Here:

http://chrisdodd.com/blog/ia/%2526quot%3Bdodd-has-track-record%2C-solutions%2526quot%3B#comment-44108

I placed this comment:

What Jim White said. I came here expecting to see Reid's Bush enabling shenanigans on FISA retroactive amnesty front and center. Thank you, Senator Dodd, for doing more than any other Senator on this by placing a hold on the Intelligence Committee bill, but we need you to do still more now that Senator Reid appears poised to ignore your hold.

This is your chance to break out by doing the right thing and standing up to Bush and his enablers. You could make an even bigger issue of this by stating loud and clear that it would be beyond unacceptable if Reid overrode your hold while honoring Coburn's and everyone else's holds on other matters. You could also encourage like-minded colleagues in the Senate -- including fellow Senators and candidates for President Clinton, Obama and Biden -- to join you in placing holds, daring Reid to defy the lot of you. There is no excuse for giving retroactive amnesty when we don't even know what crimes may have been committed.

For more, as Jim said, see FireDogLake and Glenn Greenwald,

Don't let Reid let us down. This can be blocked. Grab a megaphone.

Dodd is a serious candidate, but in the second tier of Democratic candidates. If he makes a big issue of this -- stating loud and clear that it would be beyond unacceptable if Reid overrode his hold while honoring Coburn's and everyone else's -- then he has a chance to break out. This is his chance to stand up to Bush and Bush enabling Democrats like Harry Reid.

Perhaps the other Presidential candidates in the Senate (Obama, Clinton, Biden) can be pressured to place holds and dare Reid to defy them in addition to Dodd? And what about Russ Feingold who has shown before he can have serious cajones (voting against the Patriot Act). Edwards is not in the Senate but he could at least make some noise. By making it a "Dem on Dem" fight in criticizing Reid (in addition to Bush and the Republicans as well of course), he might get some traction with the press and actually get some coverage for a change.

This is a chance for candidates to prove themselves to the base, do the right thing, stand up to Bush and get some publicity. What's stopping them?

You and Chris Dodd jointly submit an Op-Ed to WaPo explaining why amnesty is a really bad idea. And WaPo publishes it. Like I said, a pipe dream. Maybe once they rejected it, you could publish it on Salon and his website and say this is what WaPo didn't want you to see. A thought.

Because if not any criticism of him is automatically invalid. ;)

That's how he referred to referred to Diggs' opinion on ACLU v. NSA as "amateur hour". Oh, the ironies. Link to NRO on my handle.

Whether or not there are the votes for impeachment is a moving target. As you know, impeachment requires a simple majority in the House, but conviction requires a two thirds majority in the Senate. Right now, I think impeachment -- let alone conviction -- of Cheney or Bush (and in no circumstance should Bush be impeached if Cheney will still be veep) is not going to happen based on where Congress is at today.

Impeaching Gonzales is what's called for right now IMHO. With Gonzales there is a real shot at getting conviction in the Senate if it gets that far. More likely, he would resign somewhere in the process. There is an ample case to make on the merits (making false statements to Congress, approving illegal programs, etc.). Regardless, it would prompt a healthy debate on warrantless eavesdropping, prosecutorial independence, etc. And who knows, it might serve as a warmup for impeaching Cheney.

That said, impeaching Cheney and possibly Bush are not wild fringe ideas as our elites seem to think. A July 6 ARG poll (link on my handle) showed a plurality of American voters favor impeaching Bush (46 to 44 with 10% undecided) and Cheney (50 to 44). Republicans of course overwhelmingly opposed impeachment. But it's not just Democrats who support impeachment. Independents favor impeachment by heavy margins (50 to 30 for Bush and 51 to 29 for Cheney). Admittedly, this poll was taken right after the Libby commutation and other polls have shown weaker (but still strong) support for impeachment. I haven't seen any polling results re Gonzales.

Yoo is not only willing -- but intensely eager -- to defend literally anything George W. Bush does or would want to do, including -- literally -- torturing people and crushing the testicles of children if the Leader decreed that doing so was necessary to fight Terrorists.

Well, Yoo is not willing to defend quite anything. According to Gellman and Becker, writing in the Washington Post (emphasis added):

That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA — including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government has prosecuted as a war crime since at least 1901. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

Yoo said for the first time in an interview that he verbally warned lawyers for the president, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that it would be a risky policy to permit military interrogators to use the harshest techniques, because the armed services, vastly larger than the CIA, could overuse the tools or exceed the limits. "I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at DOD felt differently," Yoo said. The migration of those techniques from the CIA to the military, and from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, aroused worldwide condemnation when abuse by U.S. troops was exposed.

Link on my signature