Subject: FW: Feingold Should Rethink] Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:59:53 -0600 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD020235F197@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Hale, C. Kate" <HALECL@uwec.edu>
Please circulate widely and have everyone you know contact Feingold's
office. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee he will in the
next few days be called upon to vote on the nomination of White House
counsel Alberto Gonzales to serve as attorney general.
Sen. Russ Feingold
716 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202 224-5323
608 828 1200
608 442-8282 campaign office
Russ Feingold <senator@feingold.senate.gov>
Published on Monday, January 24, 2005 by the Capital Times / Madison,
Wisconsin
Editorial "Feingold Should Rethink"
U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold is a brilliant, principled senator with precise
ideas about how to serve in the Senate. His seriousness and diligence
are commendable, and this newspaper, perhaps more than any other, has
gone out of its
way to praise him when he is right. But Feingold is not always right.
For instance, he has not been following his own standard when voting to
approve Cabinet nominees.
Over the years, the Middleton Democrat has defined a standard that says
a president has a right to select his team. As such, he has made it
clear that he will vote for Cabinet picks unless they can be shown to be
deeply unethical or
profoundly incompetent. That's a reasonable approach.
Rice
But when Feingold, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, voted to approve the nomination of National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice to serve as secretary of state, he violated his own
standard. Feingold should have sided with California Sen. Barbara Boxer
and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is opposing the Rice nomination, not
for partisan reasons but because of Rice's record of failure, deceit and
contempt for Congress. That record, which Feingold and other senators
ably attacked during two days of questioning, left no room for debate
about whether Rice might be competent to fill one of the two most
important positions in the Cabinet. Clearly, she is not.
More significantly, her refusal to affirm that she has a responsibility
to cooperate with Congress even when it might be embarrassing to the
president confirmed that she will continue to put political and personal
concerns ahead of the national interest.
Feingold faces another test in coming days, when as a member of the
Senate Judiciary Committee he will be called upon to vote on the
nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to serve as attorney
general. Like Rice, Gonzales established a deeply troubling track record
during the first Bush term. His 2002 memorandum on torture, an
apologia for violation of the Geneva Conventions, was one of the most
shameful documents ever produced by a presidential administration. His
claim that he was only doing the president's bidding suggests that this
is a man of such flexible ethics that he should not be trusted with the
responsibility of heading the Department of Justice.
Gonzales
Like Rice, Gonzales has displayed disdain for Congress. Sen. Edward
Kennedy, D-Mass., this week convinced the Senate Judiciary Committee to
delay a vote on Gonzales' nomination because the Bush aide has evaded
questions from the committee. In requesting the delay, Kennedy complains
that Gonzales has been "arrogant" in his refusal to cooperate with the
Senate, and Judiciary Committee Chair Arlen Specter, R-Pa., agreed to
put off a vote for at least a week.
During that week, Feingold should conduct his own review of the standard
he has established for backing Cabinet nominees. If he is honest in that
review, he will conclude that Alberto Gonzales does not meet the
ethics-and-competence provision of that standard.
Feingold should recognize that, while the standard has established is a
reasonable one, he cannot simply follow one part of it. Presidents
should be given leeway in selecting Cabinet members, but that leeway
cannot extend to a nominee whose past and current failure to cooperate
with Congress clearly disqualify him from service as this great nation's
attorney general.
(c) 2005 Capital Times