The Senate reaches a compromise on immigration reform that splits the middle between the Frist-Tancredo hardliners and the Kennedy-McCain moderates. “Under the agreement, the Senate would allow undocumented workers a path to lawful employment and citizenship if they could prove — through work stubs, utility bills or other documents — that they have been in the country for five years. To attain citizenship, those immigrants would have to pay a $2,000 penalty, back taxes, learn English, undergo a criminal background check and remain working for 11 years.” But critics argue that the five-year distinction is a hard one to determine or enforce, and has been since it was first put into law in 1986. Update: Things fall apart.
Category: The Dubya Era
The Leaky Cauldron.
While Dubya and the GOP continue to smear and threaten the whistleblowers who exposed this administration’s recent egregious violations of civil liberties — the warrantless wiretaps or the secret gulags, for example — papers filed by Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclose that Scooter Libby was actually told to leak classified information to the press by Dubya and Cheney (although not necessarily the identity of Valerie Plame.) “Libby said he understood that ‘he was to tell [Judith] Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium,’ Fitzgerald wrote.” Replied DNC chair Howard Dean today, “The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America’s security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe.” At the very least, given his own penchant for selective leaking, it means Dubya is being a tremendous hypocrite every time he starts equating whistleblowers with terrorist sympathizers, and that his repeated promise to find the leakers in his administration is roughly equivalent to OJ’s hunt for the real killers. Update: ABC’s John Cochran and Salon‘s Farhad Manjoo break down the implications. Update 2: Fitzgerald makes a correction.
Hammering Away.
“‘Any rational person in [DeLay’s] position would be very concerned,’ said Kendall Coffey, a former federal prosecutor who is now a prominent defense lawyer in Miami. ‘Whether it’s working up the ladder at Enron or a drug organization, it’s classic strategy to work up by getting plea agreements and cooperation at each level.‘” As the GOP preps for a DeLay-less future, it seems that, for Boss DeLay — despite having theoretically left “on his own terms” — the legal woes are just beginning.
Arch Conservative.
“‘Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will be unremitting on the point of Iraq,’ Buckley said…’If he’d invented the Bill of Rights it wouldn’t get him out of his jam…It’s important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.’”
By way of Cliopatria, National Review founder and Firing Line wit William F. Buckley discusses Dubya’s failings, his own problems with neoconservatism — “The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country.” — and the presidents of his lifetime. “‘[Bill Clinton] is the most gifted politician of, certainly my time,’ Buckley said. ‘He generates a kind of a vibrant goodwill with a capacity for mischief which is very, very American.’”
McClellan to stand down?
“‘You’re going to have more change than you expect,’ one GOP insider said.” According to CNN, Andy Card’s permanent vacation was just the beginning of Dubya’s White House shake-up: The next victims may well be press shill Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow. Update: In related news, Gen. Anthony Zinni calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation on Meet the Press.
Condi’s Moment of Clarity.
“I am quite certain there are going to be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration.” Madam Secretary, you said it.
Topic of Cancer.
“‘We know the president broke the law,’ Leahy said. ‘Now we need to know why.'” With the Dems — except for Feingold and Leahy — AWOL yet again, the Senate Judiciary Committee debates Feingold’s censure resolution and hears testimony from former Nixon counsel John Dean, who is back before Congress for the first time since Watergate. Said Feingold at one point: “If you want the words ‘bad faith’ in [the censure resolution], let’s put them right in, because that’s exactly what we have here…The lawbreaking is shocking in itself, but the defiant way that the president has persisted in defending his actions with specious legal arguments and misleading statements is part of what led me to conclude that censure is a necessary step.” Said the rest of the committee Dems (Kennedy, Biden, Kohl, Feinstein, Schumer, Durbin): Nothing.
Kellogg, Brown, and Loot.
A new report by Rep. Henry Waxman discloses some of Halliburton/KBR’s billing shadiness in Iraq. “In one case, the government’s contracting officials reported that KBR attempted to inflate its cost estimates by paying a supplier more than it was due. In another, KBR cut its cost estimates in half after it was pressed on its true expenses. In a third, KBR billed for work performed by the Iraqi oil ministry.“
The Senate Uprooted.
“There is no issue outside of civil rights that brings out the kind of emotions we have seen.” After a weekend of significant grass-roots protest further suggests the political perils of immigration reform for both parties, the Senate Judiciary Committee votes 12-6 to support a bill by Senators Kennedy and McCain that promotes the more moderate Dubya-backed vision of reform, such as a guest-worker program, over that of the hardline GOP border-security crowd such as Frist and Tancredo. “A confrontation between the Senate and House Republicans now appears inevitable.“
Hearing Hamdan.
“The president’s consistent refusal to try the Guantanamo detainees before criminal courts or courts-martial leads a reasonable observer to conclude that the government’s case would fail if it were subjected to scrutiny by an impartial adjudicator. And if that is the only justification for military tribunals, it must be rejected. No one denies that the war on terror presents new challenges to the rule of law. But prosecuting someone with a crime that does not exist, before a commission that does not have rules, simply does not constitute justice under any set of circumstances.” Slate files several dispatches on the important case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which the Supreme Court (without Chief Justice Roberts, who has recused himself…as should probably Scalia) will hear today. Emily Bazelon finds that GOP Senators Kyl and Graham seem to have tried to deceive the Court about the legislative history of their Detainee Treatment Act, while Ariel Lavinbuk suggests a compromise solution: the Supreme Court could “find that ‘conspiracy’ — the only charge against Hamdan — does not violate the law of war.“
Update: The Court hears the case, and it seems a majority — Scalia and Alito notwithstanding — are not amused with the Dubya administration: “Without Chief Justice John Roberts…the argument seemed lopsided against the government.” Still, as was expected to be the norm on the Roberts Court,”the outcome of the case will likely turn on moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.”