“Leave it to Rumsfeld to invoke memories of Vietnam as others in the administration are trying to dispel such comparisons. Leave it to the Senate to miss the slip-up.” In yet another sad example of the AWOL Senate of late, Slate‘s Fred Kaplan watches the Appropriations Committee flub a hearing with Rumsfeld and Rice on Iraq.
Tag: Congress
Rubber Stamp Roberts.
“Far from ‘reasserting responsibility and oversight,’ Congress is putting itself out of business. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., suggested that, after this week, the intelligence committee will sink ‘further into irrelevancy.’ The Times went a step further today and declared the committee dead.” Century Foundation fellow Patrick Radden Keefe takes issue with the Pat Roberts “compromise” over the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps.
Bye Dubai.
Soon after GOP leaders tell Dubya the port deal is dead, Dubai Ports World pull the plug themselves by announcing they will divest all American interests, including operation of the six ports in question. Well, I guess it’s healthy to see Congress finally stand up to Dubya…but, frankly, this Dubai takeover has been a sideshow issue from the beginning. If only our reps demonstrated a similar spine on any number of other, more significant administration policies: the NSA wiretaps, the Patriot Act, prewar intelligence, our newfound proclivity to torture, bankruptcy legislation, you name it…including the still-extant question of port security.
The Spirit of ’94.
As Slate‘s John Dickerson surveys the likelihood of a 1994-like takeover by the Dems in November, his colleague Jacob Weisberg excoriates the Democratic leadership for lack of vision.
No (More) Such Thing as a Free Lunch.
Good news for the Union Station food court: Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rick Santorum (R-PA) successfully add a ban on lobbyist-paid meals to the reform bill. (Santorum, you say? Well, apparently, he chooses to conduct his theoretically-suspended meetings with lobbyists after breakfast.) And here’s a strange “reform” addition to the same bill: “Separately, the Senate approved by voice vote an amendment by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would deny to any lawmaker a pay increase that he votes against but that eventually becomes law.“
Jacked In.
“In a different era I’d be killed on the street or have poison poured into my coffee.” Matt Drudge previews a forthcoming Vanity Fair interview with Casino Jack, and interspersed among the delusions of grandeur are more indications that GOP higher-ups — among them Dubya, DeLay, Newt, Burns, Mehlman, and McCain — knew Abramoff better than they’re letting on. “You’re really no one in this town unless you haven’t met me.” Update: Reuters confirms.
Dubai Dare.
“‘Listen, this is a very big political problem,’ said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), explaining that he had to give his rank-and-file members a chance to vote. ‘There are two things that go on in this town. We do public policy, and we do politics. And you know, most bills at the end of the day, the politics and the policy kind of come together, but not always. And we are into one of these situations where this has become a very hot political potato.’” Content to curl up like lapdogs when civil liberties are on the table, Republicans remain livid over Dubaigate, with House leaders setting up a voice vote to kill the port deal in the next few days. Update: It has begun — the House Appropriations Committee votes 62-2 to add a block of the deal to a war funding measure.
Payne Prevention.
Conservative judicial nominee James Payne, whom Salon‘s Will Evans outed as corrupt this past January, withdraws his name from contention for the bench…or has it withdrawn. “A Senate confirmation hearing for Payne that would have been likely to highlight the ethical problems…could have proved embarrassing to the Bush administration, Oklahoma’s Republican senators James Inhofe and Tom Coburn — who have backed Payne so far — and the judge himself.“
The Treason of the Senate, Redux.
“‘The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House through its chairman,’ [Senator Jay Rockfeller (D-WV)] told reporters. ‘At the direction of the White House, the Republican majority has voted down my motion to have a careful and fact-based review of the National Security Agency’s surveillance eavesdropping activities inside the United States.’” Once again, on a party line vote and at the behest of Chairman Pat Roberts (by way of the Dubya administration,) the GOP members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence vote down an investigation into the NSA warrantless wiretaps….meaning presumed committee moderates Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel buckled under pressure again.
And, speaking of buckling under pressure, the House pass the Patriot Act 280-138. “‘I rise in strong opposition to this legislation because it offers only a superficial reform that will have little if any impact on safeguarding our civil liberties,’ [Congressman Dennis] Kucinich said…’Congress has failed to do its job as a coequal branch of government…The administration’s attack on our democracy has to be reigned in.‘”
Snatching Defeat…
“You know what I think? I don’t think we have a message.” With the administration faltering weekly, multiple investigations into GOP corruption coming to a head, and several congressional Republicans calling it quits (including longtime House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas), the Post surveys the varying Democratic strategies to win back Congress in 2006. Frankly, folks, it doesn’t look good, even given the great hand we’ve been dealt of late. As you might expect from Will Rogers’ famous dictum, no two people mentioned in this article — Reid, Pelosi, Dean, Emanuel, Schumer, Vilsack — seem to be on the same page.