I will walk on broken glass barefoot for Dick Durbin

Durbin has been consistently on our side on issues like the war on drugs, Iraq, the death penalty, gun control, campaign finance reform, abortion, health care, social security, taxes, education, and the environment.

Durbin has never been afraid of the GOP, but Daley is more powerful than all of the Republicans in this state *combined*. If a Democrat doesn't have Daley on their side, winning even primaries can be problematic. Daley chewed Durbin out in public, and Durbin apologized a few hours later. That's just the way it is.

In Illinois we control the majorship, the governorship, both congressional senators, send a majority of democrats to the House of Represenatives, and even have majorities in *both* houses in Springfield. If the Democratic party in YOUR state does not kick ass like we do, I suggest you keep the Durbin-bashing to yourselves.

:kick:

He told the truth.

But I never liked the guy.

It's kinda personal.

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...the same kind of apology that time and again those on this board have pointed out, when made by members of the GOP, isn't an apology for the content of the statement, but the way it might have made others feel. The Durbin bashing is absolute bullshit.

He didn't apologize for speaking truth, and re-acknowledged that it was truth. he apologized for his phraseology.

Esp if you are a constituent, but this situation deserves the strongest possible response you can muster. Don't take it lying down.

Today he threw his #1 clout guy under the bus (Al Sanchez). Sanchez released a statement like he was begging for it. Daley does not care. You may or may not live in Chicago (I can't tell because your profile is hidden) but Daley runs this town and will do so until further notice. He is a better politician than his father, his father had worse scandals (Avondale). Durbin cannot win without Daley. When Daley says jump, Durbin says how high.

But there needs to be some accounting for this.

However, this town does not work that way.

I kinda hate when people around here call each other names and all that. I do not wish to do that. However, do you live in Chicago? Do you have any idea how things are run around here? Back around the turn of the 20th century, a Machine guy won an election and someone yelled "Chicago ain't ready for reform!" It was true then and it is true now.

Understood.

he backed down, has become about him, and not what's happening at Gitmo.

He made an important stand on issues of ethics and morals and everything that's wrong, and then backed down under political pressure.

It was a mistake.

your opinion. I am sick of hearing naysayers. Let's get on with it already!

With this "keep your opinions to yourselves." I think the world of Durbin, but this board is all about airing our opinions. If not here, where?

giving lectures on how to kickass here in Illinois. We already do.

Peace.

Who is Daley? What were the circumstances he went after Durbin?

and the head of the Democratic Party in Cook County, Illinois.

He had a hissy fit yesterday afternoon over Durbin's remarks because his not so bright son, Patrick, just graduated from paratrooper school in Ft. Benning, GA and Richie, not being the sharpest knife in the drawer himself, took Senator Durbin's remarks personally.

Daley controls a lot of votes in Illinois and could make things uncomfortable for Senator Durbin when he runs for re-election in 2008, if Richie himself is still in office.

Hopefully, someone will step up to the plate and challenge Daley in 2007 in the Democratic mayoral primary.

BTW, Richie is the son of the former mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley. I hope you've heard of him if not Google him.

that Durbin probably wouldn't have apologized? Or do you think the pressure from elsewhere was getting to be too much as well?

That's how the timing of it looks. There aren't any Republicans here that can apply pressure on Durbin.

that broke the camel's back. Up until then, it had been no one but the Republican noise machine.

I have absolutely no respect for the present Mayor of Chicago. He's been sucking up to "Fat" Denny Hastert ever since he became Speaker of the House and he's way too cozy with Commander Bunnypants for my liking. IMHO, Richie Daley is a DINO.

He doesn't give a rat's ass about the neighborhoods in the city. He's always sucking up to the big money people downtown and on the North Side of the city.

He's managed to really piss off the rank and file police and firemen as well which is something his father would never have done.

He might have been born and raised in the 11th Ward, aka Bridgeport, but I think he forgot where he came from and that's something that working class people in Chicago do not like or tolerate.

I don't think he is the best mayor Chicago could have and I have been kinda harsh to folks around here to are berating him (I agree with Durbin) BUT Daley is not going away. He owns all the levers of power, he knows how to use them and I really think, until further notice, he runs the city and state.

Head of the Democratic party in Cook County? I was expecting to hear that he had an R after his name. Why can't the Dems stand together?

I wish he was my senator.

You are sooooo lucky to have him and Obama as your senators.
I am in Arizona, and I have McCain and Kyle... Kyle makes McCain look like a saint.

Durbin is up there on the senate floor constantly fighting for our rights. It's too bad he got caught up in the politics of free-speech, or the lack of it! It took balls for him to get up there and apologize, and his apology was heartfelt. It was a no-win situation for him. Damned if he didn't apologize, and damned that he did. He did the right thing, imho.

Keep watching his back! He deserves it:toast:

though I don't seem to be making much headway in communicating the concept to others, that there is a difference between criticizing and bashing.

So the Republicans fake outrage, get their apology, sorta, and then laugh because Dems don't defend themselves. That's bad enough. But then to have someone on our side quoting them and agreeing that Durbin is just the biggest loser, that just about pushes me over the edge. How very special.

