I trust you're referring to FReeper years and not dog years. :-) While I enjoy getting to know new FReepers, some of the "old timers" have built either personal or online relationships that really have endured -- except for the whacked out eat-our-own crowd who have done more harm than help. God sorts them out in the end!
Some of the folks who have left FR are very good people that I maintain a good close relationship with, others have axes to grind that are more personal in nature than anything else IMHO.
Either way, there is a core of long time folks here at FR whose friendship and comraderie I value, irrespective of what the mods are doing, or what JR's position of every issue is (and I have a great deal of respect for what JR has done with FR in terms of energizing people and getting them involved in the process through the online/internet experience...for that alone he deserves significant respect and praise whatever other differences people may have with him...it's his property).
Anyhow, as to the subject and matter at hand...I believe Voinovitch's play and by association the dems play on this matter is going to backfire on them if the other conservative members of the senate will simply stick to their guns and right to their faces, call their bluffs.