It's Not Casual Sex, But . . .

The big news among progressives today, of course, is Russ Feingold's resolution to censure the President (that's a PDF file if you have to watch out for those). Although impeachment might be more satisfying (in some ways--if successful, it would still leave us with President Dick Cheney, which might be even worse than our current situation), I have absolutely zero faith that it's politically feasible at the moment, so censure might be more doable. It allows Congress (as if), politicians, the media, and the blogs to keep talking about the administration's wrongdoing in the NSA's warrentless surveillance of Americans.

Of course, even that might be too much to ask, as Congressional Democrats are tip-toeing carefully around the resolution. No one's leaping aboard to join Feingold's bandwagon, and professional scold Joe Leiberman, the first Democrat to rap Clinton's knuckles in the Senate chambers over his shenanigans in the Oval Office (Jane at firedoglake reminds us of Lieberman's statement at the time), made clear to CNN that he feels nothing should be done to respond to Bush. "I'd prefer to see us solve the problem." I suppose that would be lovely, Joe, if the Senate actually bothered to do anything that would solve the problem. But maybe the best reaction came in the same article from Arlen Specter:

But a leading Republican skeptic of the NSA program, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, said Feingold's censure resolution was "vastly excessive."

If administration officials like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are correct, Specter said, "then there is no violation of law by the president."

. . .
Specter said he did not know if the program was legal and constitutional.

"I don't have any basis for knowing, because I don't know what the program does," he said in the Senate.

So Specter doesn't really know anything about the program and its legality, but surely censuring the President is over the top.

There's plenty of other discussion of this around the blogger high school auditorium. Glenn Greenwald discusses the strength inherent in standing up for principle. Georgia10 at Daily Kos talks about the plusses of pursuing censure rather than impeachment. And, as usual, Jane and Redd at firedoglake have lots of various threads about the censure resolution and all kinds of other things at their regular blog address. It's not clear when the vote will come (if, indeed, it comes as all), but call your senators to let them know where you stand.