Between Meet the Press and Face the Nation, viewers of the Sunday morning talk shows were given a glimpse of the deep divisions in the Senate’s Democratic caucus. On Meet the Press, Sen. Russ Feingold announced he
“will be shortly introducing a censure resolution of the president and the administration. One, on their getting us into the war in Iraq and their failure to adequately prepare our military and the misleading statements that have continued throughout the war in Iraq. And the second, on this administration’s outrageous attack on the rule of law, all the way from the illegal terrorist surveillance program to their attitude about torture, which we heard a little bit about today on this show. This administration has assaulted the Constitution.”
Feingold’s resolution seems to annoy Majority Leader Harry Reid, who (after preemptively accusing Republicans of obstructionism on a bill that hasn’t even been introduced yet) announced on Face the Nation that he wouldn’t be throwing the weight of his office behind the effort.
“We have so many other things to do, the president’s already–has the mark of the American people that he’s the worst president we’ve ever had, and I don’t think we need a censure resolution in the–in the Senate to prove that. We have to do … at this stage, Russ is going to have to make his case as why we are going–should do that rather than do our appropriation bills, finish the defense authorization bill, homeland security appropriation bill.”
Over at Fox News Sunday, Fran Townsend, the president’s Homeland Security advisor, discussed the National Intelligence Estimate and the media’s reporting on it.
“I think we need to step back for a moment Chris and understand what the NIE says in the paragraph just before the one you read is that the U.S. worldwide global counterterrorism operations have constrained al Qaeda’s ability to attack and that al Qaeda believes that the homeland is now a more difficult target to attack. That said, there’s no question that as we keep them on the run, we’ve also gotten stronger; we have more capability now to bring them to justice, to capture them, and we’ve enjoyed quite a bit of success working with our allies like Pakistan. There’s no question that they’ve stepped back.”
Also on Fox News Sunday, WEEKLY STANDARD editor Bill Kristol incurred the wrath of the left wing blogosphere when he suggested that the Democratic field had “gone left” by agreeing to appear at YearlyKos.
The Daily Kos, Think Progress, and a host of other lefty blogs seem to be shocked that someone might question the respectability of Markos Moulitsas–the man who, “three or four years ago,” was celebrating the deaths of four American contractors in Fallujah:
“I feel nothing over the death of the mercenaries. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.”
