Spot on, Chris. Well said.

I agree with everything but the last paragraph.

I think Feingold's cowering comment was the exact opposite of the "third way" DLC crap. The triangulation is what the rest of the caucus has served up over the last 48 hours. The other examples of triangulation you cited are triangulation against the base. Triangulation is bitching at Democrats who don't act like Republicans, Feingold did the opposite (just like we are doing with Lieberman and pushed in TX-28).

I think the cowering comment was spot on. The reason that Feingold has such resonance is because he was right when he called the caucus on cowering, just like he was right on censure, just like he was right on Iraq, just like he was right on the Patriot Act, just like he was right on campaign finance...

When it comes to triangulation, the problem isn't Feingold using the word "cowering" but the fact that he is correct in describe the cowardly triangulation of the rest of the caucus running from the truth.

A lot of valid points.  But I would be curious to know on what basis can you make the claim that Bush is illegally spying on his political enemies?  Can you cite specific substantiated example of an American critic of Bush being spyed on under the NSA program?  If not, I would be careful about throwing around those kind of charges.

Chris, you're getting to be as cynical as me. Kinda. I hope you snap before me, I'd like to watch that. With some popcorn in hand, of course :)

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If anyone's keeping track, here is a list of things you cannot criticize in public anymore:
The government in general.
The President.
The other party.
Your own party.
Individuals of either party.
People who might kill you. Even if its a very small might.
People with flags.
People without flags.
The Establishment.
The Counter-Establishment.
The Commercialized-Pseudo-Counter-Establishm ent marketing gimmick. (Harley Davidson, skaters, punk rock, etc.)
The military, from the lowest grunt to the highest Four Star General.
People with religion.
People without religion.
People who can't stand other people's religion/lack of religion.
People.
Anything.

And Moveon.org was created.

Feingold stands up against the Patriot Act, and the entire country stops to take a breath.

When Harry Reid backed him up, Jon Stewart showed a picture of a donkey growing balls.

If Russ Feingold is bitching about the Democrats not having guts, what if I, a voter, just take my business elsewhere if they truly .. don't?

This isn't about scoring political points, just like the Censure of Bill Clinton wasn't about scoring points.

America has a ghastly, almost morbid media machine that is turning their children into fat, soft, wierd little entities.. and it needs to be constantly fed. American political advertising has become a multi billion dollar business, based only on the two parties being predictable mockeries of justice, with one of them drawing down enough money to feed both types of placement agencies through their ad buys. In fact, Crashing the Gates - a Book by Jerome Armstrong, really shows this to be true - with the party constantly paying fixed percentages to their media consultants - how much did they spend in 2004 ? Think of this: 250 BILLION dollars.  

Lets really get our minds around the scale of this operation that dare not say its own name... 250 billion dollars is less than the annual expense for the ongoing war in Iraq. Its one full year of the 3 year effort to completely rebuild the gulf coast, devastated by a country's complete inability to realize something is going to happen until they see it on TV. 250 billion dollars of radiation into your eyes, that if you lit the pile of money in its paper singular denomination  - it would still be burning today even after a 250,000 acre wildfire, the landscape in texas that started last week would burn until saturday, you could get in a helicopter and fly over all of the northern panhandle of texas and watch it burn for three days.. and if the bills are stacked tightly enough, even a week.

So, what is the driver, to keep the Democratic party in place? Well, people like Kennedy think that if they don't make the media happy , and the broadcast industry lobby to keep calling the shots - they will not get re-elected. Kennedy cuts a striking pose, but does he actually get things done?

Lets take Medicare reform. The bad guys all first take their money from the big insurance companies and Pharmas to put together a boondoggle.

Then, There is a very vocal debate - and alot of personality flashed, all the while - the majority has been put into the pocket of the Pharmas with massive k street funds machine (that will NOT get crippled just by taking out Norquist, but its a good start..) that pumps money into the campaigns for all the media buys... the vocal debate is scheduled well in advance, 15 days ahead of the legislation. Then Kennedy goes on, side by side with John McCain - mr. "The media is my constituency" McCain and they stand united. McCain rails on and on about how the Government is "spending like a drunken sailor".

