Russ Feingold's cheap stunt

SAULT STE MARIE, Ontario – Russ Feingold, the only member of the United States Senate to care so little about the safety of Americans that he voted against the Patriot Act the first time around, would now like to see our president censured for doing just that – caring about the safety of Americans.

In wake of the revelation of a wiretapping program led by the White House, the Capital Times reports:

If the Wisconsin Democrat's move were to succeed, Bush would be the first president in 172 years to be so condemned by Congress.

To begin, the factoid – while technically correct – is just plain misleading. The United States Congress saw fit to impeach a president just eight years ago and, of course, came so close to removing a president from office in 1974 that the man was forced to resign.

So let's brush aside the historical shaming and acknowledge that a censure – which has been floated more time in history than one would care to count – is not exactly the badge of shame that Mr. Feingold would have people believe, especially in wake of Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.

But, of course, such is merely academic. To censure Mr. Bush for upholding his constitutional duty to protect the American people would be to bring a level of shame unto Congress that not even Messrs. Clinton and Nixon brought upon the White House. People wonder why the Democratic Party is having so much trouble capitalizing on poor poll numbers for Mr. Bush and yet the answer is horrifically obvious: it is moves like this that reveal the Democratic agenda to be little more than a natural extenuation of the “Anybody But Bush” motto that failed so badly in the 2004 election.

Mr. Feingold is crying hyperbole at a level of which, frankly, not even I suspected him to be capable. It is embarrassing to his office, it is embarrassing to the United States Senate and it is embarrassing to the people of Wisconsin.