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• Friday, January 27, 2006 02:26 PM

  I was told there would be no math...

  It ain't about the math, Tim; it's about the fact that if this country stands for anything, it stands for NOT HAVING A KING. Supporting a filibuster on Alito's nomination represents the best, highest-profile means available to senators of any (or no) party affiliation of standing up against the massive, illegal, unconstitutional and bloody well unpatriotic unitary executive power grab going on in front of our very eyes. If the White House can ignore laws and deceive the other branches with impunity, the house of cards that is this delicate democracy comes crashing down in a heap - and a Supreme Court nominee who clearly supports that White House's "interpretation" of the power dynamics in American government must not be installed without a fight.

  Will the filibuster stop Alito's nomination? Of course not. That's not the point. The point is that in two or five or ten or fifty years, when people ask who stood up against this despotic attempt to pervert everything America represents, the Democratic Party must, if it is worth a damn, be able to stand up proudly and say it did everything it could, even in a losing cause.

  As for Feinstein, I'd like to think that my call yesterday, and the calls of dozens of my friends, family and other Californians, played some small part in her sudden spinal transplant - and that, my friend, is no small feat. Let us hope that the better angels of the Democrats' natures succeed in spurring them to be who they should be, who their constituents expect them to be, who their country needs them to be. Onward, friends. We ain't dead yet.

  —Hotspur Read Hotspur's other letters
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