Ugh. I think I broke a bone in my hand last night at the batting cages. In any case, I have a badly swollen right paw and non-prescription painkillers are not exactly up to the task. Typing is no joy and concentration is hard to come by.

I doubt it will come as any surprise that the Defense Department’s inspector general has concluded that Saddam’s Iraq had no relationship with al-Qaeda and that the Bush administration relied on intelligence that had “no intelligence value”. And based on the right-wing’s reaction to learning that Valerie Plame was indeed a covert officer, I doubt that they will give two hoots to learn we were right all along about the administration’s ‘fixing the facts around the policy’. So be it.

The U.S. Senate is a conservative place by design. Every two years the entire House of Representatives has to face the voters. However, a third of the senators that voted to authorize force against Iraq have, to this day, never had to face the voters. Their turn comes in 2008. Some, like John Edwards, will recant their vote and point to reports like the Pentagon’s inspector general’s to explain how they were misled. That’s fine. Those were difficult times. We had a daily dose of scary terror alerts and our government was telling us to stock up on duct tape, drinking water, and plastic sheeting. 2002: the Year of Fear. The Year of Judith Miller and Scooter Libby. The Year of Douglas Feith and mushroom clouds.

But 2007 is a different time. In 2007 the Senate needs to decide whether what the Bush administration has done to our nation is criminal. And I don’t mean low crimes, like lying about furtive and rushed extramarital blow-jobs. I mean the biggest crimes that can be committed. Crimes that lose people their lives, that weaken the national defense, that dishonor our nation for posterity and in the eyes of the world…crimes that benefit a very few well connected people at the cost of long-term financial health of the nation. Crimes against the Constitution, crimes that violate people’s rights, that violate our treaty obligations…and with insufficient mitigating justification. The Senate needs to decide this. The House would have little difficulty. They were elected in the fall of 2006 and they more clearly represent the current views of the country.

But the Senate hasn’t fully learned the lesson. If they do not learn soon that this administration has dishonored themselves and our nation and must go…the Senate we elect in 2008 will look quite different from the one we have today. Rather than 49 Republicans senators, it may have fewer than 40.

The Republicans can only save their brand name by acting now, preemptively if you will, to rid us of this criminal administration. Just send us the signal. Let us know that the Senate gets it. It’s not only the self-serving thing to do…it’s the patriotic thing to do.