Category: Congress

US Congress Obstacle to US/India Nuke Deal

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While it looks like the Indian PM Manmohan Singh may find the votes to approve the deal with the US on civilian nuclear power, it appears that it’s unlikely to make it through Congress this year.

The legislation that enabled the negotiations, the 2006 Hyde act, requires that Congress, “be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it”, and there are only 40 days to the August recess, when we are in election season.

While it is possible that this could be finished in a post election lame duck session, that is unlikely, a lame duck session that long would run into the holiday season, and none of the Democrats are even remotely interested in giving Bush time to try last minute hail Mary legislative initiatives.

In the next session, approval may be even more unlikely. In the US, this process has primarily been about political payback to the US nuclear industry, which has supported Republicans.

Here’s hoping, particularly since it appears that India will continue to build nuclear weapons.

Another Couple of Seats Become Competitive

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This time, it’s the brothers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, the wingnuttiest of the anti-Castro wingnuts, who appear to be vulnerable.

Remembering that undecided tend to break for the challenger 2:1 ratio:

Lincoln Diaz-Balart leads former Hialeah mayor Raul Martinez 41 percent to 37 percent in the poll, with 22 percent undecided. Mario Diaz-Balart leads Joe Garcia, former chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, 44 percent to 39 percent, with 17 percent undecided.

Margin of error is 5% which puts both candidates within the margin of error.

I would also say that the undecides are likely to break even harder against them than the normal trend, as the Diaz-Balart’s are the unelected royalty of the right wing Cuban emigre community, and that community is likely already fully plumbed, while the undecideds are likely non-Cuban Hispanics and whites who have increasingly become, particularly since the Elian affair, disgusted with the anti-Castro whack job community.

The FISA Vote is Tomorrow

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Contact your Senators, any friends of the Senators, any pets of the Senators, and tell them that a vote for this bill is a betrayal of the basic values of this nation.

Note that in addition to an amendment to strip immunity, there is also an amendment to make immunity contingent on the final Ispector General report as to whether government agencies broke the law, which Mukasey and McConnell say is worth vetoing the whole bill.

Also, please give to the Blue America/FISA fund, which will punish Dems who capitulate on basic American rights and value when no capitulation is necessary.

They are running this full page ad in the WaPo today.

Also help Regina Thomas defeat John Barrow, one the most reactionary Democrat in Congress, and one of the most prominent supporters of the FISA capitulation in the primary a week from today in Georgia’s 12th Congressional district.

The Bush Blue Dogs need to be shown that their votes against America have consequences.

No more Vichy Dems.

raise-your-voice-blue-america.png

New York Times Slams Senate and Obama Over FISA

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Mostly it’s the Senate, that they condemn, though the distinguished Senator from Illinois is mentioned. It is a remarkably full throated condemnation of Senate, and Democratic cowardice:

Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Christopher Dodd and Jeff Bingaman plan to offer amendments to do that, but there is little chance they will pass. The Senate should reject this bill and start over with modest legislation that makes the small needed changes and preserves Americans’ fundamental protections.

Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, has supported the weakening of FISA. Senator Barack Obama vowed in January (when he was still fighting for the Democratic nomination) that he would filibuster against immunity. Now he says he will vote for an “imperfect” bill and fix it if he wins. Sound familiar?

Proponents of the FISA deal say companies should not be “punished” for cooperating with the government. That’s Washington-speak for a cover-up. The purpose of withholding immunity is not to punish but to preserve the only chance of unearthing the details of Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping. Only a few senators, by the way, know just what those companies did.

Restoring some of the protections taken away by an earlier law while creating new loopholes in the Constitution is not a compromise. It is a failure of leadership.

We know that the Times is right about this, because Fred Hiatt, the editor of the end worst OP/ED page in the nation™*, finds flip flopping by Obama, specifically on Iraq, to be laudable, , and believes that the FISA bill is just ducky thank you, which proves the NY times correct.

If you go against the WaPo editorial pages, you will be right an embarrassing amount of the time., and the Times is right this time; there is far more to hate about the bill than telco immunity.

*The undisputed champion of wanktacular OP/ED pages, by a knockout, is still the Wall Street Journal.

Republicans Will Cave on Medicare Funding

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The Republicans are holding up a Medicare funding plan which reduces subsidies to private insurers offering “Medicare Advantage” in order to raise doctors fees in the stand, and the AMA is taking out ads targeting the Republicans opposing this.

You see the Republicans believe that they only way to bring efficiency to the medical market is to bring in private enterprise, but private enterprise is much less efficient than basic Medicare, so they need subsidies to compete.

The reality is that the Medicare advantage program is about two things:

  • Ideology trumping reality.
  • Republithugs getting donations from insurance companies.

Bush is promising a veto, and doctors are already shutting down practices or no longer accepting new Medicare patients, so this will get ugly quickly.

If the Dems have any brains, they will fold their arms, and say, “this is the deal”, and let the Republicans founder.

Crooks and Liars » Congressional Races: Things Are Looking Up For Democratic Candidates

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Here is a rundown of where the Congressional elections are sitting, note that the races in red are moving toward Repuplicans, the other ones are moving toward Democrats.

Likely Democratic to Lean Democratic: PA-11, FL-08

Likely Republican to Lean Republican: FL-21, PA-03, WV-02

Solid Republican to Likely Republican: AL-03, CA-46, FL-09, FL-18, IA-04, ID-01, IN-03, KY-02, MN-02, NC-10, NE-02, NJ-05, NV-02, OH-07, PA-05, PA-15, TX-07, TX-10, VA-05, VA-10, WY-AL

Toss Up to Lean Democratic: NY-13, NY-25

Happy dance.