Just like the Patriot Act, and Bush's spying program, the measure goes to the floor in the wee hours of Saturday morning or is done when nobody is actually looking , especially the media - and voila - you have a new law, now that says -
"Its illegal for the federal government, as the largest buyer of medicine in the US, to negotiate a lower price with Pharmas "

Instantly Pharma stock skyrockets... but guess what... nobody buys into it. The seniors all pass, they think its idiocy. AARP spends money advertising. They still ignore it... then the federal government spends money advertising it.. still they ignore it..

Where did the money go? Where else? Political advertising. The k street money went to Bush's campaign, helped him to make him president again after the worst first term in the history of the American presidency. Or did it? Ask a christian sometime...

Then the Democrats feed on the scraps of that, through their special interest groups carefully organized to look like real entities, despite the fact that they change with the wind...

Then, after it was all done, big lobbies and the fed still spend money.

So , where's the money in a Russ Feingold Censure maneuver? Well, there certainly wasn't any money in McCain - Feingold campaign finance reform, was there?

Where was Kennedy then? What about when Russ stood up against the Patriot Act?

Kennedy thinks first and foremost - these days, if he cuts a dashing figure in front of the media.

It almost makes you wonder, doesn't it - if he were in a car, and it were sinking in the water - would he try to save the person in it, or would he be looking in the rearview mirror to see if he has any scratches on his face?

Feingold introduced a censure resolution to punish the president for breaking the law.

Clinton, was for all practical purposes, a good president. He did break the law. A minor breach, but one nevertheless. If his censure resolution passed then, there would not be a media frenzy.  There would be no huge ad buys... because it would be over and done...  But the republicans needed something to go with.. Gingrich and Norquist cut a deal... set all the pieces in place, a baseball star salary that everyone could talk about .. ie. Ken Starr... and a media circus that just invited Al Qaeda to hit us. (does anyone remember the al qaeda training video where a masked machine gun is firing into the face of bill clinton.. boffing an intern? These guys get upset about a cartoon for pete's sake... )

Ask yourself. How would your family have handled if you committed a misdemeanor offence? If it were my dad, you darn well have to pay the ticket.

But you don't get to have the cameras flashing or a circus build around it. Bill Clinton oversaw the greatest expansion of our economy in history, he had a good, stable, two term presidency. He deserved censure. and that was it. This was why Moveon.org was created - we simply didn't want our country to descend to the level of a dog and pony show -

And Russ Feingold was the only senator to champion that then, he is the only senator to champion our cause now. He is a natural leader for the party.

Back Russ Feingold, like you would back Howard Dean. There is no difference. The Democratic party is surging to record levels of support under Dean. With Feingold as its leader, the party will actually get things done, as well.

If Kennedy is still out there, wondering whether or not the water pressure is equalized enough to let him open his own car door,  and looking at himself in the mirror to see if he looks good on TV ... ask yourself.... what if it were you, in the other seat and him, passed out? Would you stop to save yourself first, or him...?

If the answer is, you want to save both - then just kick him out and don't worry about the bruise - open the door and drag him to the side of the riverbank and then punch his chest and let water well out of his lungs.  

Do what you have to. Feingold doesn't want to up-end the country for political points, he wants to end the rampage of a president who is clearly working for Al Qaeda. At the very least, he's working for the Arabs. He's a champion of our national security and who we are... we take an oath to defend the constitution...

right now, the constitution is like our friend in the car, and we're worrying about how to get ourselves out before it goes down.... see the document getting soggy... the fourth amendment...
the second amendment... the first amendment...

Feingold is the only thing that stands between us, and the constitution looking like a pile of mush - especially after this next supreme court gets the thumbs up that it's open season from Dick Cheney..  .. thank heavens the supreme court can wait and watch a little bit.. society clearly signals where it wants to go...  the media companies use polls (or lack thereof!! where are the censure polls!) to push politicians around...

