04
Aug
2007
Senate Simpering Sellout 16 Sabotage Surveillance Sanity
ssssssssssssssssssss
That’s one giant hiss, and most of all to the women, and most most of all to the one who is one of my Senators … and not for the first time, sellout Diane Feinstein (aka DiFi) … who was inexcusably enabling Bush already back in 2001 …. and 2002 … but still in 2007?!?! after ALL these years of eye-opening about Bush and Gonzo and now, last night….
she votes to exPAND the unchecked powers of both.
Un. Bee. Leave. Able.
Well, of course, actually not unbelievable, alas: Feinstein had voted for Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 (making herself one of the Democrats ‘Dirty Dozen’ at the time) and then his Mess-O-Po-tamia misadventure and … penultimately, she made herself THE capitulating Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to allow Bush’s ultra-right white male (“he made a mistake” she says) racist-allegation-ridden Mississippi circuit court nominee go forward…. She’s obviously in a doormat mood again these days. Just what we pay her for. And just when her vote alone made the difference.
Women as doormats in the Senate. Why does that get my gall, I wonder: Feinstein, Mikulski, Lincoln, Landrieu, McCaskill, and Klobuchar. Six of the 16 were women, a very disproportionate number of women doing the capitulating. NOT my idea of how women display independence. This was out-and-out deference to the powers that be, to make them all the more powerful. And this on the very day that yet more new revelations came forth about Gonzo’s relentless untruths, misrepresentations … and then they turn around and authorize him to have MORE power???
And any ONE of these made all the difference: Both parties had agreed that 60 votes were required for passage….
No wonder I didn’t vote for you already the last time you were up, DiFi. You disearned my vote a LONG time ago… when you voted for the first Bush tax cuts in 2001 and then this war. But were you ever a “deciding vote” in your subterfuge before? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, just two days ago on the Judiciary Committee, as noted above… So you’re getting worse, more unforgiveable, not less.
And here I thought Democrats were supposed to be finally standing up TO Bush, not FOR him. Where oh where did our Constitution go? Not only civil rights but also separation of powers just given another six-month hiatus…
Here’s the full list of the 16, alpha by state:
Lincoln AR
Pryor AR
Feinstein CA
Salazar CO
Carper DE
Nelson FL
Inouye HI
Bayh IN
Landrieu LA
Mikulski MD
McCaskill MO
Klobuchar MN
Conrad ND
Nelson NE
Casey PA
Webb VA
and then of course the obvious you-know-who sempre-fidelis sellout GI (Genuinely Insipid) Joe:
Lieberman CT
And not to let the men off the hook by any means. I think some Hawaiians (and Japanese-Americans in particular) are going to be none too happy with Inouye either… What’s his rationale for thinking abuses of government power don’t wind up trashing individual civil rights on too-often phoney, and stereotype-based, sweep-em-all-up grounds, eh?
Feinstein is now quoted in Reuters with the following rationale:
“The intelligence community is deeply concerned that chatter among suspected terrorist networks is up.”
“I am concerned as well,” Feinstein said. “We are living in a period of heightened vulnerability and must give the intelligence community the tools they need.”
Let’s see, what was that now engraved-on-conscience quotation of Ben Franklin’s? “Those who would trade liberty for security deservedly get neither.”
For the first time in the history of the FISA law and its court (which would now be pre-empted), putting this new power in the hands of Gonzo and the DNI is giving them yet more permission to act in secret, Executive branch amok unbeholden and unchecked. Rationalize that. As Pelosi herself said yesterday, Gonzo’s utter unreliability only serves to remind the Congress freshly and dramatically that no AG, saint or sinner, Dem or Rep, should ever have this total unchecked power.
Okay, backtracking: I’d heard the NPR interviews last night, with soundbites from Harry and Nancy both insisting there was no way Gonzo would get the added power Bush was demanding.
SO, while Reid at least himself voted accordingly, what possessed these others?
