Digging up dirt on the Democratic Underground

A far-left Internet smear site bestowed yours truly with an award last week.

The Democratic Underground selected me as one of "The Top 10 Conservative Idiots" in the United States, or perhaps the world. It wasn't clear from the group's Web site how extensive the nominating process was.

I never heard of the Democratic Underground before last week, but the group has a spiffy Web site, one of hundreds of liberal Internet sites whose sole purpose is to attack anyone who doesn't agree with the far-left's narrow view of the world.

I made it all the way to No. 8 on the Top 10 list, which included such luminaries as radio commentator Rush Limbaugh (No. 9), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (No. 10) and a state senator from South Dakota by the name of Bill Napoli.

South Dakota recently enacted the toughest anti-abortion law in the country and I gather Sen. Napoli (No. 3) had something to do with its passage. The list also includes Ken Mehlmann, chairman of the Republican National Committee (No. 4).

To the best of my knowledge, this is my first appearance in the Top 10. I'd like to take this moment to thank all the voters for their support. I feel like George Clooney at the Oscars. It's an honor just to be nominated.

The full list can be viewed on the group's Web site, www.democraticunderground.com. I'm not sure how long the list will be posted. I don't plan to visit the Web site again (unless, of course, I move up in the rankings).

I was chosen for the honor based on some recent columns about the sad state of the Democratic Party. One column in particular that caught the judges' eyes was "Nightmare scenario if Democrats should win control of Congress."

In that column, I gazed into the crystal ball to predict what a Democratic administration would look like if the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress this November and then proceed with their plans to impeach George W. Bush.

At the time I wrote the column, that may have been a far-fetched scenario. But last week, Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin who is more liberal than John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, introduced a measure to censure the president for ordering wiretaps of suspected terrorists who were calling contacts in the United States.

Feingold really wants to impeach Bush, but he thought he would start with baby steps and introduce a Senate motion to publicly admonish the president over the terrorist surveillance program.

I'd like to go on record that the National Security Agency has my permission to tap my telephone if I start getting collect calls from Osama bin Laden.

The censure motion died quicker than Howard Dean's 2004 presidential run. The Democrats talk a good game, and use anonymous smear sites on the Internet to attack political rivals, but when it comes time to stand for something, they develop a severe case of the bird flu — as in they turn into chickens.

Mort Kondracke, the editor of Roll Call, a newspaper covering Capitol Hill, goes into more detail about Feingold’s motivation for the censure motion (trying to attract support from the far left for a 2008 presidential bid) in a new column, but Kondracke also predicts that the Democrats have far more to lose than to gain by continuing to talk about censuring or impeaching the president.

For starters, these kind of threats will rally Bush's base, which will turn out in November to make sure the House and Senate stay in GOP control. Secondly, there is a segment of American voters, including Democrats, who don’t want to see Congress spend the next two years quibbling over another impeachment circus when the nation has so many real problems facing it.

The left-leaning Philadelphia Inquirer, which has been losing readers at an alarming rate in the past decade and is up for sale, devoted lots of space in its Sunday opinion section to the impeachment question. In other words, the cat is out of the bag. Nice going, Russ.

Picking up on the nightmare scenario, The Wall Street Journal editorialized last week about the Democrats’ "impeachment agenda" for the midterm congressional elections:

Feingold "is doing voters a favor by telling them before November's election just how Democrats intend to treat a wartime president if they take power. Not only do they want to block his policies, they also plan to rebuke and embarrass him in front of the world and America's enemies. By all means, let's have this impeachment debate before the election, so voters can know what’s really at stake."

To my friends at Democratic Underground, you can call me an idiot or any other names you like. If I helped in some small way to expose the left's hidden agenda and bring the impeachment issue to the front burner, mission accomplished.