Wampum

"We value the process more than we value the outcome." With those words, Leo McGarity, Josiah Bartlett's Chief of Staff, ends a plot thread about a populist uprising and incidental seizure of an American owned oil refinery in some South American state. A coup is not the way to get better government.

I'm informed that the majority in the Congress do not intend to allow debate on the Supplemental Appropriation for the War in Iraq. I'm also informed that the Supplemental Appropriation for the War in Iraq, $81bn in this supplemental, is not a partisan issue, that the minority and the majority alike want to give the financial resources to support our troops.

Those are of course, irreconcilable statements. One drawn from a fictional Democratic leadership, one from a non-fictional Democratic leadership.

Riverbend writes about the "news" that anti-occupation forces had taken a over a hundred Shia hostage in Madain this week.

We know a lot of our new officials and spokespeople are blatantly lying and it's fine to lie about security, reconstruction and democracy- we've gotten used to it. In fact, we tell jokes about it and laugh about it at family gatherings or over the telephone. To lie about something as serious as Sunni-Shia hostage taking is another story altogether. It's unacceptable and while Sunnis and Shia were hardly going to take up arms against each other over this latest debacle, but it was still extremely worrisome and for people who wish to fuel sectarian violence, it was a perfect opportunity.

Our situation is this. Our leadership asserts that a rules change by the Senate Majority to end the filibuster over a dozen nominees, several of whom are not qualified to play lawyers on TV or the net, is an outrage. Before that the there was another outrage, no debate on a major bill, and another, no readings of bills before their floor vote, and another, and another. Each of these was a Death of the Republic Film at 11 moment, all the way back to the Delay Bourgeois Mob of the Florida recount, except that Al Gore didn't make his disappointment, and ours, a Constitutional Crisis. Later this year the Senate Majority rules outrage will be over a nominee to the Supreme Court, to replace the man Nixon appointed, who as soon as Nixon was out of commission, created in the Court a check to balance Nixon's policy ending Termination as the Indian policy of the United States.

The question is this. Have we been lied to? Is the latest squawking and shaking of ruffled feathers something we would be better off joking about, than falling into donative frenzies, generally to the cost of other political work? I'm was lied to when someone told me that the cloture petition on debate on the Supplemental Appropriation was institution endangering partisan politics by the Senate Majority, but the undebatable Supplemental Appropriation, and necessarily the safety of, and the protection from the commission of crimes of, over 140,000 citizens now in Iraq, and tens of thousands more who will be sent to Iraq, is inherently non-partisan, with the facts already in evidence concerning the ongoing policy of the Executive Branch concerning the safety of military personnel and their protection from the commission of crimes. It's Maine National Guard out of the Portland Armory, 15 minutes away by foot pushing a stroller, who have guarded Abu G since the sadists and murderers were bagged last year. A parent met at a 7 year old's birthday party, shipping out to Gitmo for a year of guard duty. Another parent from down the street back from Abu G. It's not abstract or symbolic.

The rejected-and-renominated are pretty damn funny -- Janice Rogers Brown thinks the 2nd Amendment applies in State courts, but only to armed Indians. Or soldiers. Or both. William G. Myers, 3rd can't find his way through the Federal Rules of Evidence, even with a nutshell pocket guide, but he knows that archaic pottery associated with burial ceremonial ism are "killed" by breaking a hole in the bottom of the pot, and modernly this is best done with bulldozers, followed by a pass through a stamping mill and a gentle infusion of cyanide. Thomas B. Griffith is the go-to guy if your client has been convicted of practicing law without a license, or any cognate of that modest character defect. And so on.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are being worked by both the save-the-filibuster and the sink-the-filibuster collections of hacks. I led the recess visit for People for the American Way and Working Assets to Olympia's Portland office. I'm personally part of this. I've been involved in the unsuccessful campaigns of Mark Lawrence and Chellie Pingree for the seats these two hold in the '00 and the '02 cycles. Bill Frist won't campaign for reelection from Tennessee in the '06 cycle, and he will campaign the Republican primaries, including New Hampshire, in the '08 cycle. If the filibuster, first over the Bush rejected-and-renominated, then over the one or more appointments to the Supreme Court, is just ruffled feathers and rooster-in-or-on-hen-house squawking, like the posturing over the Supplemental Appropriation, then it has no legs, and no one will remember or care when Olympia, or Susan, return to Maine to do the retail. If Frist fails to be useful to drive up Susan's negatives, what use is any of this to anyone interested in a competitive campaign targeting the weaker of the two Republican Senators from Maine?

Gaming an election that is within a MOE and delivers the necessary votes in the Electoral College to determine who holds the Executive Branch does not constitute a Constitutional Crisis. Turning the lower chamber of the Legislative Branch into a one-party-puppet show does not constitute a Constitutional Crisis. Turning the upper chamber of the Legislative Branch into a second one-party-puppet show does not constitute a Constitutional Crisis. Putting a baker's dozen of Country Club comedians and comediennes in the Judicial Branch, and Robert Bork or John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales on the Supreme Court, or moving Antonin Scalia from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, does not constitute a Constitutional Crisis.

If any of them did, the Minority leadership and rank-and-file would have shown that a Constitutional Crisis existed. When the Minority in the Texas Lege wanted to prevent an abuse of process, they moved, as a body, first to Oklahoma, then to New Mexico. The voters did not punish them. They punished the feckless member of the Minority who did not walk away from a crooked table. They didn't come back to Texas to a sham vote to show they supported the troops (and get arrested), or worry about Tom Delay getting John Ashcroft to try and get them arrested on federal warrants. They just played hardball and let the voters call the strikes.

The Democrats could go to Windsor and talk about the future of Detroit and the rest of the Blue North East and Old North West, and reconfiguring the military for humanitarian and peace and stability operations, as well as US-Canada trade -- Red State cattle, oil and gas, softwoods, and NAFTA. They could go to Caiudad Juaraez and talk about the future of New Mexico, Texas and the Hispanic demographic, as well as US-Mexico trade -- Red State oil and gas, corn, maquiladoras and labor and immigration issues and NAFTA. They could be working and playing hardball and let the voters call the strikes.

We value the process more than we value the outcome, and no process and no outcome is a pretty poor substitute for other political work.