When the vote 60-28 came down in the wee-ish hours Friday night, nowhere on the web were the votes to be found, none of the usual roll-call sites (and still aren’t there — they don’t do Saturday mornings?). The Washington Post (“Senate Votes To Expand Warrantless Surveillance / White House Applauds; Changes Are Temporary”)and AP were first in with the story as it broke last night, with the count but no naming of the 16 saboteurs, and this morning the NYT wasn’t even giving the actual vote count, in either of 2 web articles on the vote. And Google coughed up none of the roll call of votes. The LA Times gave the vote count but zero mention of how California’s own Senators voted.
What kind of top 3 MSM sources ARE these papers? I mean their politics has been sellout enough, what about some basic info? Only the SF Chronicle had that info on California’s own Senators, thus revealing DiFi’s latest sabotage.
Yet, finally, after much repeated searching, there the list was of the 16, sickeningly enough, on two sites (why didn’t the search engines cough them up?), namely Daily Kos and Talk Left, which, if you can stand it, has the only real-time blow-by-blow blogging I’ve seen of the Senate vote last night, with intermittent alarms noting how first Landrieu changed her vote to a Nay, then went BACK to a Yea (for the Bushie version of this surveillance expansion).
But still no full roll call on the web as yet and no mention elsewhere of who didn’t even vote. I mean 60 + 28 = 88; Johnson of SD still ill, but 11 other Dems MIA?
The Senate voted “side by side” on two versions of the surveillance expansion, a Democratic version (Levin-Rockefeller) and a Bushie version (McConnell-Bond). As noted only on Talk Left, simperers like DiFi voted for BOTH versions. Talk about straddling fences. How can a person think it’s both okay to take authority away from the FISA court and give it to Gonzo and the DNI, and also NOT okay to take away that power and invest it all in the Executive branch?
For more, here’s the Truthout take.
See also John Nichols’ The Nation Online Beat column (“Lieberman v. Feingold and the Constitution”). (btw, next week’s Moyers program is slated to be a follow-up to the Nichols-Fein push for impeachment which aired July 13 to much acclaim)
On balkanization as well as Talking Points memo Muckraker , there’s “exclusive” reportage on how the DNI (Director of National Intelligence McConnell, allegedly no relation to slithering Senator who co-authored the ‘winning’ bill) had actually reached an agreement with Democrats only to have Bush quash the DNI, even while saying publicly yesterday that all Bush wanted to know was that the DNI was satisfied with the bill.
DNI. Hm. Damage Nearly Inevitable? Do Not Investigate? Democracy Needs Impeachment?
Diane Negates Intelligence?
McConnell’s title should be PNI: Puppet of National Intelligence.
There have been some minor changes and additions to this post since it first appeared, including having copied the list of 16 from a Talk Left posting without having checked either their spellings or state codes for the Senators, now corrected.
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This is one of those issues to which I have to say, “so what?” I agree that Feinstein and the other Dems should have taken a stand on this and not caved.
But what would they have been standing for? Not a hell of a lot. This is how the New York Times wrote up the dispute in the House, which is about to approve its version of the bill:
Oh wow! That makes me feel a whole lot better! My Democrats are protecting me! Instead of letting the AG have free reign over surveillance – though he’d have a “basket warrant,” which sounds pretty free to me – he’d have to have the secret court approve his procedure, and the Justice Department Inspector General would have to do an audit every 60 days.
Well, let’s see now: How many warrants has that court turned down in the last couple of years? According to the LA Times, in 2005 approvals outnumbered denials 2,072 to 0; in 2006 approvals outnumbered denials 2,176 to “part of one.”
Well, with a court like that, who needs it? After all, says the NYT,
Oh wow! “Clearly erroneous.” That makes me feel a whole lot better! My Republicans are protecting me! Who would decide what’s “clearly erroneous?” An irrelevant court. And how would we know anyway?
And therein is the real problem: the sheer existence of the secret court – which was created in 1978, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. A Democrat.
