On today’s broadcast of ABC’s Sunday morning “news” program This Week, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) — who was recently selected GMD readers’ favorite Presedential hopeful — dropped a political bombshell on the public (and an unsuspecting Sen. Bill Frist, also on the program) by announcing he will formally introduce a motion in the Senate calling for the censure of President Bush over the NSA wiretapping matter (a clip of the appearence can be found here).

Although Frist pledged to use his power to keep the motion from seeing the light of day, it’s still agreat move because, as Georgia10 at DailyKos puts it:

The most obvious and immediate benefit of Feingold’s statement is that it keeps Bush’s illegal spying in the news.  While the media has declared accountability dead after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted not to investigate the program, Feingold’s motion ratchets up the heat and keeps the scandal alive.

It seems obvious to folks who frequent this board that Bush’s blatantly illegal conduct merits at least this action. Here’s Feingold:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you’re so convinced that the President has broken the law, why not file an article of impeachment?

FEINGOLD: Well, you know, that’s an option we could look at, if somebody thought that was a really good idea. There are other options out there. In fact, this conduct is right in the strike zone — even though the Founding Fathers didn’t have strike zones, they didn’t have baseball — but it is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors.

“We, as a Congress, have to stand up to a president who acts like the Bill of Rights and the Constitution were repealed on Sept 11, [2001],”

In fact, a glance to the left side of the front page will remind you that Vermonters would like to see a far more definitive reaction, but anything that causes Sen Frist to get all twisted up and flustered has got to be good.

Frist:

“Russ is just wrong, he is flat wrong, he is dead wrong,”

Frist called the censure attempt “political” and a “terrible, terrible signal” to enemies of the U.S. abroad.

Will a successful censure movement take the wind out of the impeachment movement? I doubt it. Impeachment promoters will simply see this as gravy if it passes (and again, the motion actually seeing the Senate floor seems like an outside shot, at this point), and if it doesn’t pass, they’ll just get more riled up and determined.

I suppose it’s possible that if this censure notion were to become a much bigger deal than I think it will, it could end up “competing” with impeachment. But I seriously don’t see that happening. What do you folks think?