Letters to the Editor
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The only way to force Feinstein out
whether by recall, resignation or indictment, is by coming up with sufficiently damning evidence of criminal activity on her part. Nothing short of this is going to get her out of the senate (other than, of course, physical factors, but I'm not going to wish that upon anyone, Pub or Dem). She is simply too entrenched, at the start of her hopefully last term, to be gotten rid of otherwise.
This also applies to her fellow Bush enablers Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Tom Carper, Chuck Schumer (who is in a somewhat different class since I think he backed Mukasey only because it would have been politically embarrasing for him not to) and Mary Landrieu (who is not going to be effectively primary challenged and is thus likely the best that we can hope for in Louisiana for now). Unless sufficiently damning dirt is found on all of them, they're staying put.
Think Bob Toricelli, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay or James Trafficante. That's the only way to get rid of them for now, politically. Which is a big part of why she backed Mukasey.
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All true, except...
As head of the Board of Supervisors she was made acting mayor and then won the election for mayor. Her only real competition was Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys (I voted for Biafra). Feinstein is just another politician who rose in power because of the death of others. Government by gunplay.
As a Californian I am embarrassed by her presence in the Senate. I think of what the Senate would have been like with a Moscone or a Milk instead of Feinstein and I cry.
-- Bob In Pacifica
All true, except that Sister Boom Boom got more votes than Jello. There's always room for Jello, however.
He finished fourth out of a field of ten, receiving 3.5% of the vote (6,591 votes); the election ended in a runoff that did not involve him (Feinstein was declared the winner). In reaction to his campaign (and that of Sister Boom-Boom, a drag queen who also ran for mayor and handily won the third place spot above Biafra), San Francisco passed a resolution stating that no candidate could run under any name other than their given name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jello_Biafra
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harry reid can fucking drop dead
glenn, i trust youve seen the new harry reid story
http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/11/reid_allowed_vote_on_mukasey_in_exchange_for_military_funding_bill.php
i cant wait to read your take on it.
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For those not familiar
Sister Boom Boom was one of the founding members of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. She did garner more votes than Jello Biafra. To get an idea of what kind of candidate Sister Boom Boom was:
http://thesisters.org/meet.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Boom-Boom
Quite a few of the Sisters ran in that election.
Sister Nun of the Above was on that ballot as well.
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ADD
i cant wait to read your take on it.
-- grover nerdkissed
None of that money goes to fund the occupations in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's progress but it's slow progress. Unles you are from the MTV generation, have the patience of a 5 year old with ADD and an attention span no longer than a 3 minute music video, you should be a little bit pleased.
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grover nerdkissed
Honestly, if that story is true, I'm going to have to work hard to prevent myself from vomiting. That's obnoxious, short-sighted, and evil.
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No offense. A compliment. A checking-in, and just hoping all is a-okay? burr-a-burp!
burp.
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Some...
dems just realize that we are in a war that started six years ago and that they have a responsibility to keep us safe.
And apparently they are willing to do that in the face of a pissy glenn and others like him.
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@ Houngan
You are neither obnoxious or evil but perhaps you are being a little short sighted. Like many Americans, (even though I gather you are not one of us) you are quite impatient and have unreal expectations, particularly with respect to the 2006 election and the actual workings of this political system. The framers intended to devise a system where the minority will not be tyannized by the majority. It isn't perfect but as Churchill is supposed to have said, democracy is the worst possible form of government, with the possible exception of every other form of government. I think it is a typically American shortcoming, impatience, but common to younger generations of every era and place. In any case, that's one reason why the 29% of Americans who think waterboarding is OK don't get ignored. Mukasey was going to be appointed during a recess with or without congressional approval. Reid got money out of Bush without funding the occupations. Yet the garment rending and teeth gnashing persists. As George Bush himself observed, it would be much easier if someone was a dictator.
One key reason Dem leaders wanted this defense approps bill passed, sources tell me, is that they wanted to be able to argue that they had sent a bill to the President funding the military, if not the war itself. The idea was that doing this would allow them to protect themselves in the days ahead when the battle over Iraq funding heats up and Republicans inevitably charge that Dems are refusing to fund the troops.
"This lets us argue, `Hey, we just sent $450 billion to the military," one leadership source tells me.
According to sources, Reid went into this week with a few primary goals in mind: Get a massive $286 billion farm bill through the Senate, and get action on the Defense Appropriations Bill.
"The Department of Justice, once the crown jewel among government institutions, is adrift and rudderless," Schumer said Tuesday -- the same day the committee voted 11-8 to send Mukasey's nomination to the Senate floor.
"It desperately needs a strong and independent leader at the helm to set it back on course, and I believe Judge Mukasey is that person."
Schumer said that in a meeting last week, the nominee told him that Congress would be within its rights to pass a law that bans waterboarding across all government agencies and that the president "would have absolutely no legal authority to ignore" it.
Schumer said he believed Mukasey would be more likely to find waterboarding illegal than an interim attorney general.
"Indeed, his written answers to our notices have demonstrated more openness to ending the practices we abhor than either of this president's previous attorney general nominees have."
But Mukasey's pledge to enforce such a law rang hollow with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the Judiciary Committee's chairman.
"Some have sought to find comfort in Judge Mukasey's personal assurance that he would enforce a future, new law against waterboarding if this Congress were to pass one," Leahy said Tuesday.
"Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of this president."
However, the committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said he believed Mukasey would enforce a law banning waterboarding.
A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it's OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released this week.
More than two-thirds of the respondents, or 69 percent, said they think waterboarding is a form of torture, while 29 percent said they didn't think so. Fifty-eight percent said they didn't think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, while 40 percent said they did.
The CNN/Opinion Research telephone poll of 1,024 American adults was carried out November 2 through Sunday and had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/09/mukasey/index.html