Author: Greg Saunders

I don’t know about you, but I could use a laugh. Have you ever wondered why moral and political flexibility is seen as a “maverick” trait in John McCain, but it makes Joe Lieberman a craven DINO? Either way, cowardly or courageous, here’s a song for all the two-faced politicians in Washington :

If nothing else, incidents like yesterday’s Senate cave-in on torture should end silly questions like “What are you going to do if the Democrats win? You won’t have anything to complain about.” As long as there’s money in politics, bigots in the voting booth, and fools in D.C., there will always be something to complain about.

Of the 10.5 Democrats who voted in favor of giving President Bush the powers of a despot, 5.5 are running for reelection. Since these men are all in heated election battles, I think it’s only fair that we get to know them and maybe get a better idea of why they stabbed their party and their country in the back.

Graduating from the ranks of “Who’s the hell is that guy?” is Thomas Carper of Delaware, who’s in a tough reelection battle against Republican Jan Ting. How tough? Well, with little more than a month before election day, he’s only got a 40-point lead over his challenger. That must explain why he was so quick to jump on the anti-habeas corpus bandwagon. Those wedge issues can be a bitch.



New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has an even tougher challenge ahead of him. Not only does he have to struggle through life with an oddly-shaped head, but he’s only up by six in a state which hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in 34 years.



Then there’s the case of Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson. Yes, he looks like the dad from The Wonder Years, but I’m not going to mock the looks of two Senators in a row. Besides, he’s got other things to worry about, like being a Democratic politician in a blood-red state. After winning his first term by a narrow 51%-49% margin, you can bet that Sen. Nelson knows that he has to veer right to stay in office. If he didn’t support torture, his Republican challenger might start to catch up to Nelson’s 23-point lead.



At a glance, Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow’s surname kinda looks like “stab me now”. Kinda fitting for someone who’s giving the President the power to decide unilaterally what constitutes torture. The latest poll only has her up by 7 points, so you can see why she wants to give the President a blank check.



The other Senator Nelson also has a bad case of red state fever. Like most Democrats, Bill Nelson is a grand master in the “let’s wait and see what happens” school of political campaigning. Unfortunately for Bill, he’s up against Republican superstar Katherine Harris. Perhaps if Nelson caught a lucky break, then maybe Harris’s campaign would run into some troubles…things like having the National Republican Party oppose her candidacy or having her entire campaign staff quit or being tied to a bribery scandal or being accused of “increasingly erratic behavior” by a former campaign manager. Those things could sink a candidacy, but Harris only has to gain 28 points in the next 40 days. Just to be safe, Nelson should probably support the GOP’s efforts to shred the constitution.



This is Joe Lieberman. He only gets half a picture because he’s only half a Democrat. The other half is douchebag. Of course he voted alongside the Republicans. They’re the ones paying his bills these days.

So as you can see, these six Senators had to vote along with the Republicans. If they didn’t, the might risk the Democrat’s chances of retaking the Senate (which, including the 11 Democratic torture-supporters , will be a mixed blessing at best). Screw values. As long as we win the election, everything will take care of itself! They’re just pretending to be immoral assholes with no regard for the constitution, right? CLAP LOUDER!

Uggghh…wake me up in 2008.

Is it just me or is every major Democratic defeat in the Senate always preceded by barn-burner speeches from Senators Kerry, Feingold, Dodd, Obama, Kennedy, Biden, and others? I’m getting tired of this shit. It’s not enough to say the right things, you need to do the right things. In this case, the “right thing” is to do everything you possibly can to protect our basic freedoms from a party that’s willing to destroy them. This editorial at the NY Times gets it :

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
. . .
There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

The Democrats need to use every parliamentary trick at their disposal to stop this bill. If they don’t exhaust all of their options, I can’t help but conclude that the Democrats are bothered more by political concerns than the fact that the President wants to undo some of the fundamental freedoms that are established within the Bill of Rights.

UPDATE : Just kidding guys. The Democrats, in their infinite wisdom, have already agreed to buckle under :

The bill’s ultimate passage was assured on Wednesday when Democrats agreed to forgo a filibuster in return for consideration of the amendment. Any changes in the Senate bill, however, would have made it impossible for Republican leaders to meet their goal of sending the bill to the White House before adjourning on Friday to hit the campaign trail.

They gave up everything for the right to have their certain-to-fail amendments “considered”?! Cowards. This is what happens when Mr. Smith spends too much time in Washington.

That’s the Democratic party for you. They’ll do anything the Republicans want as long as they can avoid being labeled “obstructionists” in an election year.

I applaud Markos for being patient enough to stand by the Democratic party and encourage people to not drop out of the political process, but when is enough enough? At what point do you say “screw it” and come to the conclusion that the people in Washington don’t represent your core values? You know the Democratic party is in a sad state of affairs when a post encouraging people to stick by the party ends like this :

Democrats think “looking strong” means bombing Iraq or Iran, when “looking strong” really means standing for something because you believe in it, even if you might not think it’s the smartest political play. Whimpering every time Rove says “boo!” is not strength. Caving in to the administration is not strength. Surrendering what should be core beliefs because of political expediency is not strength.

Update: Rereading this, I don’t think I was clear on this point — please do put pressure on Democrats to do the right thing. On torture or whatever. Please get angry when they fail us and core American values.

Why should we continue to put pressure on politicians to do something that would come as second nature to any decent person? What does it say about our leaders if we have to beg them to oppose torture? If the Democrats aren’t willing to risk their careers for a higher principle like preserving the right of habeas corpus or protecting the separation of powers, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that they don’t feel strongly about these issues and probably shouldn’t be representing us?

