Kurtz: Joe Lieberman, an Elected Senator Charged with Voting His Judgment and His Constituency's Will as Their Representative, Is "Holding Democracy Hostage" by Refusing to Vote for ObamaCare

Yeah. As Allah noted, he didn't expect that Joe Lieberman would get the Marvelous Maverick treatment from the press that Olympia Snowe did.

But it turns out it's worse than that. Not only is Joe Lieberman getting credit as a independent-minded, um, independent, he actually stands accused by Howard Kurtz today of "holding democracy hostage."

Democracy = marching in lockstep with Obama. The debate is over. The vote must be taken before the bill is written.

Holding Democracy Hostage by participating in the democratic process.

We've come a long way from "dissent is the highest form of patriotism," haven't we? We're now "holding democracy hostage" by engaging in it.

Over at Newsweek, Anna Quindlen is having the same anger that democracy is getting in democracy's way.

This is a country that often has transformational ambitions but is saddled with an incremental system, a nation built on revolution, then engineered so the revolutionary can rarely take hold.

Checks and balances: that's how we learn about it in social-studies class, and in theory it is meant to guard against a despotic executive, a wild-eyed legislature, an overweening judiciary. And it's also meant to safeguard the rights of the individual...But what our system has meant during the poisonous partisan civil war that has paralyzed Washington in recent years is that very little of the big stuff gets done. It simply can't.

Neither Kurtz nor Quindlen was bothered by the Democrats' "holding of democracy hostage" by filibustering so many of Bush's judicial picks, of course.

But now: America has been kidnapped. Be on the look out for cute tyke wearing red, white, and blue.

Democracy Held Hostage: Day One of the Crisis

Police have released a sketch of the suspected kidnapper... is 6'2" and has "dissent-ish" cast to his face

posted by Ace at 02:52 PM

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