Reid wants the extension to have the time to properly craft a bill, and Bush is saying that he does not want an extension, because he does not want a bill to protect basic American rights.
Additionally, it looks a rush to a bill would have the effect of making it difficult to impossible for Bush’s illegal electronic surveillance, which predates 911.
It just passed a law forbidding the FTC from making automatic removal of numbers from the do-not-call list.
The FTC wanted to drop the numbers every 5 years, but this bill prevents it.
https://www.donotcall.gov/ to get on the do not call list.
The Senate passed its stimulus package, home heat assistance and extended unemployment were not included.
And, yes John McCain actually showed up for a vote in the Senate, for the first time this year.
The Senate stimulus package failed cloture by one vote.
Despite their return from the campaign trail, Democrats fell one vote shy of the 60 votes they needed to bring forward their preferred economic stimulus bill.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, missed the vote.
This is something that both Clinton and Obama, and for that matter Harry Reid, should be harping on right now.
First, George W. Bush is threatening a veto unless he gets telco immunity, and the senate Republicans are refusing to allow FISA to move forward until there is agreement on a stimulus package.
Why do Republicans hate America?
It appears that the senate is scheduling a vote on telco immunity for some time tonite, the better to get it passed while no one is looking.
Call your senators.
*Yes, this is a shout out to Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein.
Good news. It’s another step on the road to full marriage equity.
In the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008, Congress prohibited the use of federal funds to “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.” it also,
….requires intelligence agencies to turn over “any existing intelligence assessment, report, estimate or legal opinion” requested by the leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees within 45 days. If the president wants to assert executive privilege to deny the request, the law says, White House counsel must do so in writing.
Finally, Bush’s signing statement raised constitutional questions about a section of the bill that established an independent, bipartisan “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” to investigate allegations of waste, mismanagement, and excessive force by contractors.
Bush’s response, “Nyah, nyah, nayh, I’m president“, in a signing statement.
A prohibition on spending by the congress is legally binding on a president, even it makes his job “hard work”.
This is why having impeachment on the table is a necessary thing:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
The folks at FAS have an interesting post on the House Judiciary committee reviewing abuses of the state secrets privilige.
Basically, it’s the wide latitude that courts give the executive to claim that something is too secret for them to be sued, you know, things like torture, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption.
Lots of meaty stuff there.
Here.
Technically, it’s the Orwellian named Protect America Act, but still, the ‘Phants had this won, and got obnoxious.
Call your congresscritter. No Telco Immunity.
When Republicans were in power, he never batted an eyelash at earmarks, which are something like ¾% of the budget, but now he’s decided it’s a good time to go to war against them.
Oh…me bad…He’s thinking that NEXT fiscal year is a good time to start this “war on earmarks”, so he’s just “announcing” them at this SOTU speach.
Even the Republicans are calling weak:
But if he was seeking to placate the fiercest foes of earmarking, he failed. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) called Bush’s plan “weak.” Thomas A. Schatz, president of the conservative Citizens Against Government Waste, labeled it “fiscal snake oil.”
Well, I guess it meats steroids.
Charlie Pierce on Altercation:
As I was watching the debate the other night — the Democratic one where Anderson Cooper came on afterwards and got to pretend to be Angelo Dundee — I was struck by Senator Obama’s resolute assertion that he was the candidate that can come to Washington and work with “independents and Republicans” to get things done. (One of his new ads has him sitting next to Dick Lugar, a Republican senator only slightly more relevant today than is Arthur Vandenberg.) I was struck even harder by it as I watched the Democratic Senate go supine, selling out poor Chris Dodd and the Constitution, and concocting retroactive alibis for the Telecom giants in a week where we finally got the empirical count of prewar Iraq lies. Here’s my deal with His Barackosity. Take the list of Republican congresscritters, House and Senate. Make me a list of 10 of them with whom you think you can work to achieve anything close to the progressive goals you have said you want to achieve. Give me an honest run, and I guarantee you that you can’t do it. You may get “something done” but it’s not going to have anything to do with anything resembling the values of the party you seek to represent. This is a party that has to be forcibly disenthralled from its lunatic base.
Let’s make it clear, Obama has a fairly unique background, and he’s a bright guy, he was the head of the bleeding Harvard Law Review.
He has been dazzling people for years to convince them to get his way, and if someone does not hate you with a blinding white hot passion, it frequently works.
Republicans live on that level of hate.
They hated Bill and Hillary, etc. too.
Well, according to FDL, read the live blogging there, I cannot do justice to it, nothing is going to come out of the Senate. The ‘Phants are still blocking it.
Of interest, however, is that both Arlen Specter (R-PA) and
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) will be voting with the Democrats.
