Bloodless Coup

The Senate Dems Who Voted for the Detainee Bill

In case you wanted to keep track of who voted how.

Every Republican voted for this monstrosity, except for Chafee (Olympia Snowe - the gutless wonder from Maine - didn't vote). All but twelve Democrats voted against it. So who are your anti-habeas corpus, pro-torture Democrats?

Well, Bush-brown-noser-in-chief J Lieberman is on that list, of course. As are continual moderates like Salazar, Pryor, Nelson of Florida and Carper (senators who are always on the right-wing of their party when it comes to close votes). You've also got Johnson, Landrieu and Nelson of Nebraska, three senators from blood-red states (it might not have been scarlet pre-Katrina, but Louisiana was moving that way - and I think we'll soon see it's firmly red in the wake of the storm). When it comes to national security votes Jay Rockefeller often leans to the right (or to presidential deference), so I guess his vote isn't a total surprise, though it's at least mildly surprising. Finally we come to the votes I don't understand at all. Debbie Stabenow? What's that about? My guess is that her internal polling is weak (she's up for reelection in 5 or 6 weeks), and she's trying to firm up support among the moderates that the president as carefully terrified on the terrorism issue. And I suppose that's also the reason Bob Menendez, the Senate's most endangered Democrat voted the way he did. But Frank Lautenberg? FRANK LAUTENBERG!?! I've only got 3 letters for that - W-T-F? His is the weirdest vote, by far. That'll screw up Poole and Rosenthal.

Oh and a final thought - now aren't you glad Dan Akaka won his primary in Hawaii? We need more people that we can be sure we can count on to vote the right way on votes like this. And lets give a moment to salute the Democrats from red (or at least pink) states who've put themselves at risk of being Max Cleland-ed, but who clearly voted to reaffirm and protect the American way of life - Lincoln, Dorgan and Conrad, Baucus, Bayh, and heck, even ancient Robert C. Byrd.