Though Clinton and Dodd (and Obama) supported the Boxer measure -- which also condemns MoveOn.

According to TPM Election Central's handy calendar, he has a townhall meeting in Rock Hill, SC at noon. This vote happened at 12:36 (according to roll call). So he probably voted for the first and left for a private jet to SC. Assuming TPM EC has their information correct.

A real Profile in Courage

Hillary was the only senator "absent" for the 2005 bankruptcy bill. Profile in courage...
But it doesn't even compare with Dems refusal to hold impeachment hearings because it would be harmful to Hillary's presidential ambitions.

I was about to say he had some splainin to do until some Alert Readers did it for him. Given that it was a town hall, I'd cut the guy some slack. (But then, I'm admittedly a strong supporter of his.)

As a general rule, my sense is that he's a guy who'd thinks its strategically better to take heat for how he votes than for ducking a vote, but, damn, running late for a town hall? A whole room full of people waiting to ask him questions getting more pissed off by the minute because of the wait? To vote on this thing?

That's a no-brainer.

But it makes me wonder -- if Obama HAD been in the senate when the very difficult vote came up about giving Bush authorization to go to war in Iraq if diplomacy failed -- would Barack Obama have had A Very Important Engagement that day also?

Are you really comparing the Iraq War authorization with this waste-of-time, joke of a resolution?

I wish more Senators didn't bother showing up for this thing.

"Dave White":

I am saying senators can CHOOSE when to be Too Busy To Vote.

And I'm saying I wish more Senators had CHOSEN not to waste their time with this.

It's time to start working on replacing Feinstein. We've got five years to find a challenger.

No wonder Hillary is thrashing Obama in all the polls. It is called courage of conviction. Time and again when it came to difficult votes Obama either skipped or voted the wrong way and tried to explain it all away with professorial semantics. This is guy is fast turning out to be a big bore (yawn!).

They all voted for the Boxer version, which may have been good partisanship but still braindead for condemning their best allies.

I'm still sort of in shock, but I really don't see how the Democratic Party will recover from this naked contempt for their most effective allies, the ones who won them the Senate. It won't just be MoveOn that learns their lesson from this. Nobody wants to sleep with rattlesnakes. As far as I'm concerned, it's past time to forget the Democratic Party. Nader was absolutely right, and I was absolutely wrong -- both for ranting against him, and for working so hard with MoveOn to elect the likes of McCaskill, Tester, and Webb. Never again.

This was NO "little" issue.

This was about FREE SPEECH.

In America, last I looked, we were and are free to call the president or any of his sycophantic Generals a horse's ass if we want to.

Isn't that what our soldiers are DYING to protect -- our freedom to speak out (as long as such speech is not slanderous)?

~ ~

It was just yesterday that these same Republican punks could not muster up the guts to defy Bush and give our soldiers proper rest time at home after being in combat.

The Republicans do not give a rat's ____ for our troops; they are just interested in caving to Bush.

It's not like Obama did not know the second vote would occur.

He could have voted "present" like he used to do in Illinois.

"Hillary stood up for the First Amendment today, in case you missed it."

Hillary voted the right way and my guy apparently dodged, so laurals to her and darts to Obama. But please, let's not pretend she did anything other than calculate which of three unappealing choices she'd catch the least heat for and doing it.

If she truly gave a rat's ass about the First Amendment, she wouldn't have been triangulating on it by coming out in favor of the flag burning amendment. That's a hell of a lot more important than voting against the administration of a Senatorial finger wag.

The outcome of many votes are well known beforehand so I don't necessarily have too much of a problem with occasional missed votes. That said, I'm sure level of outrage would be much more intense if Hillary did this. I don't mind valid criticisms of Hillary, but the double standard is quite annoying.

Q: Could Obama tell Harry Reid to cast the vote for him?

Oh, I think it was an act of courage for the 25 Democratic senators to vote "nay."

The rightwingers -- including, and especially, Rudy Giuliani -- will be eager to crucify every one of those brave Democrats.

The rightwingers will scream that those Democrats do not "support the troops."

Of course, the time to SUPPORT THE TROOPS was yesterday when the senate Republicans (most of them) voted to DENY our troops rest time at home equal to their time in combat.

Then, the Republicans were Missing In Action.

"Geek, Esq. ":

The Cornyn amendment vote chastising anyone who would criticize a military person was NOT, as you say, a "waste of time crapola."

The Cornyn amendment is an assault on the First Amendment -- you know, the one that allows you and all the rest of us to express ourselves freely (as you and we do here at TPM).

jca wrote on September 20, 2007 3:49 PM:
WARNING: TPM has a bias, and it's not in favor of Barak Obama. This isn't the first negative spin on him, while oftentimes TPM witholds punches on, say, Edwards. See if you can guess, in the next few months, the Mainstream-Media-like bias by TPM in favor of Edwards and against Obama.
Too bad: otherwise, I think TPM has done some fine reporting.

I can't document it---but i do get a lot of that same feeling. What is worse in my case, is that it seems to have escalated since septemeber 1st---which leaves me wondering---are the numbers in the polls---which should be mostly irrelevant at this point----causing tpm to worry about losing future access if they do not get aboard the Hillary express soon enough?

"bob":

If it is such a waste of time, why are you here posting about it?

Defending the rights protected in the First Amendment is NEVER a waste of time.

This resolution did not infringe on those rights, it was a non-binding (ie non-law) worthless Sense of the Senate resolution that is nothing but a waste-of-time political theater.

This did not infringe on anyone's rights and this wasn't a question of the "First Amendment" the first amendment doesn't protect people from being criticized for their speech.

I used to require my 6th grade students to write a copy of the first amendment, simply as a handwriting assignment--and some years--usually when some issue caused the school board to require us to recite the pledge of allegiance, I would ask permission to have my class also recite the first amendment. (The answer was usually "yeah, whatever.")

I am having a hard time figuring out why a senator sould vote for either resolution. Whether it is a law, or not, senators have power to decide things (generally for big shots), so it is inherently warning people not to say stuff.

I don't want the government warning us not to say stuff.

I used to require my 6th grade students to write a copy of the first amendment, simply as a handwriting assignment--and some years--usually when some issue caused the school board to require us to recite the pledge of allegiance, I would ask permission to have my class also recite the first amendment. (The answer was usually "yeah, whatever.")

I am having a hard time figuring out why a senator sould vote for either resolution. Whether it is a law, or not, senators have power to decide things (generally for big shots), so it is inherently warning people not to say stuff.

I don't want the government warning us not to say stuff.

"Shii":

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

is:

"To express 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 personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces."

Do you have a link for some other text?

Good for Obama to skip this idiotic vote. It shows he has the sense to refuse to be pigeonholed into such nonsense.