Molly Ivans is amazing

The following is a snippet of Molly Ivin's March 2006 issue on The Progressive:

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight.

I found that on RealArt on Sunday, it was probably written at least a whole day before that, then on Monday Feindgold tried to introduce his censure bill, something I read about on Feingold's website as soon as I asked myself "Who is Russ Feingold?" after reading the Ivins excerpt.

I'm not gonna talk about the censuring bill right now, I just wanna say that Molly Ivins is so cool for bringing up a politician who until this Monday was virtually unknown in the mainstream media. She not only brought him up but hailed him as the only Democrat worth running for president right now, and I found myself agreeing with her after I read this:

The Administration Has Used FISA Thousands of Times Since 9/11: Administration officials have criticized FISA, but they have obtained thousands of warrants approved by the FISA court since 9/11, and have almost never had a warrant request rejected by that court.

This is the meat of Feingold's argument. He's not saying that we shouldn't be trying to monitor terrorists, he's saying that it is suspicious that the president would get the proper warrant on some occasions but not in others.

“This issue is not about whether the government should be wiretapping terrorists – of course it should, and it can under current law” Feingold said. “But this President and this Administration decided to break the law and they have yet to give a convincing explanation of why their actions were necessary, appropriate, or legal. Passing more laws will not change the fact that the President broke the ones already in place and for that, Congress must hold him accountable.”

There you have it.