Category: Legislation

Rapists in the Pentagon win ……… For Now

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The Senate has passed the defense authorization bill, and caved to the pro-rape faction in the military by dropping Kristen Gillibrand’s proposal to remove such charges from the chain of command:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said she will push legislation to remove sexual-assault allegations from the military’s chain of command after congressional leaders spurned her approach in crafting a compromise defense measure.

“I have an assurance that we will get a vote, just not when we will get a vote — before the end of the year or maybe right away in the new year,” Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, told reporters today. Leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees yesterday agreed on a $552.1 billion defense authorization bill for the current fiscal year.

Under the compromise, commanders would be stripped of the ability to dismiss a finding by a court martial and would be barred from reducing guilty findings. Retaliation against personnel reporting sexual assaults would become a military crime.

President Barack Obama has said the issue of sexual assault is undermining trust and readiness among members of the armed forces, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called attacks a “scourge” and a “blight” on the military.

While Hagel and uniformed leaders in the military have backed changes in the handling of such cases, they have resisted Gillibrand’s approach, saying commanding officers must be able to discipline their own troops.

The issue has crossed party and gender lines. Gillibrand has won support from Republicans including Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, while her proposal has been opposed by such Democrats as Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who heads the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Just so you know, the military says that such crimes need to remain in the chain of command to preserve, “Good order and discipline,” even though other militaries, like, you know, the Israel Defense Forces.

After all, it’s not like the Israelis have been at war in existential struggles in the past 60 years, has it?

Our officer corps is profoundly dysfunctional, and we need to stop the inmates from running an asylum.

Well, It’s a Start………

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The House of Representatives just passed a (rather weak) bill to reign in patent trolls:

The Innovation Act, a bill with measures aimed to stop “patent troll” lawsuits, passed the US House of Representatives this morning on a 325-91 vote. Several amendments that would have stripped out key parts of the bill were defeated.

Passage of the bill is a big step for patent reformers, which would have been hard to imagine even one year ago. However, patent trolls going after “Main Street” businesses like grocery stores and coffee shops have made headlines and enraged politicians from Vermont to California.

Majorities of representatives in both parties supported the bill. On the Republican side, 195 representatives voted in favor of the bill and 27 voted against, while 130 Democrats supported the bill and 64 opposed it. The White House has said it supports the bill, which must first pass the US Senate.

The key politician pushing the bill ahead thus far has been Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The most prominent opponent has been Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the most senior Democratic member of that committee.

If passed in its current form, the bill will add to transparency in patent litigation and require patent holders to reveal who is profiting from a lawsuit. It will also allow lawsuits against customers to be stayed in certain circumstances and will require fee-shifting to the prevailing party in most patent cases.

………

Stronger action on demand letters is something that proponents of legislation may try to add in on the Senate side. Opponents, meanwhile, will still be looking to stall or kill the bill entirely.

The biggest change to the bill thus far has been the removal of an expanded review program, which could challenge business method patents at the patent office. That plank was strongly desired by anti-troll advocates, since it could have greatly lowered the cost of fighting some patents. But several key tech companies with large patent portfolios, including Microsoft and IBM, were opposed to the expansion of the review program and would likely not have supported the bill if that provision had remained.

This bill is weak tea, particularly with the “lame-ass patent review” provision being stripped from the program, but it passed by an overwhelming vote, which indicates that the political calculus is moving in the right direction.

Just When I Think that the Right Wing Cannot Get Any More Evil………

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is pushing for legislation to fine homeowners for installing solar power:

An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as “freeriders” – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama’s main channel for climate action.

Details of Alec’s strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.

Great shades of Elvis.

This level of evil and the stupidity is a complete mind f%$#.

I Agree With the Shrill One

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Krugman’s latest OP/ED calls for raising the minimum wage.

It’s well thought out, but the limited space of the Times OP/ED page has him leaving out an important point to make, that a low minimum wage is actually a taxpayer funded subsidy for bad employers, because many of these employees qualify for food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, or the EITC.

Walmart and McDonalds actually have a policy to help their employees register for the public dole, because it is cheaper (for them) to dump it all off on the taxpayers.

