Connor Coyne

I wanted to write about this last week, but ran out of time.

In sum:

New York Times: Mississippi’s Ballot Trick.

Here’s a more local take on the issue:

Biloxi SunHerald: Dems respond to Barbour’s appeal in ballot dispute.

This is too obvious for much commentary. Manipulations like this should be too egregious and self-evident to require explicit treatment by law. The fact that it happens anyway is all the reason why such laws are necessary regardless. Now let’s see if they’re actually obeyed.

New York Times: Nomination of Mukasey Sent to Full Senate.

“The vote was 11 to 8, with two Democrats, Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, joining all nine Republicans on the panel in backing the nominee. Eight Democrats voted against Mr. Mukasey.” Well, eight of them didn’t let us down. The rest have written off the independence of the Justice Department, as well as implied that, yeah, it is somehow ambiguous whether or not simulated drowning and strangulation constitutes torture (?!).

Jeff Danziger agrees with me:

It’s a typical week, in that there are plenty of things that you ought to be angry about. High on the list is the New York Times report that Democrats Seem Ready to Extend Wiretap Powers. Of course, given the sound-bite nature of reportage these days, it’s easy to lose the sequence of events here. They are fairly laid out in sequence by BarbinMD… specifically that despite Democratic tough-talk (“violence to the constitution” and “the stonewalling is unacceptable and it must end,” a la Harry Reid) subpoenas have been slow coming. Now, not only do formal charges in response to an illegal program that puts us on par with Russia seem unlikely, but the program is about to be written into law.

Why can’t the Democrats fight as tough as they talk? They don’t have to become Republicans in order to do it. They don’t have to be mean or hypocritical… just firm and assertive. How does this sound: For every Presidential veto that Congress will not override, the Democratic leadership will (in the absense of pressing legislation) turn its energy toward investigations of the abuse of power in the last decade. It doesn’t have to be stated outright: it can be an “understanding.” To paraphrase alan1, there’s a time for rhetoric and a time for lawyers.

This time, I feel an above average sense of betrayal. Opposition to unconstitutional wiretaps isn’t, after all, a fringe liberal position for Democrats to take up, nor are their numbers so soft that they can reasonably defer to perceived expediency.

This is a decade where the Republican party charges to the right in pursuit of their radical and inconsistant base. This is a decade where the Democratic party charges to the right, abandoning their patient and long-suffering base. At what point does a protest “vote of conscience” become acceptable again?

New York Times: Senate Blocks Detainees’ Rights Bill.

It would have passed in an up-down vote, but 60 votes are required for cloture.

Who voted for the bill? The Dems minus one, and Republicans Arlen Specter, Chuck Hegel, Richard Lugar, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, and John Sununu.

Who voted against the bill? Lieberman and a bunch of Republicans.