IT'S BEEN A WEEK OF Shakespearean drama in politics. Of course, politics is ever a flow between high tide and low tide, but sometimes the mud and silt leave a bit too much behind to simply get washed away without a trace.
So it has been with the recent ebb and flow of American politics. If you're a Republican, the week gave you a black eye, a split lip--and may well have jolted conservatives out of their post-election contentment. If you're a Democrat, this week left you with the smile of the Cheshire Cat who knows full well that he just ate the canary.
Republicans got some of President Bush's eminently qualified judicial candidates through to the Senate floor to get a fair vote--but at the cost of selling out two nominees with the highest rating by the American Bar Association. About the only good thing for the GOP out of the "compromise" (aka fiasco)--whereby Republicans agreed to let the Democrats' obstructionist shenanigans continue--was that it should get conservatives mad again. And when conservatives get mad, they win.
Now, the Absurdities of the Weak. And the nominees are (envelope, please):
The filibuster cave-in. Republicans gave the fox the keys to the henhouse, then went ahead and obligingly opened the door, too.
Only a day earlier, they were going to finally kill the malevolent practice of a small group of liberal senators--namely, using the filibuster (a Senate custom that was never part of the Constitution)
So what happened? Your senator, John Warner, sold out. As did the perpetually self-aggrandizing John McCain and a few New England liberals who still put the "R" next to their name. They got press coverage. What did America get? Not much--only a vague Democratic promise not to abuse the filibuster quite as much as they have been.
Thanks, Mr. Warner. And by the way: You're fired. You read it here first, folks: John Warner just lost his next election in Virginia.
Just to refresh your memory on the consistency of Democratic leaders in the Senate, here's what they said about voting fairly on judicial nominations not so long ago:
I think we should have up-or-down votes in the committee and on the floor.
--Harry Reid, D-Nev., 2001
Let those names come up, let us have debate, let us vote.
--Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., 1998
An up-or-down vote, that is all that we ask for. I find it simply baffling that a senator would vote against even voting on a judicial nomination.
--Tom Daschle, D-S.D., 1999
So fair is fair, apparently--but only when fairness helps nominate liberal judicial revisionists who want to rewrite the Constitution. It's a twisting of semantics that would make Orwell proud.
The Amnesty International annual report. In a realm where sound bites have increasingly replaced reasoned analysis, consider the latest Amnesty report, which calls the U.S.-administered Guantanamo Bay prison camp "the gulag of our time." Once the laughter at such breathtaking exaggeration subsides, however, the seriousness should kick in. One doesn't compare a prison run by the world's most generous democracy to de facto death camps run by Josef Stalin. Amnesty International has done so, however, and once more proved itself to be mired in U.S. bashing rather than engaged in doing its job.
Somewhat like the U.N., actually.
California Democrats voting themselves a fat pay raise. Yes, in a state with an upcoming budget shortfall of $5 billion, where the Republican governor refuses to accept a salary, members of the Democratic-controlled legislature will receive an impressive 12 percent pay increase--to $110,880. In case you were wondering, that's the highest salary for any state legislator in America. George Soros should be proud. Party of the working class, eh?
In more big-money liberal news: David Rosen, a top aide to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he simply made a mistake when he mixed up reporting $401,000 in campaign funds raised for Mrs. Clinton at a Hollywood fundraiser--when the actual amount was more than $1.1 million. The fact that Clinton got a half-million dollars more to spend on her Senate race had nothing to do with it. The interesting part here is not that Rosen was formally charged with making false statements, but that a dinner with such B-list celebrities as Cher and Diana Ross managed to raise that much money for the aspiring presidential candidate from Arkansas--er, New York.
The national video-game addiction. Let's face it: We're hooked. According to an Agence France-Presse story, "Psychologists and psychiatrists estimate that even before the new wave of gaming consoles hits the stores, one in eight players already suffers from some kind of video-game dependency."
National (and international) obsession is nothing new, of course--but one wonders where it all leads. In a world where couples fall in love online, where Instant Messaging is ubiquitous, and where one is no longer complete without a cell phone permanently lodged between shoulder and ear, our video-game compulsion speaks, in some as yet undetermined way, to the loss of humanity.
Or maybe it's all just fun and the psychologists should stay out of it.
Stay tuned--the real great game
DAVE SMALLEY is Op-Ed/Viewpoints editor for The Free Lance-Star.