Last week was marked by Senators Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch making one more grandstand play on behalf of "freedom" and avoiding surrendering to the ugly clutches of "socialism."

What a familiar refrain this has become through the years.  With FDR there was the American Liberty League and its panicky warnings that under Roosevelt's New Deal the grand republic we know and love was being plundered by socialism, and with it loss of our precious American freedoms.

Unlike what is happening now when Obama seeks compromise with those who are not interested in anything but their own narrow agenda and propagandizing toward that objective, Roosevelt knew the forces he was fighting and struck back in the public arena.  He exposed the forces of greed arrayed against him as "economic royalists" and pointed out that what they really feared was losing their grip on monopoly.

Oh how we need that kind of leader now!  In place of a leader who stands up to the lobbyists and those they represent, instead of confronting the enemy with cold, hard, irrefutable facts as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, the response is to see if a compromise can be worked out.

This Week in Blogging the Religious Right features several reports from last weekend's hair raising Values Voters Summit, in Washington, DC, hosted by Tony Perkins' Family Research Council and James Dobson's political action group, Focus on the Family Action.

The Republican controlled US Senate, after weeks of focusing it's august attentions on such critical issues as gay marriage and the repeal of the estate tax is about to take up what some feel is another burning issue that requires the immediate attention of a country currently embroiled in two wars in which our citizens are being slaughtered daily, deeply in debt to foreign interests, under the grip of rising unemployment, crime, poverty, and lacking even basic health care for more than 35 million of it's people. The burning issue du jour is the desecration of Old Glory.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve a constitutional amendment stating that marriage in the United States shall consist only of the "union of a man and a woman." But the amendment is not expected to get the approval of two-thirds of the Senate, which is necessary to pass a constitutional amendment.

Stating the obvious, Democrats "complained that bringing up the amendment is a political move designed to appeal to the GOP's conservative base in a midterm-election year."

Well duh! Perhaps a clever Democrat could find a way to defer debate on the issue until after November?

CNN's The Situation Room reported "one Democrat walked out of the session that was held in a private chamber just off the Senate floor." Sen. Russ Feingold "complained to Chairman Arlen Specter that the meeting wasn't sufficiently open to the public. We're told that led to this exchange. Specter told Feingold, 'I don't need to be lectured by you. You are no more of a protector of the Constitution than am I. If you want to leave, good riddance.' Feingold then responded, 'I've enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman. See you.'"

More interestingly, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said "Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who supports the gay-marriage ban, has expressed support for polygamists in his home state of Utah. "I never said that," Hatch responded.
"I know some (polygamists) that are very sincere. ... Don't accuse me of wanting to have polygamy."