Raising the minimum wage would tend to be stimulative, because poorer people spend a greater proportion of their income more quickly, and it would lower the deficit, by increasing tax revenues, and decreasing safety net programs.

Of course, the so-called “Deficit Hawks” don’t care, because they don’t really care about the deficit.  They just want to punish the poors.

Ratf%$#s.

Well, This Might Explain an Outbreak of Huevos in the Senate

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It appears that someone pointed out to Dem Senators that some major abortion cases in courts dominated by Republican appointees., and the potential of crippling rulings girded the Democratic Caucus into action:

Within hours of each other, two federal appeals courts handed down separate decisions that affirmed sharp new limits on abortion and birth control. One on Oct. 31 forced abortion clinics across Texas to close. The other, on Nov. 1, compared contraception to “a grave moral wrong” and sided with businesses that refused to provide it in health care coverage.

“These are the kinds of decisions we are going to have to live with,” a blunt Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, warned his caucus later as it weighed whether to make historic changes to Senate rules. Those changes would break a Republican filibuster of President Obama’s nominees and end the minority party’s ability to block a president’s choices to executive branch posts and federal courts except the Supreme Court.

The moment represented a turning point in what had been, until then, a cautious approach by Democrats to push back against Republicans who were preventing the White House from appointing liberal judges. All the more glaring, Democrats believed, was that they had allowed confirmation of the conservative judges now ruling in the abortion cases. Republicans were blocking any more appointments to the court of appeals in Washington, which issued the contraception decision.

Faced with the possibility that they might never be able to seat judges that they hoped would act as a counterweight to more conservative appointees confirmed when George W. Bush was president, all but three of the 55 members of the Senate Democratic caucus sided with Mr. Reid. The decision represented a recognition by Democrats that they had to risk a backlash in the Senate to head off what they saw as a far greater long-term threat to their priorities in the form of a judiciary tilted to the right.

Gee, you think?

Now is the time for the Senate to get the train rolling, and some liberal, and young, judges on the Federal Circuit Courts.

I Did Not Expect Harry Reid to Have the Stones to do This

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I said that I did not believe that Reid of the Democrats would ever invoke the nuclear option, no matter how awful the Republicans were.

I was wrong:

Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.

Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.

The immediate rationale for the move was to allow the confirmation of three picks by President Obama to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — the most recent examples of what Democrats have long considered unreasonably partisan obstruction by Republicans.

In the long term, the rule change represents a substantial power shift in a chamber that for more than two centuries has prided itself on affording more rights to the minority party than any other legislative body in the world. Now, a president whose party holds the majority in the Senate is virtually assured of having his nominees approved, with far less opportunity for political obstruction.

The main combatants Thursday were the chamber’s two chiefs, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who have clashed for several years over Republican filibusters of Obama’s agenda and nominees.

Reid said the chamber “must evolve” beyond parliamentary roadblocks. “The American people believe the Senate is broken, and I believe the American people are right,” he said, adding: “It’s time to get the Senate working again.”

McConnell linked the rule change to the methods used to approve Obama’s health-care law solely with Democratic votes. The normally reserved GOP leader paced at his desk during his speech, often turning his back to Democrats to address only his fellow Republicans.

“It’s a sad day in the history of the Senate,” McConnell told reporters, calling the move a Democratic “power grab.”

The clash ended with a vote nearly as partisan as the times — 52 to 48, with all but three Democrats backing the move and every Republican opposing it.

I tend to think good riddance to the filibuster. 

It is an accident of history, and it has generally ill-served the American people.

Here’s hoping that it gets further dismantled as time goes on.

We Might All Be in Hell

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NPR just finished a series where it talked to prominent theologians about the nature of the afterlife.

One of the segments was immediately followed (it might have been preceeded) by a story about the government shutdown and potential debt default.

Then it hit me:  No one that they had talked to even mentioned the possibility that we might already be in hell.

Of course, Gnosticism, the religion that most closely hews to this philosophy, no longer exists as an organized religion, but it does seem to me that this is a reasonable conclusion.

