Where Are the Doves in Congress?
Russ Feingold, the Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, is frustrated. And he is lonely. In a Congress that once demanded that Presidents account for their warmaking, Feingold finds few who will join him in questioning the legality of the hidden war on Iraq. Some leading Democrats with anti-war roots, such as U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and U.S. Representative Howard Berman of California, have actually sided with conservative Congressional leaders in advising the White House to step up an already intense schedule of bombing raids on Iraq. Even liberal Democrats like Senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Chris Dodd of Connecticut–who decried the illegal wars of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan–are notably silent regarding the wars of Bill Clinton. “There seems to be an informal understanding that, despite the fact that the Constitution says the Congress must declare wars, and despite the fact that the War Powers Act is good law, the Congress is simpl
