Veto This, L'il Georgie!

President Bush and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin appear to be on a collision course that seemed always fated to be, ever since Feingold's commendable attempt to censure Bush for his systematic violation of the Fourth Amendment (and for Bush's routine commission of felonies connected therewith) arising from the warrantless spying conducted by the National Security Agency. Senator Russ was able to corral only three other senators to take this principled stand along with him (Leahy, Harkin and Boxer). With the success of the 2006 elections, certainly other senators would join him now, such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont and probably Sherrod Brown of Ohio. It is in the nature of principled leadership to await the arrival of stragglers who take principled stands as soon as it seems safe to do so. Thus, Hillary Clinton, et alia, will be along as soon as the public opinion polls tell them it's time to be a hero.

Not so Russ. He has always done things his own quirky way, a way which would have appealed to other troublemakers like John Adams, Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It would be difficult to find someone with a past history more different from our spoiled, petulant, lazy President. The grandson of Jewish Russian immigrants, Feingold grew up in Wisconsin, attended public high school, earned a B.A. at UW-Madison along with admission to Phi Beta Kappa and a Rhodes Scholarship, earned a second bachelor's degree at Oxford, and then graduated from Harvard Law School. While Bush pretends, in his usual fraudulent way, to be an American success story, Feingold is the real thing. Feingold has always played by the rules, and then some. His successful legislative campaigns have, in the main, been supported only by individual contributions from Wisconsin residents. It must disturb him profoundly to watch a man like Bush, who casually disgraces the Constitution, the rule of law, and America's good name, carry on as if he were a real President.

Bush is now threatening to veto the Iraq bill-in-waiting from Congress. Full of his customary bombast and tempestuous bullshit, Bush pretends that his concern is for the troops he has stranded in Iraq, on a suicide mission, for the last 4+ years. Without funding, he storms, the troops will have to remain in Iraq on longer tours, with substandard armor, etc. This is Rove & Cheney whispering in his ear, of course. Bush must never, never, never say the obvious thing, which is that running out of money means his new job is to get all the troops home safely with the cash on hand.

Enter Senator Feingold, who is ready with new legislation to help Bush focus on the obvious. His follow-on bill to the one Bush says he will veto is a model of elegant concision:

(c) Prohibition on Use of Funds - No funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any provision of law may be obligated or expended to continue the deployment in Iraq of members of the United States Armed Forces after March 31, 2008.

There you have it, Georgie. The end of the line. You argue that the American people will know "who to blame" for the predicament of the U.S. soldier in Iraq, in that steely manner that represents your best impersonation of a tough guy. Part of your shtick, maybe, is to be intentionally ungrammatical, just to sound tougher. Although with you, how would we know?

Eventually, Robert Gates, General Petraeus, other military leaders with their heads screwed on a lot straighter are going to break ranks with W and begin to utter the obvious. No money means no war. It doesn't mean the soldiers are "stranded." It means the stupid misadventure in Iraq comes to an end, and Bush's presidency with it. Harry Reid has signed on with Feingold, as have Joe Biden and other Democratic leaders. This is the real deal; if they see it through, they'll stuff this punk once and for all.