Ken Salazar

By which I mean the Republican party. The Republican party of Lincoln. I've given up on the Democrats. There is no Democratic party.

Governments like ours work when factions operate in their own self interest - when the self-checking branches of government provide oversight on each other, or when political tribes draw differences and push against each other.

It's only in pushing against each other that there is balance.

You can't blame the modern GOP for trying to control every branch of government and put as much power as possible into the hands of their political operation any more than you can blame Franklin Delano Roosevelt for going ballistic on the Supreme Court in 1937 threatening to appoint 6 young liberals in what was called the most grave Constitutional Crisis of the 20th Century in order to push through the parts of New Deal they deemed unconstitutional.

Democrats don't have a unified principle that they can push back from anymore. To be a Democrat is simple - it is simply in their political interest to avoid being called names by Rush Limbaugh. If they can achieve that, then their political concerns is secure.

There is no Democratic Party in Congress. There are a slim majority of Congressmen and Senators who have banded together in order to gather money. They're not even very much concerned with gathering power and influence.

But they are most certainly not using any of the resources that they are gathering to benefit the groups and causes who worked to put them in power in the first place.

Republicans know this, and they will use this knowledge to pass the bills that they feel the country needs. This is why 2007 was such a horrible legislative year for the progressive movement - and why 2008 will be no better for progressives.

Democrats don't push back. Democrats don't fight for their rights. As legislators they gave away their power of oversight. As Executives they gave away their right to set an agenda.

The progressive movement needs a party. A party that acts out of principle since this is how progressives operate.

Since, Democrats no longer operate anchored in a principle of any sort (Anything, fucking something, whatever - Civil Liberties... Rule of Law... whatever, it really doesn't fucking matter. Name a cause, guys - anything) they are not the party for progressives.

I would have an easier time convincing Republicans, who are comfortable with the idea of fighting on behalf of a core set of principles, that they need to change their principles than I would with Democrats, who are incapable of fighting on behalf of core principles anyway.

I'm too enraged to write anything thought provoking or witty. The leadership of the Democratic party is a bunch of spineless, cowardly, weak, feckless, cowardly asshats, who all need to be primaried until they die. When they retire from the Senate, we need to primary their retirements. When they die and go to Purgatory (they are too milquetoast, feckless, traitorous and weak to justify their special place in hell, and they sure as shit aren't getting into heaven), I want to primary them there too. Make their lives miserable for all eternity. Seriously, this is beyond pathetic.

How many people failed? The little field where I select who is in the way on my blog form ran out of room before I could add everyone. That's how spectacularly our leadership has failed.

The only thing left to do on this issue is sign the petition over at FDL and pray that the house actually stands up and leads. Of course, that will happen when I start shooting my writing quills out of my nipples, but whatever.

Matt Browner Hamlin has all the gory details on todays spectacular failure of leadership. May God have mercy on their souls.

I should add that Feingold and Dodd were the only ones to rise up and take a stand on this issue in any significant way. (Obama voted the right direction, but never brought it the attention it deserved, which in his position as a candidate he had the ability to really do.) So kudos to them for behaving like Senators instead of little scared children.

In Plato's Republic, the question is put to Socrates, "Who will watch the watchers?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?"

Today there were more Senate votes seeking an answer to that ancient question. Here are a few notables:

• (Dem) Russ Feingold's S 3913: Prohibits the government from getting around FISA's court order requirement by wiretapping an individual overseas when it is really only listening in on a person in the U.S. with whom that "supposed foreign target" is communicating.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 38-57.
  (Democrats voting nay - Inouye, Pryor and Salazar [Lieberman])

• (D) Feingold's S 3915: gives the FISA Court discretion to impose restrictions on the use of information about Americans that is acquired through procedures later determined to be illegal by the FISA court.

  Aim: Watches the watchers. Failed: 40-56
  (Democrats voting nay - Rockefeller, Johnson, Bayh, Inouye, Pryor and Landrieu [Lieberman])

• (R) Kit Bond's S 3941: Extends from 30 to 90 days the window of time that wiretaps can continue without any ruling from FISA court before the telecoms can petition for removal of the tap.

  Aim: Give the watchers more power.  Passes: by voice vote.

• (D) Ben Cardin's: 3920 To modify the sunset provision from 6 years to 4 so that the next president can amend, and so FISA can keep up with technology.

  Aim: Watch the watchers. Failed: 48-46 [needed 61 to override the GOP defacto filibuster]
  (Clinton not voting)

Plato's answer to this is that "They will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a noble lie. The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it."

Plato was overly naive. That's why a system of separation of powers, checks and balances, was devised.

That mechanism ended in America under this President Bush and this generation of Democrats.

Shame.