The XX Factor: What women really think.

Dear Chuck...

Specifically, contributions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which Schumer chairs, as a reprimand for his judiciary committee swing vote today, in favor of Bush's nominee for attorney general. Of course, Mukasey already seemed as much Schumer's guy as the president's, since Mr. DSCC kept bragging that the nomination was all his idea—right up until Mukasey refused to call waterboarding torture.

In their intensity, those who want to see Schumer punished—as a deterrent—remind me of my family of Midwestern conservatives, nocturnal Republicans who'd stay up all night decrying the Trilateral Commission. When my Aunt Ginny stopped by our place one day to report that the Commies were coming, a schoolmate who didn't know this happened all the time in my house burst into tears. And oh, Gin took fund-raising letters from her party personally; Ronald Reagan was counting on her, she'd say.

So I thought of her, not only with fondness but fresh kinship, as I tore into the message in my inbox this morning, from Schumer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Dear MELINDA,'' it began; see, they know me! Surely, CHUCK was writing to explain himself. Which was great, because I had a hard time following that part in his New York Times op-ed about how we know for sure Mukasey would be better than whatever caretaker AG we would otherwise get. Skip the advice and consent now, in other words, so as to maybe be able to offer it later—when something really important is at stake?

Let's see here, hmm, the letter offers a "little Senate update, a 10-second strategy session,'' but mentions nothing about the matter at hand. It does say that "2008 is the Halley's Comet of elections.'' Oh, and that "we can nail the trifecta next year if we start filling our war chests now.'' But through some oversight, shy Schumer's name is not even on the thing, which is signed by James Carville.

As a result, I'm stuck parsing the op-ed, in which Schumer explains that "Judge Mukasey's refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me.'' But, no worries, he goes on to say, because Congress is considering a law that would explicitly ban the practice. Like I'm considering the conclusion that fund-raising is the only reason we even have two parties.

Last week, Schumer argued that Mukasey is "the best we can get'' from President Bush: "From this administration, we will never get somebody who agrees with us on issues like torture and wiretapping.'' But who is this ‘we' again? Count me out, along with those online warriors who find today's plea for money so resistible.

"For the Senate to make a bold declaration about torture and waterboarding by rejecting him is appealing,'' Schumer says in his op-ed. Only, not appealing enough; it is just so embarrassing getting all worked up over the fate of the Republic, like my out-there Aunt Ginny and the whole of the blogosphere. Yet if not over the notion that the United States does not stoop to torture, then when?