Bradblog on Feingold

Bradblog interviewed Rus Feingold, and here's some of it:

First, he made clear that, contrary to the general impression out there, there is no rule or requirement for a Senator to confer with anybody before proposing something on the floor of the Senate. Thus, he simply proposed the Censure Resolution having decided that "it was the right thing to do."

That decision came, he said, after the end of the year. He had been encouraged by the tough stance the Democrats had taken concerning renewal of the Patriot Act before the session ended, but found that during the break their resolve seemed to have disappeared and they returned to their "foxholes".

"Foxholes?" I interrupted...

"Yes, I said, foxholes," he answered back quickly, with a clear inference that he had chosen the words quite deliberately.

Once he'd felt the Dems had again lost their resolve to fight, and once the information concerning the warrantless NSA spying had come to light, he'd decided the right thing to do was to simply take action. And he did.

"Yes," I followed up, "and don't get me wrong, I strongly support your effort there, but might you have gotten more support from your Democratic colleagues had you consulted with them first before announcing the Resolution publicly?"

He explained that had he done that, the matter would have then been vetted by "Democratic consultants" who would have decided to kill the idea entirely before it could even be proposed on the floor. "Our party," he said, "is too beholden to Democratic consultants."

Whether supported or passed or not, Feingold said, it's important for the history books. When people look back to see what happened here, and wonder if anybody stood up for our Constitution in the face of unprecedented disregard for it, via the illegal practice of spying without a warrant on American citizens on U.S. soil, it'll be right there that at least he and about five others in the Senate had the courage to stand up and say, "No, this is wrong."

Given that we can all look back historically even now to the fact that he was the only U.S. Senator -- Democratic or Republican -- to vote against the Patriot Act when it was first passed in the days following 9/11, history can be very telling. His courageous vote back then, when it was anything but easy or popular, certainly speaks well for him now in retrospect with even the few years that have passed since that dangerous, and rather unAmerican legislation was first jammed through a cluelessly compliant Congress.

This gives you a real feel for how totally clueless most of the inside the beltway Democrats are, all hiding in their "foxholes," hoping their safe seats won't disappear on them. Let's hope that the challenge in the Lieberman race helps shake some of these people out of their somulence.

The more I see of Feingold, the more I like him.