[NYTr] Amusement Nooz: Do-Nothings Condemn Do-Nothings

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[The crappy adolescent money-wasting activities of a Democratic-Party
frontgroup -- those liberals at MoveAlong.org -- are something the
useless US Senate can get all riled up about. Both groups are best at
fund-raising for themselves. Very droll. Reported by FAUX News.
They all deserve one another. -NYTr]


FOX News - Sep 20, 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297498,00.html

CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW YOUR SENATORS VOTED ON THIS ISSUE OF
HEART-STOPPINGLY VITAL IMPORTANCE:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00344


Senate Votes to Condemn MoveOn for Ad Attacking General Petraeus

WASHINGTON--The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a measure
condemning MoveOn.org for a newspaper ad it ran last week attacking
Gen. David Petraeus. The move came as President Bush accused Democrats
of cowering to the liberal political action group.

The measure passed in a 72-25 vote, with none of the Democratic
presidential candidates supporting it. Sponsored by Texas Republican
Sen. John Cornyn, never one to shy away from forcing Democrats to go on
record on politically sticky issues, the amendment to the defense
authorization bill did win the backing of 23 Democrats.

Sens. Joe Biden and Barack Obama were absent from the vote, though
Obama had voted 20 minutes earlier on a Democratic effort to circumvent
the amendment. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd voted against the
measure.

The amendment did not specifically name MoveOn.org, but expressed "the
sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, commanding general,
Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and
strongly condemn(s) personal attacks on the honor and integrity of
General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces."

But supporters made clear the measure was about MoveOn, and was aimed
at giving senators "a chance to distance themselves from the notion
that some group has them on a leash, like a puppet on a string."

"Who would have ever expected anybody to go after a general in the
field at a time of war, launch a smear campaign against a man we've
entrusted with our mission in Iraq?" Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell asked on the Senate floor. "Any group that does this sort of
thing ought to be condemned. Let's take sides. General Petraeus or
MoveOn.org. Which one are we going to believe? Which one are we going
to condemn?"

In response, MoveOn officials said the group was going to buy TV ad
time to attack McConnell, R-Ky., and other senators who voted against a
measure offered a day earlier by Democratic Sen. Jim Webb to require
troops to have equal down time at home as they have deployed in war
zones. The measure failed.

"No wonder public approval of Congress is tanking. They’re so out of
touch with reality that they can find time to condemn an ad but they
can't do what most Americans want — vote to end this war," said Eli
Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action.

The Senate vote followed a statement by Bush during a press conference
at the White House in which he argued that Democrats are more concerned
about riling MoveOn than about riling the U.S. military.

"I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke
out strongly against that kind of ad, and that leads me to come to this
kind of conclusion: That most Democrats are afraid of irritating a
left-wing group like MoveOn.org — are more afraid of irritating them —
than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a
sorry deal," the president said.

"And (it's) one thing to attack me. It's another thing to attack
somebody like Gen. Petraeus," Bush said.

Pariser responded to the president, saying Bush lied about the cause
for war in Iraq.

"What's disgusting is that the president has more interest in political
attacks than developing an exit strategy to get our troops out of Iraq
and end this awful war," Pariser said. "The president has no
credibility on Iraq: he lied repeatedly to the American people to get
us into the war. ... Right now, there are about 168,000 American
soldiers in Iraq, caught in the crossfire of that country's unwinnable
civil war, and the president has betrayed their trust and the trust of
the American people."

[FOX News' Molly Hooper contributed to this report.]