Russ Feingold SHOULD be President

I was happily trolling the internet this morning, reading jvoices and LBGTQ blogs in preparation for a post I'm composing on LBGTQ issues, when I happened upon this site and this site. It may surprise you that my politics, which I keep deeply buried beneath layers of objectivity and blogger distance (not to be confused with journalistic integrity), lean left, as if my political conscience were sitting at the Passover Seder.*

So why Russ Feingold for President? He was the sole senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001 and although he was one of 23 senators to vote against the war in Iraq, Russ Feingold is not a pacifist on the Iraq War. You may have already heard his name from its seat atop the McCain-Feingold Bill, the famous Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002. He recently made news when he called for the censure of President George W. Bush, for illegal wiretapping as reported in the New York Times. That last hyperlink is to the President's defense of his wiretapping practices, in an attempt to be fair and balanced (or to stand in awe of his 'common-folk' tone. I don't know if anyone else out there is as big a fan of Presidential rhetoric as I am, but I am sure that in the future, entire cultures will have spawned from Bush's astounding ability to sound 'folksy,' considering his pedigree. Truly astounding. I write that with no sarcasm. Bush is a master of voice.). For those of you who didn’t have the opportunity to listen to Feingold submit his resolution, it was a speech worthy of Jimmy Stewart.

"Why trumpet Feingold on a Jewbiquitous blog?" you may ask.

To which I respond: Knave! Have you been living under a rock? Feingold’s Jewish. His sister is a rabbi. I’m not sure how Off the Derech would feel about the state of his Jewishness, but the man is unquestionably a member of the Tribe. Will that be a problem for his Presidential run? I don’t know, but Aoei on DailyKos and Horq on mydd.com have their opinions on the topic. I’m sure you also have opinions. And they are…?

*At the Passover Seder (seder, meaning order, refers to the recitation of the Exodus story and traditional texts read on the first two nights of Passover), it is traditional to sit on cushons and lean left.

This newsflash just in from washingtonpost.com:
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) called Bush's comment [that Democrats "don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists"] outrageous: "Every member of Congress, from both parties, supports listening in on terrorist communications, but the president still hasn't explained why we have to break the law to do it. It is time for the president to stop exploiting the terrorist threat to justify his power grab."