You Say A-lee-to. I say A-lie-to.

At this moment, the United States Senate is preparing to vote to confirm Judge Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court. Progressives across the country are nursing their wounds from a failed filibuster attempt and bracing themselves for the collapse of civil liberties in this country.

I don't believe Judge Alito's confirmation is the sum total of all that progressives should find discouraging in all of this, however.

Certainly, the confirmation of an avowed conservative to replace the moderate Justice O'Connor is sufficient cause for Democrats and moderate Republicans to be concerned. Equally troubling, however, is the fact that there is currently only the most modest of congressional checks on executive power in Washington, D.C.

Put simply, it seems that there are only 25 to 30 Senators who are willing to take a stance against President Bush.

This situation might make more sense if we were talking about a president who enjoyed popular support--Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, or even President Bush himself in the months shortly after September 11, 2001. But this has been a difficult year for the Bush presidency. A year ago, before his fifth State of the Union Address, the President's job approval rating hovered slightly above 50 percent. The ensuing months brought on a cascade of legislative defeats, mismanagement, and revelations of unethical and illegal back door deals. Currently, President Bush's approval rating is logging in at 42 percent (plus or minus a few points, depending on the specific pollster).

Since August, President Bush has had less public support than any president since Richard Nixon during Watergate.

I cannot begin to explain why Congressional opposition to the president continues to be so timid. Surely, the fact that Republicans hold a majority in both houses determines the leadership and membership of the Congressional committees that set the agenda, but I don't see this as a strict partisan issue. Democrats are not the only people who are concerned about the current administration's breakaway spending, their mishandling of Iraq, and the trend towards an arrogant, muscular, and unilateral foreign policy. The current administration has completely abandoned the conservative ideals of smaller government, fiscal discipline, and government accountability in favor of the neo-conservative ideology of an American Empire.

But it's not just the party thing. There are at least an equal number of Democrat senators who chose not to make waves yesterday. Tim Johnson (SD), Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND), and Ben Nelson (NE) broke ranks and threw their support towards Judge (actually, now Justice) Alito. Moreover, Senators Rockefeller and Leiberman voted against the filibuster, as did Bill Nelson(FL).

As I indicated, Samuel Alito has been confirmed. For many, the point of what I'm writing here may seem irrelevant, since what is now done is done. However, the Alito confirmation is only one in a series of lost debates in Congress, and it is certainly not the last important debate this Congress will entertain before January 2009. Health care reform, immigration, and our actions with regards to Iran are matters of increasingly serious debate in both the House and Senate, and in the case of Iran, can America afford to have a Congress that cannot question, let alone stand up to, a President who has obviously squandered every last dime of his "political capital?"