As a Jew, I find the discussion of the afterlife largely irrelevant.   The afterlife is simply not a significant of Jewish theology.

The consensus on the afterlife in Judaism is, “Yes,” with some people going with a conventional heaven and hell, and some people, particularly Kabbalists, believe in reincarnation, and a whole range in between.

In Judaism, the important thing is that to whatever degree our world resembles hell, it is our job to fix it.

This concept is called Tikkun olam (תיקון עולם).

This reminds me of an old joke:

A Shmuel dies and is sent to hell, and he boards an elevator going down.

The elevator operators calls out, “Hell, level 1, all Atheists and Agnostics out.”

Shmuel looks out, and sees a bleak landscape, black sands, and a merciless sun beating down, and the air smells like.

The elevator moves further downward, and comes to a stop.

“Hell, level 2, all Muslims out.”

Shmuel smells brimstone, hears screams, and sees rivers of flowing lava under a black sky.

Shmuel is now rather concerned.

The doors close with a sepulchral finality, and the elevator drops.

“Hell, all Christians out.”

The door opens, and Shmuel can see nothing but flames in front of the door. He can feel his skin blisters from the heat even as he pushes himself against the back of the elevator.

As the doors close, Shmuel is now terrified.

“Hell, all Jews out.

The doors open, Shmuel feels a cool breeze on his face. He sees lush, green rolling hills. He smells citrus in the air.

Shmuel is stunned. To no one in particular, he says, “But ……… I thought it would be worse!”

The elevator operator looks up, and says, “It was. You cannot believe what they can do with irrigation.

Perhaps we should all spend some more time irrigating.

I Wish I Could Smith Words Like Charlie Pierce

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This New York Daily News Cover, and related story aren’t as good as the classic “Ford to City: Drop Dead”, but it’s close

Because his characterization of the recent leaks of Boehner communications on healthcare to the press as, “The Democrats Are Bringing Guns To A Gunfight,” is both succinct and evocative.

He is describing the fact that Democrats have finally taken the gloves off, and they are leaking emails from Boehners staff to the press:

Senate Democrats are considering leaking a series of emails between the chiefs of staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John A. Boehner regarding employer contributions to congressional staff health care plans, multiple top-level sources said late Monday.

 Senate Democratic chiefs of staff discussed the emails between Reid chief David Krone and Boehner chief Mike Sommers at a recent meeting, according to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.

 Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner’s position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican’s decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014 and would like to highlight the contradiction between Boehner’s public and private stances on the issue.

Pierce is right when he approves:

This would only be responding in kind. For years, Washington worked on a system of both written and unwritten rules of behavior. One of the marked characteristics of the reign of the morons has been to trash the informal systems of acceptable conduct. Fine. Let’s do away with all of them and have an actual brawl over what’s at stake.

BTW, some of the leaks have already occurred, with communications between Boehner and Reid being leaked to Politico:

With the federal government nearing shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a “so-called exemption” that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.

 “Why don’t we make sure that every American is treated just like we are?” Boehner asked, seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges.

 Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to POLITICO. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was also aware of these discussions, the documents show.

 During a five-month period stretching from February to July, Boehner and his aides sought along with Reid’s office to solve what had become a big headache for both of them. They drafted and reviewed a possible legislative fix, as well as continued to push for an administrative one from the Office of Personnel Management.

 ………

 “As POLITICO has previously reported, Speaker Boehner was aware that Sen. Reid and the White House were discussing this issue. He was always clear, however, that any ‘fix’ would be a Democratic ‘fix.’ His ‘fix’ is repealing” Obamacare.

 But according to several sources in attendance at a mid-July meeting with Reid, Boehner wondered aloud at one point whether he and the Nevada Democrat could quietly slip some language into a bill to end the problem without it receiving any public attention.

 “When I was in the state legislature, we used to stick things in [bills] and no one would notice,” Boehner said during a private meeting with Reid in July to discuss this issue, the sources said.

 Boehner’s aides then told him this would not be possible, so the idea was dropped.

 The speaker and his chief of staff, Mike Sommers — who was at that July 17 meeting as well — cannot “recall the Speaker making such a comment,” Boehner’s office said.