Cheney just takes his friends out and shoots them in the chest.

I think that what Sen. Kennedy and others are suggesting - a full-scale Congressional investigation (you know, actual oversight for a change) - is EXACTLY what Democrats should be calling for. Feingold's censure resolution is the perfect vehicle for such an investigation, because we damn sure aren't going to get it from the intelligence comm.

Let the Senate Judiciary Comm. start an investigation, let GOP Senators start hearing why this is illegal, force them to decide whether they intended to give Bush authority for such actions back '01, and do all of this in public, on TV. Then sit back and watch Bush's numbers drop to Cheny-like levels.

I think it's a perfect strategy for Dems, rather than rushing this into a vote.

On PATRIOT Act renewal, Feingold made his stand on the floor, cast his votes against cloture and against passage, and moved on. (To coin a phrase.)

A couple followed him on cloture, a dozen on passage, so far as I call recall.

He did not accuse the other Dem senators of cowering!

I (rather naively, as it turned out) thought that his censure res would play the same way. Feingold would make his pitch - and an excellent pitch it was, BTW - invite his colleagues to follow him, they wouldn't, and - game over.

He'd been a City on a Hill, and that was Mission Accomplished.

(Pre-consultation would have been idle since he'd expect none of his colleagues to follow him. But it might have wiser, all things considered.)

Then Dem senators go completely doolally, it seems, what with all those calls from Kossacks, MyDDers and friends - and staffers bleat to the media - anonymously.

And Feingold makes the cowering crack - on the record.

Why could Feingold's PATRIOT Act protest have gone so smoothly - with all Dem senators playing their parts - while the censure motion has resulted in all this brouhaha?

Dunno.

Where do the merits lie? Of course, Feingold is right on the substance. But when was the substance of an issue ever dispositive of a political question?

In the real world, almost no Dem senators would have voted for the censure res, however cordial relations with Feingold were.

The fact is, they are cowering, just like Feingold said. Which is what gives the accusation its sting, for Ghu's sake!

I'm toying with the idea that Feingold is slipping down the Henry Wallace path - burn his boats with the Dems, fight 08 under a new Progressive Party label.

How otherwise to explain his exquisitely timed gratuituous - perfectly accurate - insult?

You want to blame the leadership for Feingold's crash and burn?    Get real.   If Feingold were truely serious he would have involved the leadership in his censure proposal, and got them on board, BEFORE GRANDSTANDING ON SUNDAY MORNING TV.

Feingold is not worried about the elections in Novemeber.  He is worried about his campaign in '08.  If he was worried about the November elections he of course remember what happened to the Republicans in the midterm when they impeached Clinton.

I agree with Russ.   I think Bush did break the law.   But I would rather see Democrats kick tail in Nov. '06, and Nov. '08 then get bogged down in some political swamp - -  which is right where Feingold would lead us.

I'm going to take a beating for this but, here goes:

Kennedy is right.  I'd be willing to bet a majority of the Senate and nearly every single Democrat thinks Bush broke the law with the NSA wiretaps.  But the simple fact is we don't know what the hell he actually did.  Everything is secret and the President isn't giving any info to Congress.  His justifications have been ridiculous and so there's every reason to believe the program is illegal but we still don't have any actual facts upon which to base judgment.  Hell, if the program is as bad as we suspect, Impeachment is the proper remedy, not Censure.

We need a true investigation, with subpoena power, to actually develop the case.  Otherwise we just look like we are jumping to conclusions and we play into the Republican's desire to paint this as a partisan issue.   If Feingold had proposed a resolution to the Caucus requiring a full and serious investigation he could have introduced it with 40+ cosponsors and we could have beaten the "cover-up" drum for weeks.  Instead, he kept it secret from the rest of the Dems, wrote a resolution they couldn't support, and went on TV to bash them for "cowering."  Now the story is how weak the Dems are instead of criminality by the Republicans.  It's a PR disaster that could have gone completely the other way if it was played right.

