As it becomes more and more obvious that the Democratic leaders in Congress are either inept, intimidated, or being manipulated by their wealthy corporate sponsors, I see many of us throwing up our arms in the air beseechingly asking "What should we do?" I've been there myself.

The first thing we need to do is put the Bush Administration and the last six years in perspective. I just finished John M. Barry's "Rising Tide."

The book is ostensibly about the disastrous Mississippi River flood of 1927, but Barry writes extensively about the politics and abuse of power that allowed such a disaster to happen, and how badly flawed politicians like Herbert Hoover used the disaster to gain political power.

"Rising Tide" is must read, along with Barry's later book "The Great Influenza," because both books examine the way the rich and the powerful manipulate and control all levels of our government. While most of what he exposes was not know toby the general public at the time, eventually it has all come out, as will most of the skullduggery of the current Administration and the Democratic enablers. When you look back at the egregious abuses of power that Barry writes about, you will realize just how important it is to remain vigilant and never let our guard down, even when politicians you support get in power. Power corrupts.

The "Rising Tide" had me in tears of anger at how the smug, pompous New Orleans bankers screwed the poor, powerless residents of two rural Louisiana parishes, and how the leadership of the Red Cross turned a blind eye at how local leaders used the National Guard to imprison the all local black residents in the Mississippi Delta and forced them to sandbag the levees in return for food, food that was poorer quality than the food freely given to the whites who did almost none of the heavy labor.

I digress. In "The Great influenza," Barry devotes a substantial portion of his book to the rarely taught excesses of the Woodrow Wilson Administration during World War I (he also touches on it in "Rising Tide"): the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, and the Palmer Raids of 1919-1921. Check out the entry for "Palmer Raids" in Wikipedia to get an idea of how much worse Wilson was than Bush in this regard. Bush, of course, is far more flawed than Wilson in other areas.

Barry's books and about Wilson's fascist legislation hopefully puts our era into some perspective. These abuses of power by the wealthy and the politicians happened only 80 years ago, and yet just a decade or so later we had Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal programs, some of the most progressive legislation to that time, legislation that would never have passed in the 1920s.

We can turn this around.

I believe it is incumbent on us to identify the weaknesses of the Bush-enabling wing of the Democratic party, focus on those weaknesses, one at a time, and fix them. Right now I believe Harry Reid is a Bush enabler that can be fixed. I don't know Nevada politics well enough to know why he is so unpopular in the state, but I suspect a recall campaign could be effective in either getting him to grow a spine or to get him removed. Showing that we can bring down the Senate Majority Leader would certainly give the other Bush-enablers pause and possibly work a little harder to turn the country around.

Even if we can't make big changes immediately, be assured that the many liberal blogs, like Glenn's, have just begun to make a difference. Like a giant supertanker, a government as large as ours has an inertia that can't be turned quickly. I believe we can already see some change and there will be surely more progress to come (our biggest concern in the future may center around how to stop the turn once the country is headed in the right direction!).

By using the SIC version as the base, Reid in effect ignored Dodd's hold, right? If Harry Reid - the Senate Majority Leader - the most powerful man in the Senate, truly opposes amnesty, why wouldn't he choose the SJC version without amnesty as the base?

That's what Mitch McConnell would do...

I wrote an earlier comment about my experience with call to Sen. Reid and Sen. Dodd's offices this morning. In a nut shell, Sen. Reid's staffer didn't know which version of the FISA bill Sen. Reid was moving forward with but that he ALWAYS honors holds. Sen. Dodd's office staffer said emphatically that there was a hold on any version that provides amnesty for the telecoms.

I had to go out for a luncheon, etc., and when I came back there was an email from the Dodd For President campaign that read, in part, "In a few hours, Majority Leader Harry Reid will ask for something called a "motion to proceed" on FISA, effectively disregarding Chris Dodd's "hold" on the bill."

I immediately called Sen. Dodd's office to see if I read this right. "Did Senator Reid ignore Senator Dodd's hold" I asked. The staffer said "Yes, he did." I said "I'm writing this for my blog, can I say that Senator Reid IGNORED Senator Dodd's hold?" She said, let me double check.

she came back and said, "Unfortunately, yes. Senator Reid ignored Senator Dodd's hold."

I've been trying to confirm this with Sen. Reid's office but the line has been busy for over an hour.

I don't know what's going on here (actually I think I do, but I'm trying to be responsible).

[OK, I just got hold of Sen. Reid's office and the staffer said Reid is going to bring both versions of the FISA bill to the floor and let the Senate decide. She also said Reid just announced a few minutes ago that he doesn't support amnesty for telecoms.]