 In mid-July, as Boehner and Reid were trying to schedule a private meeting with Obama on the super-sensitive topic, the speaker’s top aide said it was okay to use a cover story to conceal the true nature of that prospective White House gathering.

 “We can’t let it get out there that this is for [Boehner] and [Reid] to ask the President to carve us out of the requirement of Obamacare,” Sommers told David Krone, Reid’s top aide in a July 17 e-mail obtained by POLITICO.

 “This is a little bit more difficult because it isn’t a routine meeting, as [Nancy] Pelosi and [Mitch] McConnell won’t be there. I am even ok if it is the President hauling us down to talk about the next steps on immigration.”

 After Krone suggested that the White House press office might float that the Boehner-Reid-Obama meeting was on immigration, Sommers said he wasn’t concerned about what cover story was just as long as the real reason behind the meeting wasn’t disclosed.

 “I really don’t care what is is about[,] it just can’t be about what we know it is about!” Sommers told Krone.

If Harry Reid did not specifically order the leaks, then he knew in advance, and said nothing to dissuade the leakers.

More of this please.

Democrats need to stop wringing their hands about how people observed the social niceties  in the good old days, and recognize that the ‘Phants do not see those niceties as anything but a weapon to be wielded against their opponents.

I’m not suggesting that Democrats go back to caning people on the floor of the Senate, Democrats need to understand that you do not bring a Hello Kitty® doll to a gunfight.

Captain Obvious Strikes

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It appears that his secret identy is Nancy Pelosi:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sought Friday to lay the blame for a possible government shutdown on congressional Republicans, saying that they refused to negotiate on the issue.

Pelosi pointed to the GOP’s inability to reconcile their competing factions as the reason that the federal government is a few days away from shutting down.

“It’s impossible for Democrats to negotiate with House Republicans when they can’t negotiate with themselves,” Pelosi told reporters. “We don’t know what we’re going to vote on from one minute to the next because I don’t think they know what they’re going to vote on.”

“I don’t know that they even know what they’re doing,” she added.

Well, duh!

You Cannot Make this Sh%$ Up

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Ted Cruz just engaged in a mammoth talk on the Senate floor, (it was not a filibuster) talking about the evils of Obamacare.

At one point, he read from the children’s classic Green Eggs and Ham, while talking about how awful the PPACA will be.

As Senator Claire McCaskill observed, Ted Cruz does not get the Dr. Seuss story, which is all about not prejudging things:

During Sen. Ted Cruz’ marathon talk-a-thon, he dramatically read one of his children’s favorite books, Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, saying it was a good-night story for his children.

How ironic, Sen. Claire McCaskill, remarked on Morning Joe, that the Texas Republican used that book in a marathon speech opposing a healthcare reform bill he has never tried.

“I went the University of Missouri, I did not go to Harvard, but I’ll tell you that my daughter texted me this morning and said ‘Mom, does he not know the point of the story?’” the Missouri Democrat said.

In the classic Seuss novel, a grumpy character declares “I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like green eggs and ham…I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere.”

Eventually, the character tries the green eggs and ham to appease his persistent friend and finds that he quite likes them: “I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!”

“It’s that you can’t knock things till you try it,” McCaskill said with a smile. “It’s ironic that he used that in the filibuster because I think when people realize how the these exchanges are going to work…It’s all private insurance companies on these exchanges.”

Not only reading Seuss on the Senate floor, but getting it wrong.

Theodore Seuss Geisel must be spinning in his grave.

Motherf%$#er

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DC Mayor Vincent Gray just vetoed the living wage bill:

Mayor Vincent C. Gray vetoed legislation Thursday that would force the District’s largest retailers to pay their workers significantly more, choosing the potential for jobs and development at home over joining a national fight against low-wage work.

 Gray’s quandary is playing out in many U.S. cities, where local leaders who generally sympathize with worker causes are also eager to lure jobs and commerce for their constituents. Retailers, most notably Wal-Mart, have placed an increasing focus on urban expansion, while unions and advocates for workers have pushed measures like the District’s “living wage” bill as a valuable hedge against the proliferation of low-paying jobs.

