Senators Russ Feingold and Amy Klobuchar have introduced a federal bill that would require that Election Day Registration be available in all federal elections.
This is a great idea -- provided the feds pony up the resources to make it happen. The United States is the only major representative democracy in the world where the onus on registering to vote is on citizens rather than the government. Until we can reverse that onus for good -- lowering barriers is a great idea.
Diarist Steve W recently urged Senator Tester to keep his campaign promise and repeal the Patriot Act. Enter Senator Russ Feingold's S. 2088, the National Security Reform Act of 2007, which fixes the National Security Letter statute of the Patriot act.
As the law is written, the government has the right to use NSLs to get data from Internet service providers, financial record holders, and telecommunications companies of everyday Americans without a warrant. Those presented with an NSL were bound to secrecy by the law's "gag rule," opening up the Patriot Act for abuse.
Since the revelations that the FBI was abusing the use of NSLs, a federal judge struck down the NSL portions of the Patriot Act as "unconstitutional," violating Americans' First Amendment rights, as well as the Constitution's separation of powers provisions:
The secrecy provisions are "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values," Marrero wrote. His strongly worded 103-page opinion amounted to a rebuke of both the administration and Congress, which had revised the act in 2005 to take into account an earlier ruling by the judge on the same topic.
Feingold's bill would fix the problems in the Patriot Act. It would require that NSLs are closely monitored and subject to Congressional oversight and limit the gag order associated with NSLs. In short, Feingold's bill puts the Constitution back into the process, ensuring that the powers vested by the law to the administration are not abused.
Thanks to Jon for his support of Senator Feingold's bill. It's one step more to help ensure Americans' individual rights under the Constitution.
The Senate considered the so-called Feingold-Reid amendment this week. The measure would have basically forced the President's hand. Now, it was never really likely to pass or survive a veto, but it was an issue of going on the record and realizing a few things -- that this President does not respond to criticism at all (hence, we still can't say "former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales") and that for the War in Iraq to end, his hand must be forced.
Now, Max Baucus and Jon Tester both voted against Feingold-Reid. They're in a different place than me. That's fine. I ain't happy about it, but it's understandable. I suppose if I'd spent a long life living in a world where people would actually work together, I'd probably fail to see it when I entered a situation where the most powerful douchebag on the planet refuses to work with the opposition at all.
"It's time for a change of course in Iraq, and I'm committed to working together with my colleagues on a solution," Baucus said in a prepared statement. "However, I'm not for pulling the rug out from under our brave military men and women serving in Iraq. I cannot support cutting off funding while they're fighting on the frontlines overseas. It just wouldn't be right."
[and]
"I am doing everything in my power as a U.S. senator to end the war in Iraq, but I will not cast any vote that I believe compromises the safety and security of our troops on the ground," Tester said, also in a prepared statement.
"I have said for two years that the president needs to develop a plan to get us out of Iraq," Tester said. "The Congress and the American people have spoken; the president needs to start listening."
There's a couple problems with this -- first and foremost, it's misleading. As a staffer from one of their offices told me himself, there's this whole false understanding that passing Feingold-Reid would literally mean that tanks in Iraq would start running out of gas and the like. That's simply not true -- and it's not how our government actually operates. Our Senators shouldn't perpetuate myths.
Second, they're both using common right-wing attacks to undermine progressive Democratic leadership. They could have both simply said, "My position is that the President and the Pentagon need to come up with a plan. This bill doesn't accomplish that." Instead, they threw in a gratuitous, "Leading members of my own party want to 'pull out the rug' on our troops in a way that 'I believe compromises the safety and security of our troops on the ground.'" Those are Mitch McConnell's talking points.
Third, they've effectively locked themselves in. If this vote was simply out-of-line with their current position, they could move based on new evidence. But they've now said anything like Feingold-Reid is tantamount to voting against the troops -- something that will no doubt be used against them if they change their position down the road as it becomes clear that President Manchild refuses to do anything about the mess he's gotten our country in.
Your thoughts?
An Addendum -- I should add a point that Atrios makes a lot, which is the trap of playing President. A lot of the supposed solutions to the quagmire in Iraq involve the President taking a different approach. All of those solutions are based on a faulty premise -- that this President is willing to adjust anything based on what some inkling body called Congress tells him to do. Even worse, there's a fairly large (roughly 30%) share of the electorate that seems to believe they elected a God or a King, not a President -- and they'll tell him to fight like Hell for the right to keep spilling Iraqi and American blood.
It's time to stop assuming or pretending that there is good faith on the part of the executive and to instead focus on every possible avenue that can be undertaken. That's not radicalism -- it's realism. And people just need to wake up to it.
Washington, D.C., is much abuzz about what to eat for breakfast. The President, you see, is proposing bacon-and-cheddar omelettes everyday for everybody. His critics contend that these omelettes everyday will eventually clog arteries with cholesterol and kill everybody. Their proposed solution? Blueberry pancakes everyday.
The city does not know what to do. In a bold stroke, the Breakfast Study Group (BSG) is commissioned to find a way out. The group numbers among its group some of the finest chefs and nutritionists of both parties (as well as some former Congressmen for good measure) to figure out the best way to feed the city.
Finally, they release their report -- a marvelous proposal that puts the core principles of bipartisanship and compromise above all else. Washington, they say, will eat bacon pancakes on Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, and blueberry omelettes on Tuesday and Thursday.
The press corps issues its hurrah -- a middle-ground has been found. Members of Congress thank the BSG for its bold leadership and look to the President to see whether he will harvest what the BSG has sown.
Meanwhile, Senator Russ Feingold points out what it apparently is difficult for people in D.C. to realize: bacon pancakes and blueberry omelettes sound worse than the original options we were given.