Judge: FISA Is Already Exclusive Means of Electronic Surveillance

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Well, this ruling shoots a hole in the claim that Dems are getting something from the current FISA clusterf%$#. The Judge says that the original FISA bill is the exclusive means for wiretap.

That being the case, this means that Bush has been violating the law already, and a felony to boot, and that the bill does not change the legal situation.

So the Dems have nothing, except for proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Oh, I forgot:

NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!

Thank you Speaker Pelosi for taking impeachment off the table.

Good Legislation: Ban on Child Gulags

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Dogemperor at Kos notes that HR 6358 has passed the House, and so will be on its way to the Senate.

This bill would regulate the completely unregulated world of teen “residential treatment facilities”. Among its features:

  • Requires ongoing monitoring of facilities
  • Establishes national database of reports of abuse
  • Requires regular reports to the Secretary of HHS
  • Appropriates $15,000,000 for this effort
  • Agrant program as a lever to get states to supervise these facilities
  • Requires formal followup peer-review studies
  • Background checks on people working at these facilities.
  • Requiring training on child abuse, neglect, and dangerous conditions such as hypothermia and heat stroke for employees
  • Keeping kids incommunicado is forbidden.

Unfortunately, offshoring facilities to avoid supervision is still allowed in this bill though.

Bush is may veto this, as he has his done his level best to make sure that faith based social services group are given a complete free ride, and the worst, and most unregulated, groups are religiously based ones like “Teen Challenge”.

Keith Olberman Gets Owned by Glenn Greenwald and John Dean

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Glenn Greenwald savaged Keith Olbermann because he is endorsing Obama’s sellout as clever politics, when earlier he had one of his vaunted “special comments” denounced telco immunity as textbook Fascism.

Olbermann promptly went on Kos, and called Glenn Greenwald names, and asserted that John Dean said that a President Obama could prosecute the telcos criminally.

There are two problems with this assertion:

  1. Nothing prevents a Bush pardon on this, and given the language Bush is using on the civil immunity, such a pardon is almost certain.
  2. John Dean did not say that a President Obama could president the telcos criminally. I saw the interview. What he said was that the had not yet seen anything that would prevent this in the bill.

In fact, we now know that :

I said that when I read the bill, and talked to the folks at the ACLU who had been following it, that it was not clear. I raised it when appearing on Countdown with the hope that someone might figure it out. But that is the nature of this badly drafted bill that it is not clear what it does and does not do, and the drafters are not saying.

But even if the bill is unclear there is no question the Bush Administration is not going to do anything to the telecoms, so the question is whether a future DOJ could — and here there is case law protecting the telecoms. But there may be language buried in the bill that protects them as well but it can only be found by reading the bill with a half dozen other laws which I have not yet done.

I made no declarative statements rather I only raised questions that jumped at me when reading the 114 page monster.

(emphasis mine)

For Keith Olbermann to laud Obama’s decision to sell out, and to suggest that Dean supports this action, when on his own show, Dean called telco immunity a, “grave assault on the Constitution”.

It’s not OK when Bush does it, and it’s not OK when Obama goes along with, Mr. Olbermann.

Well, Now, Isn’t That Special?

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More chocolatey goodness in the FISA bill:

The FISA law currently being debated in the Senate redefines weapons of mass destruction in a very broad way. Jason Sigger looks at Under title VII, section 110:

`(1) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas device that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause a mass casualty incident;

`(2) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors;

`(3) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as such terms are defined in section 178 of title 18, United States Code) that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons; or

`(4) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to release radiation or radioactivity causing death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons.’

(emphasis mine)

Two things of note:

  1. Significant number of persons is a very vague term, and a pipe bomb at a bus station might qualify under the law, even though the term was defined in the late 1940s to apply only to those things capable of causing A-Bomb levels of destruction.
  2. It defines an incendiary device as a WMD, which means that a WP 155mm howitzer round or an incendiary bomb are now defined as WMDs, a definition that the US military has been fighting against for years.

Republithugs Put HMOs Above Medical Care

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So now, the Republicans are blocking paying doctors through Medicare in order to protect their HMO friends:

But Senate Republicans (and President Bush) don’t like the way the bill finds money for docs by cutting subsidies to Medicare Advantage, the privately administered Medicare plans.

If they needs subsidies, then, “Medicare Advantage, the privately administered Medicare plans”, are less efficient than big government, and hence are government waste, which should be abolished.

The cloture vote failed 58:40, and it needs 60 votes. Kennedy was not there because he has cancer, and McCain was not there because he doesn’t give a damn about doing his job as Senator.

When Republicans complain about earmarks, they are looking at amounts that are in total less than 1/10 of this.

I hope that the Democrats pound them mercilessly on this until election day.

Just Send Out the Congressional the Sergeant of Arms and Lock Him Up

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Because if the members of the House Judiciary Committee expect US Attorney General Michael Mukasey to comply with a subpoena regarding documents connected to political scandals*, they have the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie©.

You have to vote on the subpoena, but once the deadline passes, have him arrested.

*DoJ foot dragging on the New Hampshire phone jamming, the US Attorney firings, political interference in the Civil Rights Division, etc.

Barack AWOL Obama on FISA

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Just so you know, what is likely the real FISA cloture vote passed 80 to 15.

Voting against Cloture

Biden (D-DE)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting:

Byrd (D-WV)
Clinton (D-NY)
Kennedy (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)

He couldn’t even be bothered to show up.

McCain never shows up to vote. Byrd is sick. Kennedy has a brain tumor. Hillary Clinton is…well a Clinton.

What is your excuse, Mr. Obama?