Like housebreakers waiting until Saturday night when American adults would be out for the evening, Nancy Pelosi and the House democrats, joined among Republicans only by former Representative William (“office cooler full of cash”) Jefferson’s replacement Joseph Cao (“R”—2 LA), narrowly passed the labrynthine multi-trillion dollar bill proposing to nationalize health care in America 220-215.

The New York Times called it “their defining social policy achievement.”

I think it defines them alright, as socialists, collectivists, liars, frauds, and thieves.

Stephen Green speaks bitterly for the rest of us:

How do you cure high unemployment and sluggish growth?

Proven methods include reducing regulation and lowering taxes.

So it comes as no surprise that the House has just approved one of (if not the) biggest increases in taxes and regulation after virtually zero debate and in the middle of a weekend night when almost no one is paying attention.

They’re cowards. Shrewd cowards, but cowards still. ...

Which is the greater number: Pages in the bill the House just passed, or the minutes spent debating it?

A junior staff member (since fired) working from home placed a secret House of Representatives Ethics report on a publicly accessible internet site, and someone then shared the document with the Washington Post.

Since the great bulk of the scandalous information involved democrats, the Post was understandably appalled, and was certainly not going to be found commending the leaker, but, alas! the story was now out there, and the Post was obliged to report it.

The leaked document was a 22-page “Committee on Standards Weekly Summary Report” which contained short summaries of ethics panel investigations of the conduct of 19 congressmen and a number of staff members. It also mentioned 14 congressmen whose conduct was under review by the new Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi-independent body empowered to initiate investigations and make recommendations to the ethics committee. The conduct of some members of congress was “under review” by both ethics bodies.

12 of 19 names were graciously released by the Post, including those of Charles Rangel (D – 15 NY), Maxine Waters (D – 35 CA), Jane Harman (D – 36 CA), Laura Richardson (D – 37 CA), John Murtha (D – 12 PA), Peter Visclosky (D- 1 IN), James Moran (D- 8 VA), Norm Dicks (D – 6 WA), Marcy Kaptur (D – 9 OH), Devin Nunes (R – 21 CA), C.W. Bill Young (R – 10 FL), and Todd Tiahrt (R – 4 KS). Rep. Sam Graves (R – 6 MO) was apparently exonerated, while the ethics committee suspended its investigation of Alan B. Mollohan (D – 1 WV) at the request of the Justice Department which is conducting its own investigation of the Congressman.

Statement by Chairman & Ranking Minority Member of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct – pdf

Washington Post story

Don Surber posted some news agency’s account.

Ultra-left Michigan democrat Congressman John Conyers is derisive of the very idea that representatives ought to read the Health Care Reform Bill nationalizing 16% of the American economy and undoubtedly resulting in the federal government assuming the power of making life or death choices affecting countless numbers of Americans.

I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?

0:36 video

They wouldn’t understand it anyway, is the point Conyers is making.

Isn’t it wonderful that so many Americans decided to put this kind of power into the hands of representatives so responsible?

Pam Geller points out rightly that if this feel-good piece of House legislation introduced by Linda Sanchez back in April passes, all you have to do is offend someone and you can go to prison.

This law is unconstitutional, a blatant violation of the First Amendment. It destroys the basic tenets of the Constitution. The left is ripping it to shreds. You can view the bill here.

This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.

If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.

That this is even being proposed speaks volumes as to how far America has fallen. Here is the language in the bill:

a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

‘(b) As used in this section-

‘(1) the term ‘communication’ means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received;

‘(2) the term ‘electronic means’ means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.’.

What this means?

U.S. House of Representatives would make it a felony to offend someone online.

A felony.

Under this new law you would not just be slapped on the wrist and have to pay a fine.

You would go to big boy prison.

And, my, oh my, the democrats did not like that, and they don’t want you to hear about it.

The Hill reports on democrat efforts to stonewall and obfuscate.

