A Glimmer of Hope?

No matter what comes out of the great Republican spin machine over the next couple of days, no matter how badly the SCLM mangles the real story, keep in mind what I wrote to Senator Harry Reid yesterday: "there is nothing else more important for the Senate to do than to investigate how this country was mislead in the run up to the Iraq War."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's protests that this was done to avoid dealing with the "hard work" of cutting taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor notwithstanding, Harry Reid has not hijacked the Senate. Quite the opposite, he has finally set it back on task of being about the country's business; he has started the Senate back on the path of true oversight.

I'm not sure if Reid's explanation that it was the birth of another grandson that set him on this explosive path is true. But the cause is not important. What's important is that a Democrat has stood up and told us all that the emperor has no clothes.

Now comes the hard part.

Senate Democrats and moderates need to keep up the pressure on the far right. We need to find out how and why such bad intelligence was used to cajole us all into this horrid quagmire in Iraq. We need to find out why the administration would endanger the lives of covert operatives around the world in retaliation for Joe Wilson's fortitude to stand up against the "cabal." We need to wrest control from the small and small-minded group of reactionaries who've literally hijacked our government.

Reid's "ambush" move to take the Senate into secret session yesterday won his immediate objective of moving forward with Phase II of the investigation. It's up to all Democrats to ensure the progress is not arrested again. It's up to all of us to let them know that we support their bravery. I don't know how all this will play out. But yesterday afternoon I started to have some hope that we will be able to move beyond the narrow, nasty Republican agenda of the past four years.

We'll be watching...