The Democrats are not capitulating because they don't want to look soft on terror. The Democrats are capitulating because whatever will come out in the lawsuits will incriminate Democrats.

I think there can be little doubt that this is animating this. I am just naive enough to have thought that some of our leaders were better than this. I now know -- absolutely know -- that our Congressional leaders are corrupt to the core.

I'm also having my first real bout of doubts about Senator Obama. Unless he's planning on using the Senate to shut this down big time, I feel let down, bitterly so.

Rahm Emmanuel needs to be voted out of office, not just his flunkees Pelosi, Hoyer, etc.

Wikipedia? That is your unbiased source? Most colleges won't even accept the garbage on wikipedia as a credible reference, yet you use it to reference the ties between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. Cute. I assumed someone could provide something relevant. Obviously, I was wrong!

I think there can be little doubt that this is animating this. I am just naive enough to have thought that some of our leaders were better than this. I now know -- absolutely know -- that our Congressional leaders are corrupt to the core.

I think this is obviously correct.

But as far as Obama, lets consider what's being said. He should speak up, certainly, and I hope he is simply biding his time until the bill gets back to the Senate. But going after Pelosi et al would be a declaration of war against the House party leadership.

Does that sound wise?

Thanks for providing that link.

I guess my disgust with Hillary, whom I have come to admire for manymany reasons even though I did not vote for her, is because she hasn't done more here to defend us and the Constitution (exact same disgust I feel for Obama now due to this issue). And I still don't think that her silence has anything to do with being given marching orders from Obama's camp. That assertion was what I was protesting more than anything else.

All our leaders should be standing up and raising hell. If they are not, then they need to take responsibility for that. Anyone who claims it is because they have been told to shut up, and that they are obeying, is making excuses for behavior that shouldn't be excused no matter what.

Steny hoyer, pelosi, reid, di fi. Gone after their terms. I hope they made enough money and enjoyed their time, because it's over.

I'm a glass if half full guy. :) At least we get to see the sell-outs the cowards and the republcains posing as dem's in our party. that is the good news. this is the only way to weed them out. MAke their people angry.

Please don't put this on obama. He did speak out. With the entire house leadership selling out he could not go agaisnt them, NOW, and still win the election. He needs them this year. I know I know. But what are the alternatives? Lose all the congress ledership? Vote out the bums. This movement is for the long term. Think about the big picture.

Who thinks sheehan really will take pelosi's seat? If that happens, it is a sign of things to come. Keep your heads up soldiers. We lost today. The dem's won't be cowards and sell-outs foever. This time it will be differant, for a number of reasons. If you want to step up the fight, direct yoru anger in the right place. The gop, and their sell-outs int he democratic party. You want to fix this treason? So do i. You do it by making sure hoyer does not win re-election. Di fi .rockafeller. Reid, pelosi. That is how you end the sell-outs. You must fight them as hard as you fight the gop. Because they are one in the same. Sell-outs for profit and power.

But that is not obama. Please back off the man. Think about his options here, long and hard.

Look at the bright side. At least stuff likes this exposes them. The histroy books will judge them. Perhaps judges will judge them alos. Bribery is a serious offence. Or has been the last 5,000, years.

Thanks. I had those links somewhere, but apparently my Favorites filing system isn't as good as yours.

I am quite willing to forgive Paul his periodic bursts of outrage. I started to respond to his Unity™ attack on Glenn - who I believe has been accused of being in the bag for no less than Obama, Clinton, Ron Paul, and (I think) Mike Huckabee - but, I feel a certain sympathy and respect for a devoted Clinton follower who has received back whatever abuse he's dished out by an order of magnitude.

Thank you for the opportunity to plug my friend Alonzo Fyfe.

http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2006/05/further-considerations-on-government.html

“If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear from government spying.”

Anybody who utters this statement has illustrated the full height of his stupidity.

The problem is, the common citizen does not always get to decide whether he has something to hide. Sometimes, somebody else makes those decisions for him.

In Nazi Germany, “having something to hide” meant being a Jew, homosexual, gypsy, or even willing to work for regime change in the country. Imagine how much easier Hitler’s job would have been if the government already had a practice of wiretapping phones without a warrant and a database of every phone call that had ever been made by anybody in the country.

In America, in the 1950s, ‘having something to hide’ meant how you would answer the question, ‘have you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party.’ Imagine the situation in this country if, instead of asking people to name names, McCarthy simply needed to access a database of who had been calling whom in order to get his list of suspects.

In the 1960s, “having something to hide” meant being a part of the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King was viewed as a threat. Many people in government would have loved to have been able to plug his phone number into a database and get a list of everybody he had called as well as when and how long they talked.

In the 1970s, Nixon had an official “political enemies project” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon's_Enemies_List which involved a program of using government tools such as IRS audits and legal harassment against those who dared to speak out against him. I suspect that, if this database had existed while he was President, he would have made use of it.

Other times in which Americans had “something to hide” included being Japanese American in 1940, or German American in the 1910s. It included being an escaped slave or being somebody who aided in the Underground Railroad in 1850. In the 1770s, it included anybody and everybody who was fighting for independence from England.