The Loser Party takes on the Stupid Party:

Republicans are denouncing Senator Russ Feingold’s proposal to “censure” President Bush for his warrantless wiretaps on al Qaeda, but we’d like to congratulate the Wisconsin Democrat on his candor. He’s had the courage to put on the table what Democrats are all but certain to do if they win either the House or Senate in November.

As a legal matter, Mr. Feingold’s censure proposal is preposterous. The National Security Agency wiretaps were disclosed to Congressional leaders, including Democrats, from the start. The lead FISA court judges were also informed, and the Attorney General and Justice lawyers have monitored the wiretaps all along. Despite a media drumbeat about “illegal domestic eavesdropping,” Mr. Bush’s spirited defense of the program since news of it leaked has swung public opinion in support.

But as a political matter, the Wisconsin Senator knows exactly what he’s doing. He knows that anti-Bush pathology runs so deep among many Democrats that they really do think they’re living in some new dictatorship. Liberal journals solemnly debate impeachment, and political-action groups have formed to promote it. One of our leading left-wing newspapers recently compared Mr. Bush to J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, as if there were even a speck of evidence that this White House is wiretapping its political enemies.

When the fever gets this hot in supposedly mainstream forums, Mr. Feingold is right to conclude that the facts behind any censure or impeachment motion won’t really matter. All that will count is the politics, which means it will come down to a question of votes in Congress. And several leading Democrats have already raised the “impeachment” card.

Which brings us back to Mr. Feingold’s public service in floating his “censure” gambit now. He’s doing voters a favor by telling them before November’s election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime President if they take power.

Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America’s enemies. And they want to do so not because there is a smidgen of evidence that he’s abused his office or lied under oath, but because they think he’s been too energetic in using his powers to defend America. By all means, let’s have this impeachment debate before the election, so voters can know what’s really at stake.

The Democrats want revenge for Clinton’s impeachment and the “stolen” 2000 election, and they don’t care if the whole country goes down the toilet while they try to get it. In fact, they’d rather the whole country go down the toilet if they can’t retake power; they’ve already made it perfectly clear that they’d rather live under Islamist rule than Republican government.

No matter how bad Bush may get, you can always count on the Democrats to make him — or, say, Krusty the Klown, just to offer one of many, many possible examples — look positively statesmanlike.

Update! Mo’ bettah:

Increasing Feingold’s prominence as a spokesman for the Democrats on the War on Terror only benefits the GOP. He epitomizes the Left’s do-nothing, or at least do-the-absolute-minimum, approach to the war. He voted against the Patriot Act, and its reauthorization. He opposes the NSA program. He was against the Iraq war, and opposes using coercive interrogation against terrorists abroad. He is against almost any measure in the War on Terror that doesn’t fit neatly within the confines of the American law-enforcement system (and against even ones that do — the Patriot Act). It was telling that on the Senate floor Feingold highlighted past statements by President Bush saying that law enforcement needs a court order to get a wiretap, by way of supposedly proving the president’s deceit. But the NSA surveillance is not a law-enforcement program; it is not being used to produce evidence of crimes, but to tip off American intelligence about potential plots and the whereabouts of terrorist agents.

Russ Feingold, the face of Today’s Democrat? I like it, I really do. Come on, you spineless Dems — put your “morals” where your fat yaps are! Bush must be impeached — it’s the only way to truly assuage the pain of crippling BDS! “Mainstream” Democrats (if any) simply must heed the baying of their most rabid lunatics and give us all a good, long look at the sort of balls-out chowderheaded derangement they’re really capable of! But….oh crap, here we go again:

Democratic senators, filing in for their weekly caucus lunch yesterday, looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

“I haven’t read it,” demurred Barack Obama (Ill.).

“I just don’t have enough information,” protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). “I really can’t right now,” John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters — an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.).

“Ask her after lunch,” offered Clinton’s spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.

Cowards. Seems like every time they’re just about ready to put on a real show for us, they pull back at the last moment. Darn. Oh well, at least Feingold seems to be Democrat enough to keep fighting the good fight of censuring/impeaching Bush for the gross crime of defending America. So hold on to those rainchecks, folks; we may get some yocks out of all this yet.