In the bowels of the Capitol Visitor Center, members of the (House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations) gathered behind locked doors on Thursday morning to begin a series of hearings on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

What began as a remarkably quiet and secretive hearing had, within a matter of hours, exploded into a political brawl over intelligence matters and national security.

Despite the weeks-long furor over how the Central Intelligence Agency came to use enhanced interrogation techniques, and what members of Congress were told about their development and implementation, the committee’s first hearing on the issue during the 111th Congress almost came and went without notice. The hearing was announced publicly but was not open to the public.

According to Republicans, that was by design.

“Democrats weren’t sure what they were going to get,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), ranking Republican on the Intelligence panel, referring to information on the merits of enhanced interrogation techniques. “Now that they know what they’ve got, they don’t want to talk about it.”

The hearing was publicly described only as a subcommittee hearing on “Interrogations.” A committee spokeswoman would not comment on whether the development and use of controversial interrogation tactics were discussed.

But Republicans on the panel said that not only did the use of interrogation techniques come up Thursday, but that the data shared about those techniques proved they had led to valuable information that in some instances prevented terrorist attacks.

Hoekstra did not attend the hearing, but said he later spoke with Republicans on the subcommittee who did. He said he came away with even more proof that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA proved effective.

“I think the people who were at the hearing, in my opinion, clearly indicated that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked,” Hoekstra said.

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a member of the subcommittee who attended the hearing, concurred with Hoekstra.

“The hearing did address the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been much in the news lately,” Kline said, noting that he was intentionally choosing his words carefully in observance of the committee rules and the nature of the information presented.

“Based on what I heard and the documents I have seen, I came away with a very clear impression that we did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots,” Kline said.

Neither Hoekstra nor Kline revealed details about the specifics of what they were told Thursday or the identity of the briefers.

Democrats lambasted their Republican counterparts for discussing the information that was provided behind locked doors.

“I am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing… then walked out that hearing – early, by the way – and characterized anything that happened in that hearing,” said Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). “My understanding is that’s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said, “Members on both sides need to watch what they say.”

Both Schakowsky and Reyes accused GOP members of playing politics with national security.

“I think they are playing a very dangerous game when it comes to the discussion of matters that were sensitive enough to be part of a closed hearing,” Schakowsky said.

Asked about the validity of Republican contentions that information shared in Thursday’s hearing showed the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques, Schakowsky said she could not comment on what was discussed at a closed hearing.

Reyes responded by saying he did not attend the entire hearing.

“I wasn’t at the whole hearing,” Reyes said. “As the chairman my view is we need to get the facts about how the enhanced interrogation techniques came about, not just the results.”

CQ Politics reports the latest lobbying scandal, centered on the infamous John Murtha, but featuring the kind of bipartsanship otherwise missing from the current Congress.

More than 100 House members (42 Republicans and 62 Democrats – JDZ) secured earmarks in a major spending bill for clients of a single lobbying firm — The PMA Group — known for its close ties to John P. Murtha, the congressman in charge of Pentagon appropriations.

“It shows you how good they were,” said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “The sheer coordination of that would take an army to finish.”

PMA’s offices have been raided, and the firm closed its political action committee last week amid reports that the FBI is investigating possibly illegal campaign contributions to Murtha and other lawmakers. ...

In the spending bill managed by Murtha, the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriation, 104 House members got earmarks for projects sought by PMA clients, according to Congressional Quarterly’s analysis of a database constructed by Ashdown’s group.

Those House members, plus a handful of senators, combined to route nearly $300 million in public money to clients of PMA through that one law (PL 110-116). ...

PMA’s founder, Paul Magliocchetti, is a former House Appropriations Committee aide who has a long-running relationship with Murtha, D-Pa., the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

Murtha, who used to boast that his middle initial stands for “power,” carved out $38.1 million for PMA clients in the fiscal 2008 defense spending law, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Indiana Rep. Peter J. Visclosky , who serves on Murtha’s subcommittee and additionally is chairman of the subcommittee that allocates money for the Pentagon’s nuclear programs, earmarked $23.8 million for PMA clients in the fiscal 2008 defense spending bill.

