Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Yellow Dog's Senate Weasel Meter: August Update

It's time once again to update the Yellow Dog Blog's Weasel Meter, in which we keep track of Senate DINOs (Democrat In Name Only) who sometimes forget what party they belong to. (It is especially appropriate today given Katherine Harris's lame attempt at branding Bill Nelson, who has appeared on the weasel meter, as a flaming liberal.)

Let's go to dictionary.com for our definition of terms:


Weasel

intr.v. wea·seled, also wea·selled wea·sel·ing, wea·sel·ling wea·sels, wea·sels

To be evasive; equivocate.

Phrasal Verb: weasel out (Informal). To back out of a situation or commitment in a sneaky or cowardly manner.

We've updated the Senate Weasel Meter to show the top five Democratic Senators who have been pissing us off in 2005.

Click here to see, based on our own liberal criteria, what this year's significant, bellwether votes have been.

July's main votes were on the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Bush administration's energy bill and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The latter was the NRA's baby to limit liability of firearm makers and dealers when their products actually cause bad things to happen.

Based on a remarkably bad showing on all of those votes, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas surged into Weasel power in the last month. Bill Nelson of Florida dropped out of the top five by standing against the NRA on all recent gun-related votes.

Here's the updated list of our top Senatorial weasels, so far, in 2005, with the volume of weasels representing the number of bad votes:

Ben Nelson (D-NE)




Mark Pryor (D-AR)




Mary Landrieu (D-LA)




Ken Salazar (D-CO)




Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)




As always, you can get a synopsis of each of the weasel-worthy votes shown above here.

Tomorrow: How the NRA bought Democratic votes for their bill.