Blogotional

There was action in Senate Committee yesterday that pushes us closer to the filibuster finale. I am gaining confidence. Why? -- you may ask. Because the Dems are sounding desparate, that's why. The sad part is many on our side are feeling sorry for them and sounding conciliatory when they whine and weedle and showboat and prevaricate -- DICK! I am sorry for a moment there I was flashing back to the Dick Lugar chaired Foreign Relations Committee Bolton hearings.

Lileks makes fun of pretty much the entire Senate in the Thursday Bleat. It will purge the angered soul.

Back to the filibuster -- No one sounded more desparate that John "Why The Long Face" Kerry on the floor yesterday. (Warning, this discussion is a blatant attempt to get a link from Hugh Hewitt)

Forces outside the mainstream now seem to effortlessly push Republican leaders toward conduct that the American people really don't want in their elected leaders, inserting the government into our private lives, injecting religion into debates about public policy where it doesn't apply. Jumping through hoops to ingratiate themselves to their party's base while step-by-step and day-by-day real problems that keep Americans up at night fall by the wayside here in Washington.

Effortlessly?! Why I have worked hard -- real hard. Don't election results establish the mainstream? I think this belies Kerry's underlying denial of his presidential defeat. I am beginning to think he truly believes that line he lays out that he would have won if all the votes were counted. And that crack about "into our private lives" -- Nothing, I repeat nothing, defines my private life more than my faith. And he is sticking his rather large french-looking nose right in the middle of it as he not so subtly tells me to shut up. It's not a question of into our private lives, it's a question of whose nose into whose life.

We each have to ask ourselves, 'Who's going to stop it? Who's going to stand up and say "Are we really going to allow this to continue?' Are Republicans in the House going to continue spending the people's time defending Tom DeLay or they going to defend America and defend our democracy?

Maybe if they would stop making baseless accusation about Tom DeLay, we wouldn't have to defend him so.

Will Republican senators let their silence endorse Senator Frist's appeal to religious division, or will they put principle ahead of partisanship and refuse to follow him across that line? Are we really willing to allow the Senate to fall in line with the Majority Leader when he invokes faith, faith, all of our faiths over here?

Religious division? What religious division? No one is proposing a crusade here.

Joe Lieberman's a person of faith.

First inarguable statement he has made so far.

Harry Reid's a person of faith.

Quoting from an article on G.K. Chesterton, "As Longenecker points out, everyone believes something. Even those who believe in "nothing" have a philosophy of life, as illogical and imploded as it is."

And they don't believe we should rewrite the rules of the United States Senate, and we certainly shouldn't allow this issue of people who believe in the Constitution somehow challenging the faith of others in our nation. Are we going to allow the Majority Leader to invoke faith to rewrite Senate rules to put substandard, extremist judges on the bench?

Ah, the heart of the matter...How in the world has Frist invoked faith? By a video appearance? - One he has not yet even made? That's streatching a point a bit. Substandard? Everyone of them is rated well by the American Bar Association. Extremist? Pro-life is extremist?

Is that where we are now? It is not up to us to tell any one of our colleagues what to believe as a matter of faith. I can tell you what I do believe though. When you have got tens of thousands of innocent souls perished in Darfur, when 11 million children are without health insurance, when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers, no on can tell me that faith demands all of a sudden that you put the Senate into a position where it is going to pull itself apart over the question of a few judges. No one with those priorities has a right to use faith to intimidate anyone of us.

What do you do when losing a debate? Change the subject! And while we are weighing the lives of children -- How many abortions have there been since Roe v Wade.

This speech and others like it show just how afraid they are. The less real power they have, the more shrill they become. But the fact that they make speeches like this also points out another problem for our side. We're wimps. They are playing the part of the bratty child, and we too often play the part of the parent afraid that their child will not like them. We have the power; we can and should use it. When parenting, caving under these circumstances only turns a brat into a spoiled brat. In politics, it just means you lose.

Light up the phones, lean on the weebles.

UPDATE 8:00AM

This NYTimes newsletter headline sounds surprised:

Religion at Issue in Judicial Fight

They just figure that out? Holy Coast takes a look at the article, bashing the NCC. NCC is a bunch of lefties in God's robes, I agree, but please don't discard the individual member denominations along with them. When I chaired my church's Mission Committee, I cut off NCC donations. There are a few of us left in those leftie denominations fighting for the good.

Be sure and check out Hedgehog Blog's take on Kerry's utterance.

UPDATE 9:30AM

Okie On The Lam takes on the LATimes latest on the filibuster. Gotta love the La-La Rag, always reliable to be one-sided and generally wrong.

UPDATE 1:15PM

Be sure and check out Sheep's Crib putting photoshop to the best use I have ever seen. Just swallow before you look or you'll pass whatever you are drinking through your nose. Also be sure and check out his great round-up of all the alliance posts on the filibuster issue.

Mere-Orthodoxy urges contactig two of your Califronia Senators. That's a start, but keeping moving through that Senate rolodex.

UPDATE 2:00PM

Sheep's Crib has more to add - sacrcasm in full evidence:

Actually what they were doing is what "leaders" do ... they discuss options and strategies in order to "lead" (go figure) their constituents. "Nnnoooooooo, it can't be, we allow Christians to have constituents?" The lefty-libs breath in unison.

I know, it's hard to believe, Christians in government, they have constituents, children, everything, why it's almost like they are...human.