In this case, the Republicans don’t really want to bother with the court at all, and the Democrats’ plan went along with that in all but a couple of details, which are pretty meaningless anyway, since the court does what the administration wants an overwhelming majority of the time. And so why not just vote with the administration anyway, since the Democrats’ “safeguards” are like letting the pit bull into the hen house as long as it’s wagging its tail and grinning all friendly-like?
I don’t know that the issue of surveillance and the secret court itself is all that important to you, judging from your post. It’s just another example of increasing Big Brotherism. What seems more important is the issue of Democrats caving once again on a matter of significant import for a democratic system of government. I don’t know if the NYT got it right in its description of why Democrats collapsed, but given their performance of the last few decades, it sounds about right to me:
In other words, Democrats are still chicken-shits, too scared of the Republican media bulldozer to stand up for what’s right. Either that, or they don’t know what’s right anymore, after years of indoctrination by the Democratic Leadership Council, and so can’t stand up for it. If you’re a chicken-shit, and if your own proposal doesn’t amount to a hill of chicken-shit, why not vote for Bush?
And don’t give too much credit to the Democrats who are putting up a fight about being bullied by the leadership into acquiescence. After all, they wanted their own version of the bill, with its “basket warrant,” general approval by the secret court, and a regular audit by our trusted and honorable Justice Department.
Like I said, chicken shit.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:15 amSomething I forgot to get into in the top post (which I did already add some bits to — about Inouye, and quoting Feinstein — since the first draft) is the internal debate or difference in vote among Intell Committee members themselves:
Here, fyi, are the current members, Dems, then GOP:
John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia, Chairman *Dianne Feinstein, California
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Evan Bayh, Indiana
Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
*Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin
Bill Nelson, Florida
*Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
Harry Reid, Nevada, Ex Officio
Carl Levin, Michigan, Ex Officio
GOP:
Christopher S. Bond, Missouri, Vice Chairman / Ranking Member
John Warner, Virginia
Chuck Hagel, Nebraska
Saxby Chambliss, Georgia
*Orrin Hatch, Utah
Olympia J. Snowe, Maine
Richard Burr, North Carolina
Mitch McConnell, Kentucky, Ex Officio
John McCain, Arizona, Ex Officio
* = also on Judiciary Committee, the other key component in this legislation
So, of the 4 Senators on both crucial committees (presumably meaning the maximum of ‘inside knowledge’ on how both are operating), you have Feingold and Whitehouse voting against the bill, Feinstein and Hatch voting for it. Nice company to be keeping, Diane.
Here’s what Chmn Rockefeller had to say about the bill, he who has been chairing or ranking member on Intelligence Committee in the Senate seemingly forever: that it lacked “the privacy protections and safeguards American citizens deserve and expect” (LA Times quote) and “provides a weak and practically nonexistent court review” (Washington Post).
Further quoting from the Washington Post, linked in top post:
More later, but these are bases for my review so far of the bills and their process as suggesting that it was not nearly so minor as the NY Times conveys.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:56 amThere is a third option, M. Congress could have passed a different bill that really enforced constitutional norms. Sorta possible.
Anyway, there is a real effect to enacting legislation … even if inaction continues the status quo ante. It authorizes something. It puts an impritatur on it by our representatives. Likewise, voting for the administration bill means something too. This is why Bush is so concerned about appearances. They do matter.
Anyway, a belt of thanks as well for Dianne Fienstein’s support of Judge Leslie Southwick. Her passionate support of the judge’s off the bench public service and desire not to let two unfortunate rulings (Emily Bazelon’s article over at Slate explained it is a lot more than that) besmirch such a fine public servant.
Oh well.
