E Pluribus Unum

Fact is, the war's over. All that's left is, well, the shouting.

C'mon -- Saddam is dead, there are no WMDs, Iraq has a democratic government. Mission Accomplished, right? Declare victory and come home already.

In that context, the House Democratic proposal is a mess. I'd vote against it -- and I'm a yellow dog Democrat. I'd vote against it and start over with a much simpler proposal that provides 100% of the funding requested by the president with the proviso that the funds only be used to withdraw the troops (see above, "Mission Accomplished").

UPDATE: Here's another video of David Obey (D-WS). This time the camera captures him speaking to Tina Richards, the mother of a Marine and anti-war protester in the hall outside his office in Washington. The video runs over 6 minutes -- but hang in there, it is a fascinating encounter between two impassioned people who feel they are doing what they can to end the war.

Obey is a sponsor of Pelosi's supplemental spending bill that would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq by Aug. 31, 2008. "We're trying to use the supplemental to end the war," Obey stormed, later adding, "It's time these idiot liberals understood that!" Later, when another war protester also starts questioning Obey, he says: "That bill ends the war! If that isn't good enough for you, you're smoking something illegal."

Now I know that Obey has been on the Hill forever; at one point he reminds Ms. Richards that he was instrumental in passing the legislation that cut off the funding for the Vietnam war in the early 70's. On the other hand, I also understand that he fancies himself a rival of Jack Murtha, so I have mixed feelings about that.

But the most fascinating thing about the confrontation is when he says that "you don't have to cut off funds for an activity that is no longer legal." Clearly he believes that the current proposal somehow avoids the hot potato of defunding by first "making the war illegal." Not sure how that works; besides, there are lots of things Bush has done that are of, um, questionable legality, as Jon Stewart so humorously alludes to in the first video.

Watch the video. It's worth six minutes of your time as a fascinating glimpse constituency outreach in the halls of Congress -- and I say that with only a bit of irony.