He has been a good Minority Whip. That can not be erased by yesterday's apology. He is a good man and doesn't deserve the abuse. Criticism perhaps. But not the destuctive, divisive crapola we've been seeing.

I was on that tour Obama did around Illinois, writing an article, and Dick was there every fucking day, supporting Barack and we had 30 percent of the audience in nearly every stop Republican, by my unofficial count. Dick's wife, Michelle, just rocks. Privately, they think the GOP is a pack of drooling fascists, and they are right. Politicaly, they can't say that. She asked me, please don't print that, and I said, you're off the record, this is about Obama. Who is, btw, a far more calculating person than Durbin is. They're both great, but I prefer Dick. He is far less a careerist; he just loves people and everywhere he went, even the Rethugs were coming out to shake his hand and chat. There is no other senator I know of who does what he does. I really wanted him to run for president, but he refuses to even think about it.

The fact is, he got a TON of pressure to apologize for something he never said. He said, if I read this not knowing it was our guys (meaning CIA and Military Intelligence) doing this, I would have thought it was the Russan Gulag or the Nazi concentration camps. The inquisitors in our case are evil people, and he was absolutely right. That is not how America is supposed to operate. Even McCain agreed with that.

I'm working here in Illinois to get Chicago people to travel to congressional districts and kick the nazis out of our state for once and for all. We are picking three races, with Melissa Bean being a given, since the White House has gone after her, and two other races. And we are going to flood the box. There is no reason for this state to have a single nazi left standing in 06.

Sen. Durbin is one of the greatest people in the whole Cogress, with a sterling voting record and recent work with the Democratic town hall meetings across the country to support Social Security, and this one trivial incident is enough to threaten everything. Are you people serious?

As soon as Durbin referred to the reprehensible (and internationally illegal) cruelties of the interrogators and guards at Guantanamo, I thought it was yet another great, brave Durbin statement; then as soon as it became "Nazis" and "Soviets," I started thinking--I wish it hadn't been done that way. This is going to get attacked. It is going to be both misunderstood and deliberately used as a smear, and both things happened. I think Durbin must have been contacted by military families with sincerely hurt comments, because the apology was specific and heartfelt, and did not strike me as "cowardly" or anything else, but as if Durbin was not prepared for the kind of reaction it got. No matter how you slice it, there are sincere people who actually think that Durbin compared American troops to Nazis, no matter how far off that was.

I think the apology was inevitable, as "Nazi" references usually are, and that now, Democrats should start attacking this prick Frist for exploiting it. They ought to matter-of-factly answer the continuing Frist comments, subterfuges, etc., with "All right, you've milked this thing for all you're going to get out of it. Let's move on. What do you compare this behavior to?"

Back in 1985 when my husband was in the Army and we were stationed at Redstone Arsenal, he was accused of a very serious crime that he did not commit and there was no real evidence to suggest he did. But he was locked up, repeatedly interrogated, subjected to strip searches, DNA samples taken for two weeks. He was moved to Fort Campbell,Ky for an additional four weeks while in the mean time our quarters were searched twice, I lost my job because they wouldn't give me time off to go to Ft Campbell, and they released his name to the newspapers on base and also in Huntsville.
The only evidence they had was work logs that put my husband in the parking lot of the hospital at about the same time the crime took place.
But in the Army there is no bail, there is no innocent until proven guilty. You are locked up and at their mercy for due process.
Now this crime was a rape in which there most definitely was DNA evidence. My husbands family came down and we franticly did everything we could to understand the military law, politics, and procedures involved.
But we knew once the DNA testing complete he would be exonerated. After they moved him to another state and a month had gone by we were in a state of panic and my husband was suffering physically and emotionally. The Army would not give us any information on when this test would be completed. My mother in-law went back to Illinois and contacted Senator Paul Simon and back then the Congressman Dick Durbin.
After hearing my husbands story the response from Senator Durbin was immediate. I believe it was his pressure that got the military to release the results of the DNA testing which did make my husbands innocents indisputable.
The military police were under a lot of pressure in this high profile crime and for whatever reason, I believe they knew they did not have the right person in lock up but they believed it was to their advantage to delay the results of the testing, keep my husband locked up to put pressure on the victim whom had stated she didn't know her attacker. We later found that to be untrue. This was an officers wife whom had been left bound and gaged in a van in the parking lot and had laid her head on the horn till she was rescued. It turned out she did know her attacker and it was not my husband. The rest of the details I will never know, we searched for the end to this story and it just disappeared.
I am forever grateful to Dick Durbin for taking the time to listen, to care, and to act on behalf of one of his constituents. He will always be a great Senator/Congressman in my eyes.
As for our recourse, well ya can't sue the military. They tried to get rid of us by giving us the option of choosing anywhere in the world we would like to be stationed but we decided to stay and hold our heads high, demand retractions in the papers, and give my husband's CO the shit he deserves for not standing up for him. Ten months later we were done with the Army and did not look back.