August 4th, 2007 at 12:06 pmThe House bill differs from the Senate one only, as far as I can tell, in the number of days before an audit. The Senate bill is weaker here. But my points still stand: the FISA court never sees a warrant it doesn’t like; and allowing the Justice Department the power of auditing the program is to make a mockery of the idea of an audit. Even if the audit is honest – and that’s an enormous “if” – the perception is that Justice is corrupt, inefficient, incompetent, and politically compromised. Because a secret court is allowed to exist and rule on issues that go to the heart of the Constitution and our freedoms, any bill purporting to regulate it and the programs that need its approval is meaningless.
Unless, as Joe says, that passing such bills puts our representatives on record. But I have a problem with that glass half full, too: Most Americans are not following this too closely; it’s arcane, they don’t know the details, and as a matter of fact neither do we nor our representatives, because it’s all a secret. And it seems to me that just the fact of the government keeping such power secret from the people is a violation of the core of the Constitution, let alone the fact that the secret is all about secret spying on American citizens.
August 4th, 2007 at 2:36 pmA ‘reasonable expecation of privacy,’ to use a key principle, is ultimately a subjective test that is up to the people’s willness and ability to expect and defend. It seems corny, but cases like this ultimately do show the importance of us regular citizen sorts in defending our republican values.
I second the secrecy aspect, open government being such a key part of things. Compare the not always benign search at borders or airports, where we physically are there, and are able to in some way judge what is going on. Those who blithely cite that as if this program is therefore okay ignore the key differences involved.
August 5th, 2007 at 1:30 amLies, untruths, inaccuracies, misrepresentations, distortions, and slop. What’s the difference really if they all serve the propaganda underlying an ever-expanding imperial Presidency and out-of-control Executive Branch? Now factor in “new math.”
And, again, not just from the Bushies but from the MSM. How could this one even fly? With either the House yesterday or the NYT’s reporting on them today and their — hm, what to call it? — misrepresentation (such a milquetoast word anymore) of the prior night’s Senate vote, which this thread has addressed at length.
(Granted that we still today only have the word of TalkLeft and Kos to go on as to the Senate votes on this bill… Still no full roll call vote up on sites like Thomas … Their site claims that roll calls are entered there within an hour of the vote, so I figured the explanation was being a weekend, however, today they already have the roll call up for the House vote yesterday, which means entering 435 votes, yet still no record of the Senate vote from Friday, entering a mere 100 votes? What’s up with that?)
Where’s the error in reporting? Here’s where: in the NYT article today, on the House passage of the same bill, 227 to 183 (Pelosi, like Reid, going down, albeit true to their word, personally voting against it and Pelosi quoted in this article as saying, in defeat, that the measure “does violence to the Constitution of the United States.”)
The rub is where THIS claim in the NYT article comes from:
Okay, let’s review again, from above. The Senate Intelligence Committee, as per the Senate’s own website, consists of the following Democrats:
John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia, Chairman
*Dianne Feinstein, California
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Evan Bayh, Indiana
Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
*Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin
Bill Nelson, Florida
*Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island
Harry Reid, Nevada, Ex Officio
Carl Levin, Michigan, Ex Officio
(again the * means they’re also on the Judiciary Committee)
Those who voted for this travesty of capitulation are in bold: Feinstein, Bayh, Mikulski and Nelson. That’s four, out of 8 (and out of 10 if you count the ex-officios, which they must not be doing here).
That leaves 4, suggesting that in fact it was a 4-4 split among Senate Intell Democrats.
Notice that Blunt himself only says that “Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats” voted for it. HE doesn’t even, in this quote, claim that it was a majority of them. What he does is artfully (oh, those clever GOPs) exploit English grammar in the name of “deniability”: His sentence can mean one of two things, given the absence of his own adjective qualifier: it can mean “some” Senate Intell Dems voted for it, or it can mean “all” Senate Intell Dems voted for it. So had he been going for “full truth,” he would have added the word “some.” Instead he propagandized by hoping to be construed as meaning — by those who might be uninformed among his listeners (? do these guys have listeners besides the media? Usually anymore we see them speaking to empty or near-empty chambers) — something greater than the actual number or percentage of Senate Intell Dems who voted for it.
