Tim Johnson, Your Country Needs You.

Can someone please explain to me why Senator Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is not voting on the most important issues the U.S. Senate has considered since, oh, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Yes, I know he's recovering from a nearly-fatal brain aneurism, and as someone whose family history includes stroke victims, I emphathize strongly.

But really, they were propping up Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and faking his votes for years after he was, for all intents and purposes, you know, dead.

Johnson's not bed-ridden. There are photos on his Senate web site of him undergoing physical therapy, walking with a cane. His Newsroom page has more than a dozen press releases just this month announcing the millions of dollars in funding that he has secured for South Dakota.

So why does Harry Reid keep using the absence of Senator Johnson as an excuse for the Senate Democrats not having even a one-vote majority (Joe Lieberman notwithstanding?)

I understand and appreciate the importance of near-constant physical therapy for those who have suffered brain injuries. If it were me, I'd want to be home, as far away from the lethal miasmas of D.C. as I could get.

But these, dear Tim, are perilous times. The fate of this country and the entire planet are quite literally at stake. I don't believe that getting you onto the floor of the Senate, whether in a wheelchair or a hospital bed, to vote to preserve the Constitution of the United States, would kill you.

But even if it would kill you, I am still asking - nay, demanding - that you do it.

When the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, they were signing their own death warrants. If they'd been caught by the British soldiers who patrolled every street, they'd have been hanged. No trial, no appeal, no delay.

Is your taking a break from physical therapy to cast a vote to preserve the nation they risked their lives to create so much to ask?

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Language on the Supplemental Resolved

Negotiators from the House of Representatives and the Senate have finished hammering out a compromise agreement on the Supplemental War Spending Bill.

The legislation establishes benchmarks for the government of Iraq, and includes measurable progress in the development of Iraqi security forces. It would also give U.S. soldiers and Marines more authority to pursue extremists and wuld establish a program to disarm militias and pursue political reconciliation between the sects and protect minority rights.

If the benchmarks are not being met, troop withdrawals would start on 01 July of this year, with a goal of completing the draw-down in 180 days. If benchmarks are beign met, then withdrawal would start on 01 October, also with a goal of completing the draw-down in 180 days.

The current language must be ratified by both chambers of the congress and then it will go to the president for either a signature or a veto.

The president has promised a veto as he is allergic to any form of accountability.

Bush "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality -- and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared in a speech this afternoon.

Bush has repeatedly vowed he will not sign any bill with benchmarks or timetables, and he repeated himself today on that assertion in brief comments to reporters followign a meeting with General Petraeus. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable [for] withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," Bush said.

Here is hoping the Democrats retain this newfound backbone and make him accept accountability. It's high time. He's sixty years old, and most of us start to develop a modicum of it by age six.

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Senate passes war funding resolution, with deadline for withdrawal

The Democratic controlled Senate today held firm and passed a war-funding resolution that carries a deadline for withdrawal of March, 2008. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the moment was nigh to "send a message to President Bush that the time has come to find a new way forward in this intractable war."

Of course, President Bush – who knows nothing of war himself – threatened to veto any legislation that carries any “date certain" for withdrawal of troops, and Mitch McConnell, always a reliable Bush boot-lick said the Democrats were insisting on a “surrender date.”

"That's not surprising from a White House that has stubbornly refused to change course even in the face of dwindling support from American people whose sons and daughters are dying" said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

The ball is in Bush’s court now. So let him veto it. Let it be his signature that cuts off funding. Let him tell the troops in so many words that they are expendable and he will keep this clusterf**k going for as long as he chooses, and he will by-God get just as many of them killed for his lies as he wants, and Congress and the American people can just go hang. He’s the “Decider” after all.

He can try to spin it however he wants, but the fact remains, the houses of Congress are no longer stacked to the rafters with loyal Bush millions, and he will play ball, or it will be a long and miserable 21 months. Given his approval rating is hovering at 28% and 70% of the people in this country are realistic about the situation in Iraq, just let him try to play the blame game. I don’t just dare him…I double dog dare him.





[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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Senator Tom Eagleton, Sept. 4, 1929 – March 4, 2007

Flags across Missouri will be lowered to half-staff for Thomas Eagleton. He served Missouri in the Senate for 18 years, elected in 1968 and retiring in January 1987.

Missourians know, love and respect him for the way he did the job we asked him to do.

The rest of the country knows him because for 18 days in 1972, he was McGovern’s chosen running mate. He was forced from the ticket when it came out he had been treated for depression and part of that treatment had consisted of electroconvulsive therapy. McGovern has stated repeatedly for the last decade that dropping Eagleton was a mistake, and he regretted removing him from the ticket.

I called my mother when I heard about Senator Eagleton’s death. I was nine years old at the time the firestorm around him erupted, and don’t have the history or perspective she does, “Poor Tom Eagleton.” She said with a sigh. “He should have quit smoking. He was a good man and he deserved so much better than he got. We didn’t know anything about mental health back then. Mental illness was a failing, a moral weakness. They turned on him like he was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. Hell, they treated him worse. A sex scandal would have been small potatoes in comparison. I voted for McGovern, but it was under protest after that.”

His senate career was exemplary, and he was vital to a significant amount of important legislation, including the establishment of the Pell Grant education assistance program, and the establishment of the Department of Aging. Eagleton was an early opponent of the war in Vietnam, and he was the chief author of the War Powers Act. He considered the defining moment of his Senate career the legislation he co-authored to cut off funding for the bombing of Cambodia.

In his retirement, he taught at Washington University, wrote many commentaries for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, often taking the occupant of the White House to task. One of the last commentaries he wrote for the Dispatch was published Nov. 3, 2005 in which he pulled no punches in laying out what he saw as a no-win situation facing the United States because of what he viewed as President George W. Bush's "misadventures" in Iraq.

"Hubris is always the sword upon which the mighty have fallen," the former senator wrote. "From here on, any president will have to level with the American people before going to war."

State leaders were quick to eulogize their friend and colleague:

"Today Missouri has a hole in its heart," Sen. Claire McCaskill said in a statement. "Tom Eagleton managed to be a statesman, an intellectual and a man of the people all at the same time."

Missouri Republican U.S. Sen. Kit Bond also issued a statement saying: "Tom Eagleton cared deeply about Missouri and its citizens. His long career in public service is a powerful example to all of us that we are here to make a difference and should dedicate ourselves to causes larger than ourselves."

"Tom’s death is a great loss to our state. As a United States Senator, he was highly respected on both sides of the aisle. He was a person of high principle and consistent good humor." Said Jack Danforth in a statement issued soon after Senator Eagleton’s death. Danforth and Eagleton served together in the Senate for ten years, and in 1994 shared the Post-Dispatch’s Man of the Year honors.

In 1995, Senator Eagleton was instrumental in convincing the owners of the then-L.A. Rams to relocate to St. Louis. When asked what the nightlife was like, he didn't hesitate "We're like a raucous Des Moines."

Senator, you will be missed.

You already are.

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