Here’s a short list of things for which there’s little except hope this week. But, I figure if we all got together at Sunday Late Nite and hoped for the best, maybe one (or even some!) of them might happen. There’s also action you can take to help hope along, in the links.

I hope Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s Tuesday Impeach-Cheney Resolution gets enough attention that Congresspeople are ashamed to vote to table (kill) House Resolution 333. Please ask if your Congressperson is on board, and call in to Dennis Kucinich’s conference call on Monday evening. More information here.

Dennis Kucinich will be on the phone, Monday, November 5 at 7:30 p.m. ET, 6:30 CT, 5:30 MT, 4:30 PT. If you want to listen, call (641) 715-3300 The access number is: 324341# This is a one-way call with no restriction on the number who are on the line to listen. Please get everybody together and put it on a speaker phone!

I hope Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) decides to postpone Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee vote on the Michael Mukasey confirmation to be Attorney General after reading this today with his morning coffee:

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government — whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community — has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: “I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure.” He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. “Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning,” he replied, “just gasping between life and death.”

I hope Heather can tell her story, and Dan’s, to the Judiciary Committee before their vote:

When I read about what is happening with the detainees in Gitmo and the dark sites, all I can picture is my beloved Dan lying bruised and beaten and bloody, incoherent from exhaustion and starved from lack of sleep, with no ability to tell his family and his country that he was even alive, and no one knowing where he was. It is happening to people in the name of EVERY American as we speak.

Now comes Michael Mukasey who says he is not familiar with the particular technique of waterboarding and therefore he can not make a determination as to whether it constitutes torture or not. Well, let me assure him and you that waterboarding is torture … period.

Senators Schumer and Feinstein have said they will vote for Mukasey, We have five days to change their minds. You may say it’s a fool’s errand, but for Dan I must. I must speak out until there is no longer breath in my body.

Torture is not what Dan fought for; it’s not what Dan gave his physical health for; it’s not what Dan gave his mental health for.

Give Dan the legacy he deserves and help stop torture as the law, policy and practice of the United States.

What will YOU do to help stop torture?

EVERY American needs to stand up and say:
NOT IN MY NAME!
NEVER IN MY NAME!

Finally, I hope that hope means more than a wish, a prayer, and a four-leaf clover to Dianne Feinstein, who says this about Judge Mukasey:

The bottom line is this: I hope that Judge Mukasey will fairly and evenhandedly represent the American people and direct the Justice Department wherever the facts and the law lead, not where the White House dictates.

If all you can do is hope, Senator Feinstein, hadn’t you best think again about voting to confirm him? You are never going to have any more leverage than you have now. All you’ve gotten from the private meetings, his confirmation hearing testimony, and explanatory followup letters is hope?

You can do better, Senator Feinstein. Better than simply hope.

(YouTube courtesy TPM Veracifier: RGJoe sez “Confirm Mukasey!”)