His former chief of staff, Richard Kaelin, lobbies for PMA, as does Melissa Koloszar, a former top aide to defense appropriator James P. Moran , D-Va.

Moran sponsored $10.8 million for PMA clients, and Rep. Norm Dicks , D-Wash., another member of the subcommittee, sponsored $12.1 million. ...

Of the 104 lawmakers who lent their names to earmark requests for PMA clients in the fiscal 2008 Pentagon spending law, 91 have, since 2001, received campaign money linked to PMA, either from its political action committee or its employees.

Lord knows, I don’t often agree with ultra-left blogger Glenn Greenwald about anything, but what do you know? Even the most unlikely of occurrences are possible in this best of all possible worlds.

Here’s Glenn responding to the recent Rasmussen Poll finding national approval of Congress to have fallen to an all-time low of 9% by concluding the democrat House majority is safe in perpetuity and it’s time for moonbats to turn on the democrat party leadership and start defeating any democrat congressmen discernibly to the right of Leon Trotsky.

That’ll learn ‘em. And those democrat leaders will then start obediently toeing the Party Line (and I don’t mean the democrat party line).

Many progressives and other Democratic supporters are reflexively opposed to any conduct that might result in the defeat of even a single, relatively inconsequential Democratic member of Congress or the transfer of even a single district to GOP control. No matter how dissatisfied such individuals might be with the Democratic Congress, they are unwilling to do anything different to change what they claim to find so unsatisfactory. Even though uncritically cheering on any and every candidate with a “D” after his or her name has resulted in virtually nothing positive—and much that is negative—many progressives continue, rather bafflingly and stubbornly, to insist that if they just keep doing the same thing (cheering for the election of more and more Democrats), then somehow, someday, something different might occur. But, as the cliché teaches, repeatedly engaging in the same conduct and expecting different results is the very definition of foolishness.

As foolish as it is, this intense aversion to jeopardizing any Democratic incumbents might be considered rational if doing so carried the risk of restoring Republican control of Congress. But there is no such risk, and there will be none for the foreseeable future. No matter what happens, the Democrats, by all accounts, are going to control both houses of Congress after the 2008 election. Their margin in the House, which is currently 31 seats, will, by even the most conservative estimates, increase to at least 50 seats. No advertising campaign or activist group could possibly swing control of Congress to the Republicans this year, and—given the Brezhnev-era-like reelection rates for incumbents in America—it is extremely unlikely that the House will be controlled by anyone other than Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi for years to come.

The critical question, then, is not who will control Congress. The Democrats will. That is a given. The vital question is what they will do with that control—specifically, will they continue to maintain and increase their own power by accommodating the right, or will they be more responsive, accountable and attentive to the political values of their base?

As long as they know that progressives will blindly support their candidates no matter what they do, then it will only be rational for congressional Democrats to ignore progressives and move as far to the right as they can. With the blind, unconditional support of Democrats securely in their back pocket, Democratic leaders will quite rationally conclude that the optimal way to increase their own power, to transform more Republican districts into Blue Dog Democratic seats, and thereby make themselves more secure in their leadership positions, is to move their caucus to the right. Because the principal concern of Democratic leaders is to maintain and increase their own power, they will always do what they perceive is most effective in achieving that goal, which right now means moving their caucus to the right to protect their Blue Dogs and elect new ones.

That is precisely what has happened over the past two years. It is why a functional right-wing majority has dominated the House notwithstanding the change of party control—and the change in direction—that American voters thought they were mandating in 2006. As progressive activist Matt Stoller put it, “Blue Dogs are the swing voting block in the House, they are self-described conservatives, and they are perfectly willing to use their status on every action considered by the House.” The more the Democratic leadership accommodates the Blue Dog caucus—the more their power relies upon expanding their numbers through the increase of Blue Dog seats—the less relevant will be the question of which party controls Congress.

