Frist vs. Feingold

A decade or so ago, I was still in college; I had just wrapped up a practicum teaching English at an urban high school in south-central Wisconsin. I spent my nights preparing to star in a staged reading of several Harold Pinter plays. I had a scruffy beard, long hair--certainly more than I have now. I stayed up until all hours of the night reading, playing guitar, getting to know my future wife. I was living on work-study and (stupidly!) credit cards, cafeteria dinners and frozen pizzas cooked in a toaster oven. Every week, I'd hit the IHOP at 3 AM for pancakes or biscuits and gravy. Mostly, I was keen on a hell-bent liberal philosophy of living, teaching, and governing. I was ready to conquer the world and leave it a better place.

Today, I am different in many ways. I'm a homeowner, a responsible dad to a rabbit and a crazy dog. I have a job, with supervisory responsibilities. I have a wife. I have much, much less hair. And, mostly, though I still want to change the world, I know it will only come by fixing one sentence fragment at a time. Is it all right for me to have changed? Am I allowed to believe some different things, act different ways than I did then?

Well, Owen (my arch nemesis) has lain into Everyone's Favorite Senator™, Russ Feingold, for believing something different now--in this case, about the use of the filibuster against judicial nominees. Back when Clinton was trying to get his judges confirmed, the Republican majority, when they couldn't use their special "holds" or "blue slips" to keep the nominees off the floor, threatened filibusters. At around that time, Russ voted in favor of another measure--completely unrelated to judicial nominees--that would curb the filibuster.

Now, Russ is in favor of allowing Democrats to filibuster Bush's bad nominees, so we don't end up with extremists on the court. (Yes, I know, I'm biased.) Says Russ, "My view has changed, because of the abuse of power by those running the Senate." And, frankly, when I look at extreme ideologues like Frist, I can't say I blame him.

On top of that, of course, for four years now we've heard nothing but grumbling from over there on the right about how obstructionist Democrats are, and how Republicans would never do any such thing. But, of course, they do: The Frister himself voted to filibuster one of those Clinton nominees; and the Republicans blocked a total of sixty Clinton judges, compared to the ten that Bush has had blocked.

My non-nemesis Dean sees a lot of this for what it is: standard political posturing. When a thing helps my side, I'm for it; when a thing hurts my side, I want to get rid of it.

But here's the thing: Russ has admitted his opinion changed. On the other hand, you've got Frist, et al., who try to act all innocent as if they had been doing God's work all along. (I have no doubt that they believe they are.) Yes, again, I'm biased, but I have to give Russ credit here. Frist, on the other hand, is a sanctimonious fool.