September 20, 2002

Please read the text of the draft resolution, to be approved shortly by Congress, giving the President unlimited authority to start a war with Iraq and any other nation he sees fit. As neither of the Senators from California are up for election this year, there is little I can do to vent my displeasure at the ballot box concerning the craven manner in which the Democratic Party has once again acted. It is perhaps telling that the one senator who is most likely to do the right thing on this issue, Paul Wellstone, is the one facing a challenge from the Green Party. Ironically, quick passage of the bill will probably assure a big election night for the Democrats, because it will neutralize the Iraqi war as a political issue seven weeks before the election; after the resolution is approved, foreign policy differences will not be a big factor in local congressional races. But its passage will only show how unfit the current Democratic party is to govern, and why control of Congress just doesn't matter, in spite of the handful of judicial nominees the party can stall in the Senate.

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