The linchpin for that destructive strategy is uncritical progressive support for congressional Democrats. That is what ensures that Democratic leaders will continue to pursue a rightward-moving strategy as the key to consolidating their own power. Right now, when it comes time to decide whether to capitulate to the demands of the right, Beltway Democrats think: “If we capitulate, that is one less issue the GOP can use to harm our Blue Dogs.” And they have no countervailing consideration to weigh against that, because they perceive—accurately—that there is no cost to capitulating, only benefits from doing so, because progressives will blindly support their candidates no matter what they do. That is the strategic calculus that must change if the behavior of Democrats in Congress is to change.

Democratic leaders must learn that they cannot increase their majority in Congress by trampling on the political values of their own base.

Let’s hope the entire nutroots base, responds to Glenn in the manner of Molly Bloom:

I was a Flower of the mountains yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him and yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.

The Sunday New York Times Magazine this week had a feature by Benjamin Wallace-Wells profiling Oklahoma Congressman Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and discussing Cole’s uphill task this year.

Going into the 2008 elections, Cole faces a daunting list of challenges. To date, 29 of his party’s representatives in Congress have retired, an unusually large number, leaving open politically marginal seats that incumbents might have held but which will be more difficult for challengers to defend — Deborah Pryce’s seat in Columbus, Ohio; Mike Ferguson’s in central New Jersey; Heather Wilson’s around Albuquerque; Thomas M. Reynolds’s in Buffalo. Reynolds, Cole’s predecessor at the N.R.C.C., just narrowly held his seat in 2006. Rick Renzi, a Republican congressman from Arizona, was indicted last month on federal corruption charges, putting what was another safe Republican seat in play. These vacancies mean that in a year when, by historical standards, his party would be expected to win back seats, Cole will have to defend many more seats than he will be able to attack (only six Democratic incumbents have announced they are leaving office). His committee has approximately $5 million on hand, roughly one-eighth the amount of cash on hand as its Democratic counterpart, which at latest count had $38 million. ...

Many within the Democratic Party believe that the gains of the 2006 election weren’t merely the result of good strategy. They believe that the map was undergoing a fundamental shift. Perhaps the most-studied Democratic detailer of the map’s evolution is a consultant named Mark Gersh, whose analysis of the 2006 election results has become the Democratic Party’s official version. “Most people think of politics as changing from the grass roots up,” Gersh says. “It doesn’t. It changes from the top, from presidential races on down.”

For Gersh, the modern political map has sustained two basic changes in the past 30 years. The first, beginning with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 but only culminating with the 1994 election of Newt Gingrich’s insurgents, was the slow, top-down conversion of socially conservative blue-collar voters, in the South and elsewhere, from Democratic partisans to Republican ones. In 2006, Gersh saw the culmination of the second big shift. “The biggest thing that happened in 2006 was the final movement of upper-income, well-educated, largely suburban voters to the Democrats, which started in 1992,” he says. The largest concentrations of districts that flipped were in the suburbs and the Northeast. This, Gersh says, was the equal and opposite reaction to the earlier movement toward the Republicans and to some degree a product of the social conservatism demanded by the Republican majority. When I spoke to Emanuel earlier this month, he told me: “I believe there’s a suburban populism now. The Republican Party has abandoned any economic, cultural or social connection to those districts.” ...

Many Republican operatives now worry that crucial segments of the electorate are slipping away from them. Republicans had traditionally won the votes of independents; in 2006, they lost them by 18 percent. Hispanic voters, who gave the Democrats less than 60 percent of their votes in 2004, cast more than 70 percent of their votes for Democrats in 2006. Suburban voters, long a Republican constituency, favored Democrats in 2006 for the first time since 1992. And Democrats won their largest share of voters under 30 in the modern era, a number particularly troubling for some Republicans, since it seems to indicate the preferences of an entire generation.

