What the hell is going on?
So the whole time I was in Anchorage, I spent very little time paying any attention to current affairs. After the whole election disaster, a full semester with two classes focused on politics, and more conversations than I care to remember, getting away to Alaska seemed like the perfect opportunity to let “the real world” flutter away from me for a little while.
I think the last thing I paid attention to was the confirmation of Gonzalez as our Attorney General, and when that went through, I realized that there was very little the Democrats could (or would) do as the opposition party.
But then I pick up the NY Times today and I read that the useless Democrats have fought the Republicans into a stalemate on the Bolton confirmation –though it might be moot if the President decides to appoint him while Congress is in recess for the Fourth of July holiday.
But regardless of how it turns out with Bolton, the headline got me a little excited. As if the Democrats had finally realized what it means to be an opposition party.
Maybe I should have been paying more attention though. Because when I think back on the last few months while I was in unforced exile from current affairs, I realize that the whole Social Security thing that Bush was talking about has kind of gone away (except when someone is mentioning that Bush failed on getting his ideas through Congress). The whole “nuclear option” thing seemed to come down in favor of the Dems. More people seem to be paying attention to the Tom DeLay controversy. The Terri Schiavo case seemed to bring out the worst in the right wing fundamentalists, opening up the eyes of people who had yet to bare witness to it. And everything going on down at Guatanamo seems to be making even southern Republicans shake their heads:
Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., has reportedly joined calls for the United States to consider closing the controversial prison at Guantánamo Bay, describing it as an “icon for bad stories” and declaring that “it’s not very American, by the way, to be holding people indefinitely.”
And then there’s the Downing Street Memo, which, in case you weren’t convinced before, shows that Bush had been committed to war in Iraq, regardless of what came through our intelligence networks.
Such revelations have led the House member who renamed French fries “freedom fries” — because of France’s opposition to the Iraq war — to reconsider his support for the invasion. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., recently told ABC News that the facts compel him to conclude that the war in Iraq was waged under false pretenses.
That’s not to say everything is rosey. The recent attempt to cut funding for Public Broadcasting (the House Appropriations committee voted to cut $100 million dollars from next year’s budget; the whole House has yet to vote on it) is terrible. I was watching some of the Senate proceedings yesterday on CSPAN, and Senator Dorgan (D-North Dakota) made an interesting speech about the findings of the consultant who was responsible for evaluating the “liberal bias” of PBS and NPR. Senator Dorgan reported that, among other things, the consultant rated the programs based on whether they were pro- or anti-Bush. He said:
I am struck that it is way out of bounds to be paying money for a consultant who decides to evaluate public broadcasting through the prism of whether or not it supports the President. That is not the role of public broadcasting, to decide whether it supports the President of the United States. If we ever get to the point where you can’t be critical of public policy, Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the President, then there is something wrong.
So, things aren’t perfect here in liberal land, regardless of how much the Democratic party seems to be standing up to the Republicans. And now that I’m back in “civilization,” maybe I’ll start paying attention again.
UPDATE:In the time it took me to write this post, Senator Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, reversed himself and said that he would try again on the Bolton vote. Hopefully, the Dems will stay strong.