Ahmadinejad spoke at a college!!! Is America still whole?

The right wing in this country really can't take debate, whether it's debating laws (talking about surveillance will kill Americans!!!!) or a powerless clown like Ahmadinejad at Columbia. Even President frickin Bush understands that a country that's confident in their democracy can afford to hear WORDS without turning to jelly:

President Bush said Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia "speaks volumes about, really, the greatness of America."

He told Fox News Channel that if Bollinger considered Ahmadinejad's visit an educational experience for Columbia students, "I guess it's OK with me."

Bollinger, the President of Columbia, was so caustic toward Ahmadinejad, calling him a "petty and cruel dictator) (he apparently doesn't get the Iranian political hierarchy either), that it was clear he had been cowed by the right into being overly belligerent. But the point of open debate being vital to society was proven when Ahmadinejad claimed that his country doesn't have any homosexuals. I know some members of the right immediately responded to that by booking flights to move there, but the point is that such a patently ridiculous statement exposed Ahmadinejad for the fool that he is. We should be encouraging that, not stifling it.

And here's another debate we really SHOULD be having. Apparently the Senate exists only to make Sense of the Senate resolutions, but this one is scary (naturally, Lieberman wrote it):

(b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate--

(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;

(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;

(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and

(6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.

When we have the President being advised on Iran policy by the guy who is pleading to blow it up, this kind of resolution is not only unhelpful, it's dangerous. We'll see if we have a functioning democracy today by seeing if the Democrats can manage to strike this nonsense down.