 The veto, which is unlikely to be overridden by the D.C. Council, clears the way for Wal-Mart to continue its entry into the District — plans years in the making that were thrown into question after lawmakers embraced the wage proposal this year.

 Gray (D) announced his veto in a letter delivered to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson on Thursday morning. It explained his opposition to the bill and tried to soften the political consequences by disclosing his intention to seek a minimum-wage increase from all employers, not just large retailers.

 In the letter, Gray said the measure was “not a true living-wage bill,” because its effect would be limited to “a small fraction of the District’s workforce.” He called the bill a “job-killer,” citing threats from Wal-Mart and other retailers that they would not locate in the city if the bill becomes law.

 “If I were to sign this bill into law, it would do nothing but hinder our ability to create jobs, drive away retailers, and set us back on the path to prosperity for all,” he said.

 In an interview, Gray did not say what minimum wage he would seek, except that any increase would be “reasonable” and would come after consultation with lawmakers and interested parties.

The whole “job killer” argument is bullsh%$.

The studies are fairly clear here.  Walmart does not create jobs, it takes jobs from smaller retailers, aggressively puts those workers on the public dole, and underpays them:

Earlier studies did not adequately deal with selection bias: i.e., the problem that when and where Walmart chooses to open new stores is not random, but tends to be correlated with other variables. Those confounding variables make it difficult to determine whether local employment outcomes are causally related to Walmart‘s entry, or to something else. I’ll skip the technical details, but suffice it to say Neumark and his co-authors devised a sophisticated methodology that accounts for the selection bias. Using data from over 3,000 counties, their results show that when a Walmart store opens, it kills an average 150 retail jobs at the county level, with each Walmart worker replacing about 1.4 retail workers. These results are robust under a variety of models and tests.

This sucks, and it likely that the override will fail.

Obama Asks for Congressional Authorization for an Attack on Syria

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This is something that I did not see coming.

Presidents Nixon have been outright hostile to the application of the war powers act, so I expected that his speech yesterday would be to announce the start of 2-3 days bombing.

Instead, he announced that he would be submitting a proposal for a war powers act authorization:

President Obama put on hold Saturday a plan to attack Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons, arguing that the United States had a moral responsibility to respond forcefully but would not do so until Congress has a chance to vote on the use of military force.

The announcement puts off a cruise missile strike that had appeared imminent, a prospect that had the region on edge and stoked intense debate in the United States, where many dread getting dragged into a new war.

Obama did not indicate what he would do if Congress rejects the measure.

Lawmakers are scheduled to return from recess on Sept. 9to begin what is sure to be a contentious debate about the risks of injecting the United States into a conflict in which it has few reliable allies and enemies on both sides of the front lines. The Senate will hold committee hearings on the proposed strike this week, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced Saturday.

The decision to seek congressional approval for what the administration has said would be a short, limited engagement was a remarkable turn one day after Secretary of State John F. Kerry delivered an almost-prosecutorial case for military intervention. Obama made the decision Friday night following days of agonizing deliberations with members of his Cabinet, according to administration officials.

I think that Obama is aware of the politics of the situation here, and felt a need to distinguish himself from Bush’s foreign policy.

I think that his calculus is that Congress won’t be willing to deny the request and will grant him the authorization of use of military force (AUMF), because of the political consequences of the vote.

I think that this is a miscalculation. On the Sunday shows, members of Congress expressed a lot of skepticism about the AUMF.

In particular, they complained that it:

Leading lawmakers dealt bipartisan rejection Sunday to President Obama’s request to strike Syrian military targets, saying the best hope for congressional approval would be to narrow the scope of the resolution.

From the Democratic dean of the Senate to tea party Republicans in their second terms, lawmakers said the White House’s initial request to use force against Syria will be rewritten in the coming days to try to shore up support in a skeptical Congress. But some veteran lawmakers expressed doubt that even the new use-of-force resolution would win approval, particularly in the House.

