New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg just now used the emperor character from Star Wars in an analogy of the irreparable harm to our government if the nuclear option is invoked. Like the Republican senators care? I know, I know... the democrats are trying to appeal to the constituents of the Republican senators who theoretically would then "pressure" their senator to vote sensibly. Again, like the Republican senators care? Unless, by some miracle, six Republican senators actually listen to their consciences and vote morally, this is indeed going to go down as one of the darkest days in the history of our government.

Iraq. Election Fraud. Torture. Global Warming. The Media. Social Security. Medicare. Education. Health Care. Pollution Laws. And now the Senate Filibuster Rules. Is there anything left for the Bush-war regime to wrap their Iraqi-civilian/American-soldier blood-soaked fingers around and slowly destroy?

"What happened was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security ... To live in the process is absolutely not to notice it -- please try to believe me -- unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, regretted. Believe me this is true. Each act, each occasion is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow. Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing) ... You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. " - - - German professor after World War II describing the rise of Nazism to a journalist