“What is concerning is that we lost ground in every one of the highest-growth demographics,” said Mehlman, the former R.N.C. chairman and Bush political adviser, who is now a lawyer at the lobbying firm Akin Gump.

Tom Cole, however, thinks the situation is not hopeless.

Cole’s basic challenge is to try to flip the popular perception of the capital so that more voters identify Washington with the Democrats than with the Republicans. He says he wants to use his party’s resources to define Nancy Pelosi as a national character, the face of a Democratic Congress that is once again too liberal for the country. (“Those three little words — ‘San Francisco liberal’ — are just magic for fund-raising,” one of Cole’s staff members told me.) He has tried, when possible, to choose candidates whose biographies can reinforce the anti-Washington theme, even if they have no real political experience. And he is counting on McCain’s emergence to permit the party to distance its image from that of Bush. Cole might have come up with a grand and unifying policy vision for his insurgents to run on. But Cole is not an ideologue. And with Rove and the party’s other grand strategists having abandoned the field — five of the six members of the Republican Congressional leadership in 2006 have now retired — Cole is now turning to practical answers, to process, and deferring to the politically moderate geography of the battleground areas. “I still think most Americans want their government to be smaller, not bigger, and their taxes to be lower, not higher,” Cole says. “And I still think most Democrats in office think that America is not a force for good in the world, and I think most voters have a different perspective.”

But Wallace-Wells believes the GOP coalition and platform are in serious trouble.

Part of the problem, for a Republican Party that wants to get back to basics, is that George Bush and Karl Rove’s party was not theirs alone but a pretty precise articulation of decades of post-’60s Republican strategy. “You go back to the Reagan years, and even before that, and we always had a three-legged stool: anti-Communism, anti-abortion and tax and spend,” Dan Mattoon, the Republican lobbyist and former deputy chairman of Cole’s committee, told me. “The first leg dropped off when the Berlin Wall fell, and after 9/11 we’ve tried to do the same thing with terrorism, but it’s not as strong. The second leg, tax and spend, was pretty strong until George Bush. Then we had just one leg of the stool, which was social issues, and I think that you look at the makeup of the younger generation and there’s more of a libertarian view on social issues.” Cole says that the party’s rhetoric on issues like gay marriage has cast Republicans as too reactionary for many suburban districts. “My problem on social issues is the tone — sometimes we have been too shrill, and that has alienated voters who might otherwise have joined us.

In other words, he is repeating the conventional viewpoint that the Reagan coalition of anti-communist neocons, religious and social conservatives, and economic conservatives has fallen apart.

I think it’s more the case that the Republican coalition, under George W. Bush, has fallen into disarray for lack of articulate and firmly principled leadership.

Bush is so inarticulate that it isn’t easy at all to identify a coherent Bush philosophy, but it seems clear that he has always been a moderate on Government, and is in many ways a liberal (resembling Woodrow Wilson) in foreign policy. Bush’s so-called conservatism has generally consisted of a manifest rejection of the consensus of the elect as articulated in the elite media outlets, which is widely recognized as an expression of a visceral animosity on Bush’s part to his own native elite culture.

Therein really consists his unforgivable sin from the point of view of the Establishment left. And Bush’s folly has proven to be his willingness to provoke their ultimate degree of wrath in the absence of an effective ability to fight them in public debate or within government.

Amusingly, Bush got away with his fundamentally happy-go-lucky approach right up until 2005 Hurricane Katrina. He seemed to be made of teflon. Media attacks simply bounced off him, and the American public in general indifferently shrugged off his malapropisms with a smile until along came New Orleans. The MSM was able to flood televisions screens with images of disaster while blaming them on Bush Administration incompetence and callousness. Blame for Katrina finally stuck.

