Feingold Scores! "This is not a partisan issue. This is an American issue."

Today the people struck a blow toward taking back this country from the cadre of ghouls who have steered us into the mouth of Death.

Russ Feingold's courageous lone dissent against the Patriot Act's initial passage has grown and mushroomed over the years into a genuine movement among Hill politicians. It's a rare and refreshing blow for the forces of common sense. Read his electrifying remarks before the cloture vote today and you'll feel the pull of History being made.

And now his filibuster has for the moment rolled back the tide of tyranny, despite the enormous force of an ocean of Republican power, money, and influence. Now that the Patriot Act, rushed so precipitously through Congress, has been around long enough to actually read, and its proponents have been around long enough for their deeds and motives to actually be evaluated, many of us and our elected representatives in Washington have apparently decided that we like our American liberties the way they were before after all, thank you very much, and want much of this over-reaching, un-American legislation to die of old age at the end of the year.

If only New Orleans had had levies as strong as this one man's tenacity.

The NeoCon Right came to Washington to blow it up, starve it, usurp its checks and balances, and all in the service not of Jesus (as they pretended), but of Monsanto, Cargill, Halliburton and Raytheon, and a thousand others too numerous to mention. Thankfully, the country seems to be shedding its blinders, waking up to this fact, and realizing the consequences of throwing freedom away in the name of security while secretly enriching the unaccountable, privileged Few.

Enough God this, God that, hold still while I look up your ass and if you squirm or complain the terrorists win. It's a new day. Perhaps we can get back to a day when our leaders actually respect the institutions of Government in the way that every generation of politicians before them was able to understand, but which they contemptuously disregard.