem, Congress. Deny funding for Bush's warrantless domestic espionage program. Reform the Patriot Act in a meaningful manner. Make sure our money goes to those who need it, not the No Billionaire Left Behind programs of the Administration and its K-street friends. Make sure the Abramoff scandal leads to meaningful reform of lobbying and of elections. Censure is a meaningless scolding of a frat boy who thinks he's perfectly within his rights to ignore every rule and law. Meaningful legislation would be far more effective at containing and yes, Russ, bearding the Frat Boy President.

Cheney, of course, mischaracterized the resolution as an attempt to protect the speech of those who would conspire against us. First, we'll never know who was tapped: This administration operates under such secrecy that it has reclassified fifty thousand pages of information previously declassified. I highly doubt that it will ever declassify who was spied on or what information was gained by the program. Second, no one wants to limit the power of the President to spy on terrorists, we simply want it overseen by even such a weak oversight agency as the FISE court as required by law.

So grow a backbone, Democrats, not to support Feingold's well-meant but misplaced resolution to censure one with no conscience, but to pass legislation to eliminate the threat Crawford's village idiot poses to our civil liberties and our way of life.