No, I don't really believe the "aid and comfort to the enemy" part. That's how the Constitution defines treason.
It's what a guy named Cheney, no longer a veep but still a dick, accused President Obama of recently for deciding to try the accused 9-11 mastermind in a U.S, courtroom.
It's what conservatives always claim about war protesters or opponents of giving the Pentagon a blank check. If you ask any questions, you're helping the other side, whoever they are. <
And it's what Republicans, their conservative base, and the right-wing radio talkers would be screaming if Democrats had tried to pull what the GOP tried this week.
Republicans in the Senate refused to give a single vote to a $636-billion Pentagon spending bill that the defense secretary said was necessary to protect "our foreign policy and national security priorities.”
Instead, they threatened a filibuster and forced Democrats to come up with 60 votes to insure passage. That came only when Wisconsin's Sen. Russ Feingold, a Dem who opposed the bill,
agreed to vote in the early morning hours to close debate and allow a final vote on passage, rather than let the GOP hijack the health care bill.
Why were Republicans, the war hawks who usually want to give the Pentagon everything it asks for, and maybe even a little extra, trying to block the bill?
Because they will stop at nothing to try to stall or prevent passage of health care reform.
They know, and their defense contractor contributors know, that a military spending bill will eventually pass. (Once the filibuster was prevented, the bill passed 88-10 with Feingold and nine Repubs voting no.)
But the GOP and their big health care and drug industry donors want the health care bill to fail. And the Republicans desperately want Obama to fail.
To they were willing to vote against "supporting the troops" -- to use their own usual terminology -- as a means to an end.
Much of this may have escaped your notice because it did not get a lot of media attention.
If Democrats had tried something similar and blocked funding for the troops you'd have heard the GOP and its wholly-owned subsidiaries like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News screaming bloody murder. It would have been worth at least 12 hours of ranting and raving from Charlie Sykes, the local face of the Republican chickenhawks.
But we've heard nary a discouraging word about this disgusting and disgraceful behavior by the Republicans. Instead, the Journal Sentinel tells us that Feingold may be in trouble for not being liberal enough on health care.
Tell me again about that liberal media.