Specter, of course, makes noises, and toes the line, and Rockefeller has been the champion of retroactive telco immunity.
It’s odd.
I do not know what is going on, but this is very, very odd.
FWIW, Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) voted with the Republicans to end debate and amendments on the bill.
FWIW, Landrieu is up next year in LA, but she will lose, as the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans has ensured that.
No money to the DSCC. Give directly to races, because otherwise, it will go to folks like Pryor, Lincoln, Nelson, and Landrieu.
It’s wasted money.
Bush is ratcheting up the rhetoric on the “give the phone companies a blow job” version of the FISA update, and Harry Reid is pushing back.
Bush is threatening a veto of an extension of the so called “Protect America Act”, because, even though it protects phone companies for current warrantless domestic spying, it does not indemnify them for prior spying, some of which began in February 2001, more than 7 months before 911.
Let’s be clear. Indemnification is not about getting phone companies to cooperate. It is about helping phone companies conceal the details of this activity, so that Bush and His Evil Minions™ will never face legal consequences of their law breaking.
Well, $%#@ that.
Care of Firedoglake, they will both show up to vote against cloture on the “give the phone companies a blow job” version of the FISA update.
Good for them, or more accurately, their pollsters. Someone told them that this was more important than a fund raising meeting.
Telco immunity is about Bush and His Evil Minions&trade covering up their illegal wiretapping activities that started before 9/11.
Edwards is calling on people to call their Senators to act against Telco immunity.
Clinton and Obama???
crickets.
I guess it’s tough to do the job you have sworn to do in the Senate when you are busy campaigning for Prez.
Firedog Lake asks What The F*!k Is Up With FISA?
Reid is now saying that if there is not an extension, than there will be nothing when the current misbegotten bill expires on February 1.
According to Think Progress, this is Reid’s Statement:
The White House threat to veto a short extension of the Protect America Act is shamefully irresponsible. The President is simply posturing in advance of Monday’s State of the Union address.
When it comes to providing a strong long-term Foreign Intelligence Surveillance bill, Democrats in Congress are focused on solutions, while Republicans are obviously playing politics.
The House has already passed a FISA bill, and the Senate was ready to pass its own bill until Republicans blocked all amendments. At the same time, Democrats are ready to extend current law for as long as necessary, but Republicans are blocking that extension and the White House is threatening a veto.
It is shenanigans like this that make Americans so eager for change. We hope the American public will remember these Republican stunts when they go to the polling booth this November.
In any event, current law ensures that no ongoing collection activity will be cut off on February 1. There will be no terrorism intelligence collection gap. But if there is any problem, the blame will clearly and unequivocally fall where it belongs: on President Bush and his allies in Congress.
The ‘Phants overreached. They were going to get everything that they wanted this, so they wanted this, and a pony…OK, it wasn’t a pony, they wanted to be able to humiliate the Democrats too.
Really. I’m serious.
Here is Harry Reid, getting ready to completely capitulate on civil rights protection and telco immunity in the FISA update.
I should note that once again, Chris Dodd is excluded from my approbiation, as he is still threatening a filibuster on telco immunity.
Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything, they fear looking ‘weak.’ To avoid this, they ‘cave’ and surrender and capitulate and stand for nothing. As a result, they are, as here, endlessly described in the media as ‘caving’ and surrendering. As a result, they look (and are) weak. It’s a self-destructive cycle that has no end.
I want my party back.
How about we try voodoo to raise Harry S Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson from the grave, and send them to Congress to bitch slap Reid and Pelosi.
It’s like throwing away an impeachment investigation, even as just a technique to extract documents, because it trumps executive privilege.
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
We have unemployment rising, homes being foreclosed, Iraq and Afghanistan collapsing, and what does Delegate Lionell Spruill think is important? Truck nuts.
Yep, this man, to my great shame a Democrat, is proposing a bill to ban truck nuts, saying, “It comes to a point where there are certain things you just can’t do. And putting testicles on the back of a truck is just too much. So I am trying to stop it.”
About the only person that this benefits is David Letterman.
As a result of Dodd’s activism against Telco immunity, Harry Reid has decided not to attempt to pass such a provision while Bush is still in office. Instead, he’s looking at extending the last bill for another 18 months. (Note the article linked is a WSJ editorial, and so it is in many ways factually inaccurate where there are clear facts, and wrong in its analysis, read only if you have a strong stomach or an affection for dark humor)
Still, this is not good enough. The “Protect America Act” is an assault on the constitution and its principles. It should not be extended a day, much less 18 months.
Dodd is now out of the Presidential race, but in 2000, he lost to Daschle in a race for the Senate Democratic leader, and he should challenge Reid next time.