1) Feingold's censure motion is the right thing to do.

2)There's an obvious political component to it. That, however, I would argue is not necessarily a bad thing.

3) It was a jackass thing for him to not tell his fellow Senators about this before going national with it, and to then publically bash them for not jumping on board immediately.

The Democrats are behaving just like they did with Iraq:  cowardly and craven.  George Clooney (?!?) said it best:

The fear of been criticized can be paralyzing. Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, "We were misled." It makes me want to shout, "Fuck you, you weren't misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic."

I won't criticize Feingold for speaking the truth about the other Democrats.  It is infuriating how they are letting him twist in the wind.

If this group of Democrats had been in power during Watergate, we would be naming schools after Richard Nixon today.

A lot of people who don't seem to have followed this issue very closely are pushing the "we should call for an investigation" meme.  Friends, we have already called, very loudly, for an investigation.  Our efforts to get an investigation before either the Judiciary Committee or the Intelligence Committee have sputtered out.  We have gotten all we will get from the "investigation" angle.

Yes, if we had a friendly media willing to follow this story every day and continue pressing for an investigation, we could possibly get somewhere.  But that's not the world we live in.

Not only is getting behind this resolution the right thing to do, but it's so obviously a political winner.  That's what makes it so frustrating.  The Democrats are so dedicated to winning in November by doing nothing at all to arouse controversy that they won't even censure the President for breaking the law.

I have never considered abandoning the Democrats over any issue, not even the war, but this one has that potential.  I don't believe these Democrats are worthy of governing the country.  I wonder how many members of the base are in the same place I am.

The fact the Dems are by and large not backing Feingold on this proves that they are either utterly craven, or are simply and inexorably not on our side.

I think we are charitable, and Russ Feingold himself is being charitable, when we ascribe to Senate Democrats' motivations adjectives like "cowering". I don't think they're cowering at all.

I think they're simply not on our side. And this controversy is just an egregious example of this fact.

The difference between Senator Feingold and Senator Lieberman is this:

When Lieberman bashes Dems, he sounds like one of them.  When Feingold bashes Dems, he sounds like one of us.

I can tell the difference, and I think others can, too.

Why isn't what Allard and many others keep saying slander? They are repeatedly alleging a major felony against the leaders of the country and are unwilling to substantiate any of the allegations.  I'm not even remotely an expert on the law, but:

In order to prove defamation, you have to be able to prove that what was said or written about you was false. If the information is true, or if you consented to publication of the material, you will not have a case. However, you may bring an defamatory action if the comments are so reprehensible and false that they effect your reputation in the community or cast aspersions on you.

That sounds about right doesn't it?

It goes on to say:

Public figures have a "harder road to toll" than the average person since they must prove that the party defaming them knew the statements were false, made them with actual malice, or was negligent in saying or writing them. Proving these elements makes the chance of a successful lawsuit slim.

It seems to me that at least one of those would apply.

Hmm, an earlier post got eaten up.  I'll try again.

As you front-paged me (not a complaint!), I feel in fairness my report of the conversation should not remain pseudonymous--I'm one of Senator Kennedy's constitutents, Andrew Foland of Cambridge.

It's been pointed out in several quarters that a full-throated Congressional investigation may be better.  I might even agree with that (though I don't see why Senators can't openly support the call while kicking the vote down the calendar.)  Let's play make-believe that the Senate Democrats have a Grand Plan, and such an investigation might ever take place. (Remember, it's make-believe.) Let's imagine this Grand Plan is thought to lead to a winning censure vote in Septmeber.

The communication problem is, how can I tell the difference between a Grand Plan, and caving?  If the Senators would communicate with us, we might be willing to back up this Grand Plan Winning Strategy in a variety of ways that might help.  But as it stands, we just have to guess.  And these guys have done little to earn trust in the absence of communication.  

And, that said, the Grand Plan better be for winning.  Better to stand up and lose now, than to roll over in September.