The Democrats we elected to Congress continue to turn in a disappointing performance whenever they are faced with any tough decision. A few key Senators allowed George Bush to win another key victory by placing his guy in the Attorney General’s office.
I’m personally tired of the continued failure of our elected representatives to represent us. I’m especially tired of people, like Dianne Feinstein, who support the administration’s continued use of torture and denial of simple human rights.
We need to step up the pressure, which I did today. I invite you to join me in putting some consequences to Sen. Feinstein’s actions.
There are only one hundred U.S. senators, but there are millions of us. If we each yell loud enough about something, you bet they can hear us.
I’m yelling about the confirmation of Mukasey. It may seem like a minor issue, but I would argue that this issue is really about the soul of the country. What does it mean to allow our Attorney General to waffle and weasel on torture? It means that the commitment of America to justice, which goes back to the founding of the country, has been overthrown. With it goes our moral right to lead the world and with it goes our power to improve the world by bringing up the standards of human rights.
Do you want to live in a country that officially sanctions torturing prisoners? If not, I ask you to join me in demanding that Dianne Feinstein be removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Have you ever written to your senator? I don’t mean e-mail; I mean a paper letter with a wet signature. I hadn’t until today. It’s a bit of trouble. It takes time, not the least of which is figuring out what to say. I’ve written to my representative before, but not a senator. I never thought what I wanted was important enough to bother them.
This is. This is very, very important. It’s where we need to make our stand. We need to make a stand about whether the soul of our country is blackened by the weakness of torturing prisoners or whether we will clean our soul of this taint by setting unambiguous standards and sticking to them in the face of terrible pressures.
That’s why I’ve requested that Sen. Harry Reid bring forward a motion to remove Sen. Dianne Feinstein from the Judiciary Committee. Here’s the letter:
10 November 2007
Re: Senate Judiciary Committee Appointments
The Honorable Harry Reid
600 East William Street, #302
Carson City, NV 89701
Dear Senator Reid:
In view of Senator Dianne Feinstein voting to confirm Judge Michael Mukasey for U.S. Attorney General, I am petitioning you to bring to the Senate a motion to have her appointment to the Senate Judiciary Committee rescinded. Her action shows that she does not support simple human rights and is incapable of exercising the judgment requisite to serve on this committee.
Please ask your colleagues to support you in removing her from this post and replacing her with someone who will unambiguously support the fundamentals of justice, including all the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution.
Thank you for your support in this matter.
Sincerely,
(signed by me)
cc: Senator Dianne Feinstein
Here’s my letter to Sen. Feinstein regarding my letter to Sen. Reid:
10 November 2007
Re: Removal from Senate Judiciary Committee
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein
United States Senate
331 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Feinstein:
In view of your vote to confirm Judge Michael Mukasey for U.S. Attorney General, I am petitioning the Senate to have you removed from the Senate Judiciary Committee. While I doubt that the Senate will take this extraordinary action, I believe that it is important to put into the record official opposition to this vote.
The very least the American people can expect is that when an official is nominated for high office in the U.S. government that that person be willing to make an unambiguous statement in support of simple human rights. We’ve seen a lot of officials ignoring the plain intent of the Constitution and abusing their powers. Among those officials is the President of the United States. It is therefore incumbent on all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that in considering a nomination that they err on the side of rejecting any person who will not maintain the highest standards in advising the President on actions related to our rights and correct judicial procedures.
You didn’t do that when you voted out Judge Mukasey to the floor and you didn’t do that when you voted to confirm him as Attorney General. Regrettably, this action cannot go without a response, which is why I have petitioned Senator Harry Reid to bring to the floor a motion for your removal from the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sincerely,
(signed by me)
(These letters haven’t had time to be delivered yet, of course.)
As I point out to Sen. Feinstein, I doubt that the Senate will remove her. The point is to register with the Senate leadership how deeply I’m troubled by the actions they’ve been taking.
I think you should take the time to write to Sen. Reid about this matter, too. The more that write, the better. It’s time they got the message that their actions are unacceptable and won’t be tolerated without protest.
There are those, count Karl Rove among them, who think that Daily Kos consists of people with bad spelling and bad manners. Please use the highest respect in communicating with the Senate. But don’t mince on words or buffer the message. They need to get it unfiltered from the "unwashed masses."
I began to doubt whether I should put up such a fuss about this. Maybe it’s unnecessarily presumptuous to write to the majority leader in the Senate and ask him to summarily remove a ranking Senator from a key state from one of the most important committees. I started to reconsider mailing them off.
Then I heard Bobby Kennedy, Jr., on Air America (on Clout). He reminded me that George Washington refused to use torture on captured troops during the American Revolutionary War, even though the British were torturing American captives on the ships in New York harbor. He reminded me that Abraham Lincoln refused to condone torture of prisoners during the American Civil War, despite advice from many, and set up a group to set the rules for how Confederate prisoners would be treated. Those rules grew into the Geneva Convention. He reminded me that German soldiers surrendered to Americans in droves during the Second World War because they had heard from their fathers that Americans don’t torture, a fact those fathers discovered for themselves in World War I.
Americans don’t torture. That’s exactly right. What does that make people like George Bush?