More Right Wing Idiocy and Democratic Collusion.

So Bush is asking for another 20,000 troops for the vanity project he launched in 2003 and is still going on today in 2007...well, with the new Congress now taking their seats, I suppose he should canvas the couple dozen or so former war supporters who lost their seats to see if any of them want to suit up. My guess is that, no, they'd rather fly back to their coops and return to their cushy corporate law jobs or perhaps start a new career in lobbying; they'll probably even buy one of those little yellow magnetic ribbons to show how much they love the war, as long as someone else and someone else's children are fighting it.

At least this time some of the Democrats are claiming they'll fight BushCo's full speed ahead steamrolling of the Constitution and Congressional oversight. Not Joe Biden, though. Joe Biden represents so much of what is wrong with the Democratic Party and why the Democrats are often seen by so many on the Left as "Republican Lite." Here's Biden excusing his pitiful lack of oversight on the Iraq Boondoggle:

"There is nothing a United States Senate can do to stop a president from conducting his war," Biden said. "The only thing that is going to change the president's mind, if he continues on a course that is counterproductive, is having his party walk away from his position."

Oh, really? Nothing? The U.S. Senate is powerless in the face of this lame duck administration? Fortunately, letter writer Mike Wingo called bullshit on Biden's sad pronouncement:

I am certain that Mr. Biden knows that the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. And not a penny has been spent on this war that wasn't approved by both houses of Congress. So, there is indeed something the Senate can do to bring about a rapid end to the debacle in Iraq: refuse to fund it.

Wingo is on to something. It's reminiscent of Thoreau's argument in "Resistance to Civil Government," even though Thoreau makes his appeal to the citizens and not the legislature, and he's writing about both slavery and the Mexican-American War, but the idea of drying up the funding is the same:

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

So Senator Biden, the idea is that the Senate can simply stop funding Mr. Bush's project. Take a stand. Of course, that's harder to do that than it is to pretend you aren't responsible -- yes you Mr. Biden who voted to authorize Bush's illegal and ill-advised aggression -- for the whole mess in the first place.