This column is dedicated to Joe Biden, who, if he could have been elected, would have been one of our nation's most intelligent presidents.
Welcome back, Joe.
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Leave your regrets or disappointments outside the Senate Chamber door.
We need you. And that "we" includes your First State constituents and every other American who benefits from your keen abilities to stop wrongdoers wherever you find them.
You do seem to have an extraordinary array of heightened senses for the bad guys.
I don't know if you just have a sharp eye for the twisted language some of our so-called leaders use to undermine the Constitution or whether you have an extremely keen nose for the stink they leave behind, but you've got something going for you that's been on the job for almost four decades.
You certainly have a cutting tongue when you need it. Some say it's too cutting. Your tongue has certainly gotten you in a lot of trouble.
We are all flawed. Like many of us, you probably needed to pass some of your thoughts one more time through the little editor in your brain before you gave them voice.
You're not perfect, but I'll take your shortcomings without rancor because they're not flaws of character.
I know there are some die-hard Delawareans out there who can hardly wait to pounce when you stumble. I wonder if they know what you've done for us and why we need you to keep doing what you do.
How many of us remember that it was Joe Biden who authored the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that by 2001 resulted in a 29 percent drop in violent crime?
I also remember your 1994 Violence Against Women Act.
I wonder how many Americans know you helped draft FISA, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or that this summer, with FISA repeatedly under assault by would-be king George W. Bush, that you introduced a bill that can protect us against both terrorists and terrifying attempts to destroy the rule of law?
Among other provisions, this Act will prohibit the U.S. from detaining terrorism suspects in secret, extraterritorial prisons such as CIA "black sites" and require us to transfer such suspects to legal custody domestically or to a foreign country that will not torture or mistreat them.
It will prohibit torture. That's an unambiguous provision as I read it -- quite different from the current administration's desperate efforts to scramble the term into something that sounds like deniability.
To me the most important part of this act is that it repeals the provisions of the Detainee Treatment and Military Commissions Acts that purport to deprive Guantanamo detainees of the writ of habeas corpus.
With this you strike another blow against the attempts by the Bush administration to destroy our Constitutionally mandated separation of powers, our sacred trust to maintain our system of checks and balances.
Yes, Joe, welcome home.
Your Deputy Press Secretary, Danielle Borrin, tells me you've got a list of Foreign Relations Committee priorities that include work on policy for Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, plus climate change, global HIV/AIDS and Darfur.
That's more than most would take on.
I think you can handle another new president.
http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080110/DCP02/801100360/1058/DCPComments at bottom.
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