Free Republic

Feinstein: Seeking to silence right-wing gabbers. Last week, the immigration bill died a grisly death at the hands of the talk-radio listeners who have frustrated and confounded me.........Nearly as frustrating, however, has been the imperial reaction of elected officials to their citizen uprising. Apparently, democracy is a drag - but it's nothing a little authoritarian censorship can't fix.

I asked one of the few conservative Republican senators who stuck with President Bush on immigration to assess how Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell handled the issue. Asking not to be quoted by name, he replied: "If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty." Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version that he supported, but he also abandoned his post, keeping off the floor during final stages of Senate debate.