“I think it’s going to be a very tough sell,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), who is often a key crossover Republican in compromises with the White House. For now, Cole said he is “leaning no” on approving any use of force against Syria.

His remarks came after a more than 2½-hour classified briefing that drew 83 lawmakers to the Capitol, GOP aides said. They flew in from across the country on 24 hours’ notice for a rare Labor Day weekend meeting. The briefing, run by five senior national security officials, began the administration’s all-out effort to win support for what Obama has said would be a limited strike against military targets to punish Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime for carrying out a chemical attack.

White House officials have less than two weeks to secure backing in the House and the Senate, which will not formally return from their regular end-of-summer break until Sept. 9. They are expected to then immediately begin debate on military authorization, with votes by mid-September.

………

Obama’s allies said the first order of business will be to work with the administration to redraft the resolution, which was sent to Capitol Hill on Saturday night and barely filled one page. It had no prescriptions for what type of military action could be carried out or its duration.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the dean of the Senate and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters that the resolution is “too open-ended” as written. “I know it will be amended in the Senate,” he said.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said, “That has to be rectified, and they simply said in answer to that they would work with the Congress and try to come back with a more prescribed resolution.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a former Senate staffer who inspected chemical weapons attacks by Saddam Hussein’s government against its own citizens in Iraq in the 1980s, said he will push to add language that would limit the length of the mission and prohibit putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria.

I think that the old Clinton hands remember how the AUMF vote in 1991 largely cleared the way for Bill Clinton in 1992, because the Representatives and Senators who voted against it were ruled out as a Democratic Presidential nominee by the conventional wisdom of the time.

I think that this is wrong.

First, we won’t have the sort of conclusive military victory that we had in Kuwait

Second, this is a different time, and the political equation has changed.  The current resident of the White House got there largely on his credibility of his opposition to “stupid wars.”

Voting against the AUMF, or voting to narrow it, is likely to be a requirement for any Congressional Democrat who wants to run for President in 2016.

I thing that there is a significant possibility that Obama will be handed the same sort of defeat that David Cameron did in the UK.

(AUMF request after break)

I Think that People are Finally Sick and Tired of Michael Bloomberg’s “Making the Trains Run on Time” Act

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The New York City Council just overrode Bloomberg’s veto of police reforms:

The City Council voted Thursday to greatly increase oversight of the New York Police Department and of its widespread use of stop-and-frisk tactics.

Coming after historic crime declines stretching 20 years and aimed at a police force whose tactics long enjoyed strong support in City Hall and among many New Yorkers, the move on two bills marked a decisive swing of the pendulum toward reining in the practices of officers and the policies of their leaders.

The votes, a week and a half after a federal judge ruled aspects of police stops in the city unconstitutional, amounted to a stinging personal defeat for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. He has considered the policy to be central to one of his main achievements: a city safer than many hardened residents had thought possible.

The two bills, which the mayor had vetoed and will now become law, represented an effort by frustrated elected officials to force changes on the police from the outside — one through an outside inspector general with subpoena power to study and make policy recommendations to the department; and the other by opening state courts up to individual claims of bias-based policing and by expanding the categories of people entitled to sue.

Mr. Bloomberg immediately denounced the new laws as an effort to “outsource management of the N.Y.P.D. to unaccountable officials,” and he vowed to sue to stop the bill on expanding profiling claims. “It is a dangerous piece of legislation,” he said, “and we will ask the courts to step in before innocent people are harmed.”

For the mayor, who argued strenuously and repeatedly in public to head off the passage of the bills, the votes offered a stark reminder of his diminished ability to influence city politics in the waning months of his administration.

The 51-member Council, led by its speaker, Christine C. Quinn, enacted the two measures by voting to override Mr. Bloomberg’s earlier veto of both bills.

The Council voted overwhelmingly to create an independent inspector general for the department, with 39 in favor and 10 opposed. The second bill, which would expand the ability of New Yorkers to sue the police over bias-based profiling, passed with exactly the 34 votes necessary for an override. Ms. Quinn, who is running for mayor, voted against it. (Two members were absent from the vote.)

There are a lot of people who are just plain sick and tired of Michael Bloomberg.