Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Crooks & Liars has videotape of CNN’s Soledad O’Brien nipping at Sen. Russell Feingold’s heels while questioning him about his “crazy” proposal to censure the president for his NSA spying initiative. In addition, his Democratic Senate colleagues beat a hasty retreat from him as well. I called it “pulling a Murtha.”

But just like Nancy Pelosi turned around and embraced Murtha’s proposals to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq on an expedited basis, Congressional Dems are liable to change their tune when they read Newsweek’s latest presidential popularity poll. Several questions related to Feingold’s efforts and the issue of impeachment. Here are some number that ought to make Dems (and Bush himself) sit up and take notice:

The outright anger against Bush felt by many Americans was reflected in responses to questions about the effort of Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to censure Bush in Congress for his warrantless wiretapping program. Feingold has found very little support for his move on the Hill. Four in 10 (42 percent) of the adults in the general public say they would support Congressional censure of the president, while half (50 percent) say they would not. Censure wins majority support from Democrats (60 percent) and one in five Republicans (20 percent) say they’d support it.

Even the far more radical approach of impeachment has close to majority support among Democrats:

In today’s strongly polarized political climate, roughly one in four American adults (26 percent) say they think Congress should actually impeach President Bush and consider removing him from office…Only 5 percent of Republicans would support impeaching Bush, while 94 percent would not. Among Democrats, almost half (49 percent) support impeachment, while 48 percent oppose it. Overall, 69 percent do not think Congress should consider removing him from office.

Maybe this will encourage Dems to get up off their asses and do something on this score?