Hillary on the fence

I'm not saying that the Palestinian fence should be the end-all in deciding whether someone is a good Progressive, but when you're willing to sell out an entire people that's been treated like second-class citizens by a regional power for decades in exchange for solidifying your support amongst downstate voters in New York, there's something wrong. It's safe to say, that if Hillary Clinton were a senator from Michigan or another state with a larger number of Arab-American voters and fewer Jewish-American voters, she'd have been speaking from the other side of that fence.

Meanwhile, just in case his opinion in Casey didn't give it away, the Washington Times is reporting that Judge Samuel Alito is severely anti-choice: it'll be fun to see what tricks Senator Clinton performs after she rolls over on this one too. Just to review, by January, we will have had two anti-choice, anti-Roe justices added to the Supreme Court over a six-month period. Senator Clinton needs to end this charade of pandering to the right and put her foot down; it was one thing to replace Rehnquist with Roberts, but O'Connor was an important swing vote on many issues, and the stakes have risen. Certainly, she can vote against his nomination and put out a couple of angry press releases, but that's not the Senator Clinton many of us are getting ready to help in 2006. If she wants to lead America, she can start by leading the resistance to Alito instead of hiding behind her staff. Senator Clinton needs to stand on the steps of the Supreme Court with a mob of young Progressives and loudly tell George W. Bush that the American people will not stand for what he's doing. We need to put forth a united front against this dangerous attack by the radical right, but so long as Senator Clinton continues wasting her influence "triangulating," there's very little to hope for.