Picking one entry to highlight from a blog isn't an easy task. We picked this January 6th post from A Winding Road because Folding Star summed up all that we felt which includes a hearty thank you to Senator Barbara Boxer.
Thank you Senator Boxer
This post is coming later in the day than is usual for me, and I do apologize for that.
Today was a day of ups and downs. First, the incredible news that Senator Barbara Boxer had demonstrated the courage so often lacking these days among many of her colleagues and had signed the objection to the certification of Ohio's electoral votes.
I'm sure many of you felt the same all too rare sense of pride I felt over this news. We all owe Senator Boxer a huge debt of gratitude for her resolution and courage in coming forward on this matter, for doing the right thing. And we all owe the same debt of gratitude to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones and all of the other members of the House who worked with her on making this happen.
It's also further proof that the progressive movement that we've all felt growing over the past few years is still very much alive and in force. Our voices, our calls, our letters, our signatures on the petitions were a large part of what convinced Senator Boxer to sign on.
Let me be clear that I was under no illusions as to what would happen next. Republicans are in the majority of both houses. I had no real hope that the objection would be carried further, though it clearly should have been.
I, political junkie that I can be, watched all of this unfold on CSPAN and CSPAN 2 this afternoon. In the Senate, I watched as Democrat and Democrat came forward and praised Senator Boxer for giving them the chance to discuss this, watched as most of them gave stirring speeches about the need for electoral reform, several of them laying out in detail the problems that had occurred in Ohio.
I also watched, though, with a sinking sense of disgust as one after another, in the midst of their praise for Boxer and their listings of the faults of Ohio election and the calls for reform, as they expressed the feeling that they had no question as to the validity of the Ohio electoral vote.
My anger and depression grew as the roll call vote was called. One by one, all of the Democrats who cast their votes, with the exception of Senator Boxer, voted against the Objection. This in spite of the evidence that many of them had cited in their own stirring speeches calling for reform. At one point, it was called out that Senator Levin had also voted Yea. Several minutes later, however, the clerk called out the words "Senator Levin, Nay."
I do not know why the Senator from Michigan changed his vote, or if the first reporting of his affirmative vote was somehow a mistake.
In the literal sense, Senator Boxer truly stood alone in the Senate this day, and she will forever have my admiration and respect for her courage and resolution in doing so. But in a much larger sense, the Senator stood not by herself, but with thousands of us by her side.
Her loudly and firmly called out Yea vote was cheered from the same gallery that had minutes before interrupted a statement from the Republican Senator from Ohio, George Voinovich. To his declaration that the people of Ohio and of the Country had chosen President Bush, a female voice from the gallery shouted out "We did not!"
Whoever she was, we were all there with her in spirit, calling out the same thing.
One of my own Senators gave a speech today echoing his Democratic colleagues' calls for reform, before casting a No vote.
I did not expect this Objection to be carried forward. I did, however, expect that other members of the Senate besides Senator Boxer would have the courage to vote in favor of the objection, especially in light of the overwhelming evidence of fraud many of them spoke of.
Where was the Democratic party today? Has it so completely been taken over by Neoliberals? Have all the true liberals in the party been pushed into silence except Senator Boxer?
One by one, Senators I expected to vote Yea disappointed me.
Things went a bit better in the House, and certainly the speeches there, as I flipped back and forth between the two bodies, were far more stirring and passionate than in the Senate. Also, more had the courage to step forward there, in terms not of just speeches, but also in terms of votes. 31 House Democrats voted in favor of the Objection.
In spite of my disappointment, though, we can say that the crucial subject of electoral reform has been brought to the forefront of the political discussion today, and the problems of the Ohio vote were aired in a way that they largely have not been to date.
Now it is up to us to keep the pressure upon our elected officials, no matter what their votes were today, to make sure that today's talk of reform was not just lip service.
We need real change, and we need it NOW. We need certifiable paper trails for all electronic voting machines, we need laws preventing State Officials who are in charge of elections from having any affiliation with either of the Campaigns involved in the election, and we need a uniform standard for voting and counting the votes nation wide.
While we're at it, we also need to throw out the Electoral College, an antiquated relic of a time when only white men of means were eligible to vote in this country, and institute a system of voting where it's truly Democratic- one person, one vote. We have popular elections for every official in this country except the top two, and it's well past time to change that.
My depression started to fade as I considered what happened today and compared it to what happened after the 2000 election, when no Senator would come forward and do what Senator Boxer did today.
I'm sure you heard her own comments on that today in her press conference. She expressed her regret that she hadn't come forward in 2000. She was asked by then Vice President Gore not to do so, and she respected his wishes. However, she very rightly pointed out today that it wasn't about Vice President Gore, any more than today was about Senator Kerry. It was about the voters.
This year, thanks to Senator Boxer and the members of the House who worked so hard on this, we moved a step closer to saying that what's happened in the last two elections is wrong, is as far from what America stands for as it's possible to get.
Now we move forward. We fight for Electoral reform, we fight to hold Bush accountable for his crimes, both in stealing elections and in lying us into an illegal war, in approving torture of prisoners in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, and in outing Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent who's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, spoke out against Bush's lies.
It's not too soon to begin calling for Bush's impeachment on these grounds.
The next four years will mean speaking out and standing up, continuing what we've started in the past few years. Senator Boxer, the woman who should without question be Senate Minority Leader instead Harry Reid, showed us today what that looks like, and her courage, far more than the cowardice of her 44 Democratic colleagues, is what I'm taking away from today.
Meanwhile, in another signal that things are changing for the better, Senator Arlen Spectre, new Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, showed independence from the far right and the White House in the opening of the Confirmation hearings on Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales.
Spectre allowed far more questioning and criticism of both the White House and the Patriot Act than his predecessor, the odious Senator Orrin Hatch, would ever have stood for. He's even allowing for crucial testimony against Gonzales from law professors and a Human Rights Activist.
Senator Spectre is far from perfect, but having him in the position promises to be a benefit to some degree, especially on matters of Judicial Nominees.
An article on the subject of Spectre's somewhat promising beginning can be found at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=3&u=/ap/20050107/ap_on_go_co/specter_gonzales
We have many more battles to fight now and in the years ahead, including the battle against the Patriot Act, parts of which come up for review this year. Let's go forward with the spirit of Senator Boxer and Congresswoman Tubbs Jones alive in us. Let's speak truth to power, as the woman in the gallery did today, and loudly make our own feelings heard.