Senator Paul Wellstone Had a Spine

In the Primaries, We Fall in Love. After the Primaries, we fall in line.

This is an old line I heard first from Randi Rhodes. It will work for me in 2008. It works for me. Every damned time.But. . .

The photo is borrowed from an excellent column by an infrequent contributor to my pages, Coleen Rowley. She challenges the statement on the sign, asking Is Spineless Better Than Evil?

Her answer is YES-BUT!:

Spinelessness = Silence + Inactivity = Complicity

Like any good Minnesotan, Coleen's guru on not being complicit is the late Senate Paul Wellstone. I learned from reading Coleen, that Senator Wellstone was the only Democratic incumbent facing a re-election challenge who voted "no" to Bush's use of force in Iraq, along with 22 other Senators.

I say "Learned"?

I have to disclose that I was such a self-absorbed American hedonist in 2002 - silent, inactive and complicit - that I never knew who Paul Wellstone was until his tragic death, three weeks after he made this speech:

Never again, Coleen.