But the real inaccuracy actually comes in the NYT reporting (by Carl Hulse and Edmund L. Andrews): They went beyond Blunt’s words and made the claim, inaccurate by any measure, that the bill was “supported by most Democratic members of the panel that oversees intelligence operations.”
Shame on you, NYT. You fell right into what Blunt wanted you to, just as the NYT and all the MSM have been doing for six long years — the GOP’s work for them. They give you an inch and you take it a mile.
The only possibility to account for the NYT to have made such a claim (still erroneously) is that one or more of those remaining 4 simply was not there and didn’t vote. We know Rockefeller and Feingold were present, and were quoted fuming over this bill. As to Wyden and Whitehouse: status unknown as yet. (Which, if so, makes their absence even more of a travesty because their absence got propagandized, facilitating such a claim to get made by Blunt and then picked up and furthered by the NYT.)
But, even if the Senate Intell Dem vote was 4 in favor, 3 opposed and 1 not voting, that does NOT make a basis for claiming that “most” of the Senate Intell Dems voted for it, only that most of those who actually voted were in favor, not “most” of the Senate Intell Dem members.
I give another “ssssssssss” to the NYT today. Unless the sources for the 16 votes, STILL not mentioned in the mainstream media, only available via sources cited yesterday here like TalkLeft and Kos, are somehow incorrect, I see no basis for the NYT to have bought into this and, worse, converted even what Blunt propagandistically but ambiguously claimed, into an outright misrepresentation, i.e., a lie. (If we don’t start calling these things lies every time the media does this, there’s no way they’re ever going to wake up. All lesser terms have apparently lost any weight of conscience whatsoever with this MSM of ours.)
August 5th, 2007 at 6:22 amZinya,
August 5th, 2007 at 7:25 amWhat’s the explanation for Feinstein’s various positions that you outlined, given that she runs in California?
To Montfort’s comments about the FISA court, while I don’t dispute the record of approvals of applications, it does have the potential deterrent effect of making the DOJ think about what it is asking for because there is no assurance that the court will rubberstamp everything. The administration in fact argued, as I recall, that it needed to avoid “speed bumps” given the “urgency” of the issues involved. Those “speed bumps” aren’t just the time required to prepare a petition. They are also the necessity for offering something cogent in support of the petition.
Hi Jack,
I share your view of why this is a big deal (not to put words in your mouth — I think it’s a big deal– symbolically as Joe pointed out above and pragmatically too as you do here).
As to Feinstein, I think what she gets by on (in terms of getting re-elected) is an appearance of clout and that she has Boxer catching all the flak and hatred from the GOP, leaving her as the one who “skirts through” so to speak, getting less focus and less outrage.
What makes DiFi tick and vote the way she does? Well, outside of women’s issues and gun control and some other Democratic staples, on which she’s usually pretty good, she really is DLC material, and surely cuz her own pocketbook puts her there. She’s the wealthy California Democratic woman Senator, not Boxer. She’s the one who “sees” the corporate point of view on things – ahem – and who mouths words of compromise also based, i think, on her asperation to be every bit the “senior Senator.”
(She technically is our ‘senior Senator’, even though she and Boxer both ran and won in their same first year, 1992. But because Feinstein was running for the unfinished seat vacated by Pete Wilson when he became Gov in 1990, she became Senator in November immediately following election –and had to run again 2 yrs later when that seat came up for its regular cycle, while Boxer only became Senator the following January.)
And clearly it suits her, stylistically. She would have acted like the ‘above the fray’ arbiter type whether she were ‘senior’ or not, and so she gives her own moderateness (even conservative in the DLC sense) the aura of authority which she has parlayed into this kind of across-the-aisles “respect” (at least in lipservice) she gets touted for. But it’s indicative of how mushy she is, how vulnerable really to abandoning liberal perspective on things like taxes, in the name of her own business connections (her husband — since 1980, her third husband — being a very ‘connected’ investment banker with dealings in China and other things which ‘color’ her votes on trade matters as well). See the wikipedia entry on her for more, if interested.