I’m not ready to abandon the Democratic party, but I’m ready to make my protests against their lack of action mean something. Over the weekend, I wrote a pair of posts at the Huffington Post that pissed a lot of people off for saying, essentially, “Don’t Vote Democrat”. In it, I advocated voting against every incumbent, regardless of party, under the theory that starting Congress over with a blank slate would be better than the corporate whores and lapdogs that we’ve got now. Although it was more of an intellectual exercise designed to provoke discussion, my essential point was this :

If you’re willing to vote Democratic every election no matter what’s going on because they’re always better than the Republicans, then you’re just helping reinforce the cowardice that’s plagued the party for well over a decade now.

The biggest flaw in the blogosphere’s enthusiasm for the prospect of the Democrats taking over the House and/or Senate is the notion that the Democrats are suddenly going to grow a spine. It’s not gonna happen. Do you really think they’ll view as a mandate their change from a slight minority party to a slight majority party the way the GOP has arrogantly asserted with their recent electoral wins? Investigations, subpoena power, etc. sound awesome, but we’re talking about the same people who we have to beg to oppose torture.

It’s not enough for Democratic politicians to do the right thing after being hounded. We deserve leaders who have well-tuned moral compasses and don’t need to be reminded the difference between right and wrong. But these cozy, beltway incumbents are the ones who are going to be running the committees, who will be practically unstoppable in future primaries, and whose fetishes for centrism will have them all waiting in line just for the privilege of getting to co-sponsor draconian legislation with St. McCain. Crashing the gates is a great goal, but at a certain point you might need to just tear down the whole damn fence and build a new one.

Which is not to discount the hard work of the netroots. Ned Lamont, Jon Tester, and Jim Webb (among many, many others) are doing great work to shake up the status quo and deserve all the support you can give them, but I’m not willing to do thing to support the politically and morally tone-deaf Democratic incumbents who take the support of their base for granted. If you’re not willing to stand for something as basic as human rights, then why should we stand for you? Is it really worth all this effort to replace people who support torture with people who tolerate torture? Either way we’re stuck with a lawless President who gets to do anything he wants.

Are you willing to risk losing another election in order to rid the Democratic party of cowards and fools? Hell, I’m a Democrat. At this point, I’m used to going to bed on election night depressed. So I don’t take it for granted that the Democratic party is going to win in November. Unlike many of my friends on the left, I’m not afraid of losing this election. My big fear this election season isn’t that the Republicans keep control of the House and Senate, but that the Democrats win and do nothing.

Atrios has some good advice for the group Faithful Democrats (and other such organizations) :

If I had a somewhat insidery new organization for religious Democrats and was thinking about an issue which would be true to both (what I imagine to be) religious principles and liberal principles, and where the debate could perhaps be shaped (for better or for worse) by religious argument and language, I’d think about jumping on it.

So, how about a little torture talk, guys.

Lemme second that one. Maybe they can take their cues from the faithful non-Democrats at Christianity Today.

Every inch of the human body and every aspect of the human spirit comes from God and bears witness to his handiwork. We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28). Human dignity, value, and worth come as a permanent and ineradicable endowment of the Creator to every person.

Christians, at least, should be trained to see in every person the imprint of God’s grandeur. This should create in us a sense of reverence. Here, we say—and we say it even of detainees in the war on terror—is a human being sacred in God’s sight, made in God’s image, someone for whom Christ died. No one is ever “subhuman” or “human debris,” as Rush Limbaugh has described some of our adversaries in Iraq.

Because they are human, people have rights to many things, including the right not to be tortured. Christians sometimes question the legitimacy of “rights talk,” correctly so. Just because someone claims a right does not mean that it really is a right. But among the most widely recognized rights in both legal and moral theory is the right to bodily integrity; that is, the right not to have intentional physical and psychological harm inflicted upon oneself by others. The ban on torture is one expression of this right.
. . .
In the Scriptures, God’s understanding of justice tilts toward the vulnerable. “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry” (Ex. 22:21-23). Primary forms of injustice include violent abuse and domination of the powerless.

One reason our legal system has so many layers of protection for the accused and imprisoned is their powerlessness. This is important in any legal system that has the power to deprive people of their liberty and even their lives. The 83,000 people who have been detained by our government and military in the last four years are, as prisoners, vulnerable to injustice. Those who have been tortured are victims of injustice.
. . .
Given human sinfulness, not only must people be told not to torture, we must also strengthen the structures of due process, accountability, and transparency that buttress those standards and make them less likely to be violated. This is what is so dangerous about the discovery of secret CIA prisons in Europe and “ghost detainees” who are located no one knows where. As Manfred Nowak, U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said at the time the cia’s secret prisons were revealed, “Every secret place of detention is a higher risk for ill treatment; that’s the danger of secrecy.” It is not enough for U.S. government officials to say they can be trusted to act “in keeping with our values”—not without due process, accountability, and transparency. No government is so virtuous as to overcome the laws of human nature, or to be beyond the need for democratic checks and balances.
. . .
It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

Conservatives everywhere take pride in George Bush for his outward expressions of his faith, but if the fear of another terrorist attack has caused them to compromise their moral framework then they’re nothing more than unrepentant sinners and gutless cowards. Throwing away your values isn’t a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness.

On the partisan front, it’s especially pathetic to see the Democratic leadership cede the moral high ground to the Republican “rebels” and Christianity Today. You’d think showing strong opposition to an unpopular president would be second nature at this point, but instead the Democrats are once again sitting on the sidelines with their fingers crossed. Keep up the wait-and-see act, guys. It’s worked great so far.