Shadow President administers beating to Elephant

If you are getting your news from the mainstream media you probably haven't heard about the ass-kicking John Kerry delivered to the republican leadership on the Senate floor yesterday. The nominal topic was the "nuclear option" to end the filibuster currently under consideration by Bill Frist.

A selection:

Yesterday, when Jim Jeffords announced his retirement, I remembered a very different Washington that Jim’s words captured so eloquently almost four years ago. He spoke of a political tradition where leaders represented their states first. “They spoke their minds,” he said, “often to the dismay of their party leaders…and did their best to guide this city in the direction of our fundamental principles.”

My distinguished colleague, Senator Voinovich, had the courage to respect that tradition earlier this week, but such acts of courage, sadly, are increasingly rare. And I want to talk about this for just a minute. Senator Voinovich is being vilified on talk radio and the Internet for having the audacity to say he wanted more time and more testimony. Senator Voinovich did not say he planned to vote against the president’s nominee; he just said he wants to make an informed decision on a matter of great importance. That doesn’t seem so controversial, but my distinguished colleague, Senator Chafee said he had never seen such an act as Senator Voinovich’s in his four years in Washington.

Before the era of C-SPAN and 24-hour news and the World Wide Web, Senators showed courage and independence all the time. Senators did not think twice about acting on their conscience ahead of partisanship. Today, Senator Voinovich is subjected to widespread denigration in partisan circles, when Americans should really admire and respect his independence.

Open your eyes and look at what’s happening right now in Congress and you're quickly reminded that the people who run Washington have lost touch with the mainstream values and priorities of the American people.

More:

Every one of us knows there’s no crisis in confirming judicial nominations when over 90% of the president’s nominees have already been confirmed.

No, what’s at stake is something far greater - a struggle between a great political tradition in the United States that seeks common ground so we can do the common good - and a new ethic that, on any given issue, will use any means to justify the end of absolute victory over whatever and whoever stands in the way.

A new view that says if you don’t like the facts, just change them; if you can’t win playing by the rules, just rewrite them. A new view that says if you can’t win a debate on the strength of your argument, demonize your opponents. A new view that says it’s ok to ignore the overwhelming public interest as long as you can get away with it.

For what? For a so-called ‘nuclear option’ that seeks to put extreme, substandard judges on the federal bench against the will of the American people.

Reading Kerry's words is a start, but the speech was passionately delivered, an inspiration. Help spread the word. I'm hoping to get c-span to repeat it or archive it online. If you're interested in helping, you can write to viewer@c-span.org and add your voice to the request. The speech was delivered at about 2pm on April 21. We can help get the word out by directing people to the speech and by talking about it ourselves. Do-it-yourself media. Because most of the time it feels like we're all we've got.