Still sleepwalking.

Senate approves $401.3 billion defense bill. The vote was 95 to 3. Opponents: Robert Byrd (D, W.Va.), Daniel Akaka (D, Hawaii), and James Jeffords (I-Vt.). Absent: presidential candidates John Kerry (D, Mass.) and John Edwards (D, N.C.).

In other words, not one democratic senator/presidential candidate voted against this bill. Lieberman and Gephardt voted for it, and the other two were too chickenshit to go on the record either way. Anyone care to speculate about causes for voter disenfranchisement? "Damn politicians -- they're all the same." I've heard that so many times, and now I'm starting to believe it. I'll still vote for anyone against Dubya in 2004, but I sure as hell hope it's not one of the senate idiots currently running around pretending to be presidential but afraid to show what the hell they really stand for.

Only one senator (now that Wellstone is gone) says anything worth listening to:

"We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events." Senator Byrd, railing against the Senate's near silence as they took one more step toward taking the nation to war against Iraq, spoke those words on the Senate floor on 12 February 2003.

"To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war....

"Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50 percent is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

"We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.'" ...