I’ve written her each time she’s done something outrageous, partly out of pique because I worked for her first election in a combined Clinton-Feinstein-Boxer campaign in 1992, and have repeatedly felt betrayed by her votes. To no avail, of course.
August 5th, 2007 at 9:17 amAs to Senate roll, per Balkanization, IO noticed that Yahoo has an AP article providing the count dated Friday.
BTW, I think the alternative had both symbolic and concrete value, though agree with M. that the latter left something to be desired. Likewise, I recommend Glenn Greenwald’s piece yesterday, which includes an interview with Sen. Dodd that provides an inside look at the Senate mind-set.
August 5th, 2007 at 10:04 amAh, thanks much Joe. I must have passed through Balkanization before they had this link yesterday — their coverage has been updated a lot; here’s the link to all its thorough commentary — and I had not found that AP article. I don’t know why it didn’t come up on a Google search for the roll call vote yesterday.
And thanks for the mention of Greenwald and Dodd.
For convenience sake, recapping now the vote here in, imo, an easier fashion to process than the AP’s layout.
And this does change a few things; First of all, the SF Chronicle was wrong yesterday. I praised them for citing how California’s Senators voted, even while growling at Feinstein for voting Yes. However, they got Boxer wrong: They said she voted No, but this says she was one of 6 Dems (and 6 Republicans) who didn’t vote. I see they have subsequently revised their web version accordingly.
Secondly, it confirms my post above here, about today’s NYT coverage: All of the Senate Intell Democrats were present and voted, no absentees, hence they were split 4 to 4 (and the Yeas were in the minority 4 to 6 if you count the ex-officios). So there was ZERO basis for the NYT to go further than Blunt did and claim that “most” of them supported the bill.
Anyway, for anyone’s interest and easier reference, here were the votes grouped by position:
YEAS (43 R, 16 D, 1 Inde)
Alabama : Sessions (R) Yes; Shelby (R) Yes.
Alaska: Murkowski (R) Yes; Stevens (R) Yes.
Arizona: Kyl (R) Yes
Arkansas: Lincoln (D) Yes; Pryor (D) Yes.
California: Feinstein (D) Yes.
Colorado: Allard (R) Yes; Salazar (D) Yes.
Connecticut: Lieberman (I) Yes.
Delaware: Carper (D) Yes.
Florida: Martinez (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Georgia: Chambliss (R) Yes; Isakson (R) Yes.
Hawaii: Inouye (D) Yes.
Idaho: Craig (R) Yes; Crapo (R) Yes.
Indiana: Bayh (D) Yes
Iowa: Grassley (R) Yes
Kansas: Brownback (R) Yes; Roberts (R) Yes.
Kentucky: McConnell (R) Yes.
Louisiana: Landrieu (D) Yes; Vitter (R) Yes.
Maine: Collins (R) Yes; Snowe (R) Yes.
Maryland: Mikulski (D) Yes.
Minnesota: Coleman (R) Yes; Klobuchar (D) Yes.
Mississippi: Cochran (R) Yes
Missouri: Bond (R) Yes; McCaskill (D) Yes.
Nebraska: Hagel (R) Yes; Nelson (D) Yes.
Nevada: Ensign (R) Yes
New Hampshire: Sununu (R) Yes.
New Mexico: Domenici (R) Yes.
North Carolina: Burr (R) Yes; Dole (R) Yes.
North Dakota: Conrad (D) Yes
Ohio: Voinovich (R) Yes.
Oklahoma: Coburn (R) Yes; Inhofe (R) Yes.
Oregon: Smith (R) Yes
Pennsylvania: Casey (D) Yes; Specter (R) Yes.
South Carolina: DeMint (R) Yes; Graham (R) Yes.
South Dakota: Thune (R) Yes.
