Insomnia

Woody Allen once said "The lion and the lamb shall lie down together, but the lamb won't get much sleep."

Quite possibly the last conservative I would have expected to visit the liberal bed was Bruce Fein. I remember seeing him on McNeil/Lehrer during Reagan/Bush I, and finding him incredibly odious.

Now, via Sully, he gives an interview to Truthout, of all places, and says this:

The Right Seeks to Rein In Presidential Power

Fein told Truthout, "Imbeciles like Ann Coulter play to the basest instincts of the conservative movement to give the president a blank check to grab whatever power he wishes."
...
He expressed disappointment with the lack of any real pushback against presidential power by Congressional Democrats. "The Democrats in Congress have done absolutely nothing to tell the president he is not a king and we do not live in a monarchy. They are allowing him to trash the Constitution because most of them know nothing about the Constitution and are concerned only with making headlines about minor issues and getting themselves reelected."

Fein acknowledged that things were probably worse when Congress was under Republican control, "but only marginally."

"Neither party has shown the courage to assert the power of Congress as a coequal branch of government. Congress should be telling the president it's not OK to detain people without trials, to grab people off the streets and 'render' them to other countries to be tortured, to listen in to our telephone conversations, and to issue signing statements that nullify laws he doesn't like."

He added, "We elect members of Congress to lead, not to follow. If they are going to lead, they need to understand the Constitution and the vision of its framers, and then have the backbone to insist that the executive branch stop usurping the responsibilities assigned to the legislative and judicial branches of our government."

Wowser. Bruce Fein. Bob Barr. Chuck Hagel. We need to keep our eyes wide open, but the sad fact is we need these guys. They give cover to other wobbly conservatives, and undermine charges of partisanship on the part of those who dare to question the monarchy.

And when the surge is finally acknowledged to be the failure it had to be, the bed is going to collapse under the weight of all the Republicans who follow them off the Bush bandwagon.