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March 13, 2006BELTWAY BLOGROLL
The Censure Of George W. Bush?
Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin has been a favorite of liberal bloggers for a while now, and he scored more points with them over the weekend by calling for the censure of President Bush.
Most of the major liberal blogs -- including Americablog, Daily Kos, Eschaton, Firedoglake, MyDD, TalkLeft and Think Progress -- took note of Feingold's plan to introduce a censure resolution this week. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who has been urging the censure of Bush for a while, also plugged Feingold's effort at ConyersBlog.
The call for censure is over the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, which aims to identify people in America who are communicating with terrorist suspects abroad. By lending his name to the censure effort, Feingold already has rallied the liberal blogosphere behind the idea.
Firedoglake encouraged the netroots to let Feingold know that they are behind him. "Call both your senators first thing in the morning and ask if they support Russ Feingold's censure proposal," the blog urged its readers. "If they don't, ask what their position is on the issue -- and why. The more people we have calling, the more staffers in the offices start to realize that Feingold struck a political chord with a bunch of us in America."
Censure emerged as a political option for former President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, before the Republicans who controlled Congress ultimately decided to impeach him instead. The idea went nowhere back then, however, and it is almost certainly destined for the same fate with Bush in the Oval Office and Republicans still in control of Congress.
As the push for censure garners more media attention thanks to Feingold, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, reports already are beginning to note that Andrew Jackson is the only president ever to have been censured. That politically motivated effort also was for naught, as a subsequent Congress more friendly toward Jackson eventually reversed the censure.
I revisited "The Censure Of Andrew Jackson" back in December 1998 in a historical essay for IntellectualCapital.com. That site is now defunct, but for anyone who is interested, the article is available at the Wayback Machine via the link above.
Posted by | 07:14 AM
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