The Latest Sutton Impact

Couldn't agree more with Ward's latest cartoon, nicely uploaded early at the Village Voice. (Note to Ward - Mrs. F takes umbrage at your use of the "P" word, something that I've been censured for using in the past here at Cracks Centraal.)

In other Russ Feingold censure motion-related news, it looks like the Republicans are ready to call this hand (via Reuters/Yahoo!):

The Republican-led U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday it would hold a hearing next week on a call by a Democratic lawmaker to censure President George W. Bush for his domestic spy program.

In a one-sentence notice, the panel said the hearing would be held next Friday by the order of its chairman, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who has opposed censure.
[...]
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist sought to dismiss the censure resolution against Bush with an immediate vote last week but was blocked by some Democrats who said the resolution needed to be at least debated.
[...]
Feingold, who has attracted little support from fellow Democrats for censure, said unless a hearing was held he would push for a vote by the full Senate on his resolution.
[...]
The Senate has censured a president, which amounts to a formal rebuke, only once before and that was Andrew Jackson in 1834 in a banking dispute.

The WaPo also has a story on growing calls for impeachment of the President coming from Vermont townships and New England Congressional members:

Here in Massachusetts and Vermont, though, in the back roads and on the streets of Holyoke and Springfield, the discontent with Bush is palpable. These are states that, per capita, have sent disproportionate numbers of soldiers to Iraq. Many in these middle- and working-class towns are not pleased that so many friends and cousins are coming back wounded or dead.

"He picks and chooses his information and can't admit it's erroneous, and he annoys me," said Colleen Kucinski, walking Aleks, 5, and Gregory, 2, home.

Would she support impeachment? Kucinski wags her head "yes" before the question is finished. "Without a doubt. This is far more serious than Clinton and Monica. This is about life and death. We're fighting a war on his say-so and it was all wrong."

[...]

Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon.

"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me."

[...]

It would be a considerable overstatement to say the fledgling impeachment movement threatens to topple a presidency -- there are just 33 House co-sponsors of a motion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to investigate and perhaps impeach Bush, and a large majority of elected Democrats think it is a bad idea. But talk bubbles up in many corners of the nation, and on the Internet, where several Web sites have led the charge, giving liberals an outlet for anger that has been years in the making.

[...]

The GOP establishment has welcomed the threat. It has been a rough patch for the party -- Bush's approval ratings in polls are lower than for any president in recent history. With midterm elections in the offing, Republican leaders view impeachment as kerosene poured on the bonfires of their party base.

I'm not ready for impeachment (remember who's waiting in the wings to take the reins), but I'm more than comfortable laying out the case for censure to the American public. I just don't see the horrifying downside to this--the GOP talks tough about this energizing its base, but, as Ward illustrated, they're sweating it out just as equally because they know that a good chunk of their "base" is pissed off and would very potentially back a rebuking of the President.