Tennessee: Corker (R) Yes.
Texas: Cornyn (R) Yes; Hutchison (R) Yes.
Utah: Bennett (R) Yes; Hatch (R) Yes.
Virginia: Warner (R) Yes; Webb (D) Yes.
Wyoming: Barrasso (R) Yes; Enzi (R) Yes.
NAYS: 28 (27 D; 1 Ind.)
Connecticut: Dodd (D) No
Delaware: Biden (D) No;
Hawaii: Akaka (D) No;
Illinois: Durbin (D) No; Obama (D) No.
Maryland: Cardin (D) No
Massachusetts: Kennedy (D) No
Michigan: Levin (D) No; Stabenow (D) No.
Montana: Baucus (D) No; Tester (D) No.
Nevada: Reid (D) No.
New Jersey: Lautenberg (D) No; Menendez (D) No.
New Mexico: Bingaman (D) No
New York: Clinton (D) No; Schumer (D) No.
Ohio: Brown (D) No
Oregon: Wyden (D) No.
Rhode Island: Reed (D) No; Whitehouse (D) No.
Vermont: Leahy (D) No; Sanders (I) No.
Washington: Cantwell (D) No
West Virginia: Byrd (D) No; Rockefeller (D) No.
Wisconsin: Feingold (D) No; Kohl (D) No.
NOT VOTING: 12 (6 R; 6 D)
Arizona: McCain (R) Not Voting.
August 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pmCalifornia: Boxer (D) Not Voting;
Indiana: Lugar (R) Not Voting.
Iowa: Harkin (D) Not Voting.
Kentucky: Bunning (R) Not Voting;
Massachusetts: Kerry (D) Not Voting.
Mississippi: Lott (R) Not Voting.
New Hampshire: Gregg (R) Not Voting
North Dakota: Dorgan (D) Not Voting.
South Dakota: Johnson (D) Not Voting
Tennessee: Alexander (R) Not Voting
Washington: Murray (D) Not Voting.
Hey! What’s up with you guys? Didn’t anybody like my simile?
C’mon! Let’s have a little appreciation party here!
Well, I thought it was right on point and pretty witty, too, if I do say so myself. And apparently I have to ’cause no one else will.
August 5th, 2007 at 2:22 pmA second reply to Joe with another thanks: I just read the Greenwald piece at Salon you recommended (and he has now updated it with his entire Dodd interview, not just the excerpts yesterday dealing with this Senate bill).
A few (among too many) salient quotes from his piece, which was — to use his own word about his interview with Dodd — “dispiriting” … to face the lack of spine, Dodd himself having no real explanation for how and why so many Democrats keep capitulating on one matter or another to Bush’s whip-cracking.
Memory may ill serve me but I have to think that this tendency has increased sharply in the Bush years and – no surprise — my only explanation is that the MSM themselves have played so heavily into Bush’s hands for so long, so willing to quote unchastised the GOP’s omnipresent “how unpatriotic” slurs against Democrats, that it has cowed more Democrats more often than ever. Did they toe the line for George Bush Sr. even, that recently, the way they have for Jr? I don’t think so. Maybe my gray cells have gotten too much grayer to recall well.
Anyway, a few excerpts from Glenn Greenwald:
August 5th, 2007 at 2:25 pmMe again. Here’s more ‘inside ballpark’ — Congressional Quarterly report on the vote (“White House Wins Standoff…” with some previously unseen comments from Feinstein and McCaskill and, for the first time, a record of the vote on the alternate Democratic (Rockefeller-Levin) bill, which was defeated, 43-45.
The quoted comments of our nation’s fine Senators here must be read to be believed. Highpoints:
August 5th, 2007 at 3:36 pmBelated comment to Monty: my wife points out that pit bulls are not the problem in hen houses; beagles are. She bases this on personal experience. It wasn’t that I didn’t like your simile; I didn’t get it. Sorry.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:01 pm