Simultaneously, the disinformation operation conducted by disaffected elements of the Intelligence Community proceeded without White House interference or effective opposition. The passage of a couple of years proved adequate for the media echo chamber to persuade large portions of the public that “Bush lied.” There were no Iraqi WMD, and Bush knew it all along. He started the war “for the oil,” or to avenge Saddam Hussein’s attempt to assassinate his father.

The collapse of Bush Administration political activity coincided with a series of Republican Congressional scandals, and together produced the public perception of a failed and discredited GOP and the subsequent loss of both houses of Congress.

Bush’s failures seem to be amplified by the failures of the Conservative Movement. The Conservative Movement chose the time of Republican disarray to try mobilizing the base with a red meat issue. And what did they chose? Anti-illegal immigration. Anti-illegal immigration politics worked beautifully in transforming California into a firmly democrat stronghold. Why not take the same strategy, certain to alienate Hispanic voters, nationally?

Both George W. Bush and the current organized Conservative Movement demonstrably arrived at the 2008 primary campaign season without a defined candidate, a coherent strategy, or a clue.

The consequence was John McCain’s victory, produced by a combination of media bias and cross-over democrat voting in open primaries. Essentially, we are running the moderate democrat candidate this year as the Republican nominee.

If the Conservative Movement and the GOP does not return to the kind of politics practiced by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, to a politics based on a coherent and principled philosophy, to clearly articulated ideas, to a policy of winning elections by winning the long-term national debate, they are going to find the GOP stool has no leg to stand on at all.

There was obviously more going on behind the scenes that the powers that be are telling us. But whatever specific incident or event provoked the resignation, Alcee Hastings’ removal from a House role featuring this kind of responsibility is a very positive development.

CQ Politics:

Democrat Alcee L. Hastings of Florida abruptly resigned from the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday, citing increased activities as chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission and his work on the Rules Committee.

“Now, I will devote even more time to my continued work for the people of my congressional district by ratcheting up my work as chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, as a senior member of the House Rules Committee, and as co-chairman of Florida’s congressional delegation,” Hastings said in a statement released by his office. ...

Hastings denied that his decision was related to being passed over for the chairmanship of the full Intelligence Committee in favor of Silvestre Reyes of Texas. Reyes was hand-picked to lead the panel by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California in January.

“He’s chosen to put a greater emphasis on other parts of his legislative portfolio,” spokesman David Goldenberg said.

It’s no secret, though, that Hastings has been brooding for some time over the move. In an interview with Congressional Quarterly in April, Hastings expressed some anger at “Democrats in high places” who made an issue — during his bid for the chairmanship — of the fact that he was impeached and removed from office as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption and perjury charges.

America doubtless owes Armenia a debt of gratitude for Cher, but it is otherwise difficult to understand why, at this particular time, when American relations with her Turkish ally are jeopardized by both Islamic fundamentalism and Kurdish nationalism, the House of Representatives finds it necessary to try to pass a resolution recognizing the Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

Alec Mouhibian muses on all this, from an Armenian perspective, in the American Spectator:

I never thought the day would come. But here it is! Being an Armenian—like playing women’s basketball at Rutgers, losing money on Enron, and contracting AIDS in Africa before it—is now relevant and topical. Hell, yes. I feel so damn temporarily important, and I wouldn’t trade it for having sold steroids to sluggers or resisted arrest in Los Angeles or, for that matter, having rented storefront from Barney Frank. Bask, fellow Armenians! Bask. Ours is the world and all that’s in it—and, which is more, we’ll have a hairy son.

Lest you’ve been comatose or going to history class at Princeton, the source of the spotlight is Congress’s resolution to recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915 as “genocide.” Turkey still insists it was merely a transportation malfunction, in which 1.5 million Armenians mysteriously vanished as piles of human carcasses appeared in their place.

Observers may find the issue inherently dull at first sight. Be patient. You don’t want to miss the massive collateral amusement—whether it’s Islamic Turkey taking postmodern relativism to its logical conclusion, competitors in the victim business afraid of losing market-share, arch unilateralists waxing worrisome over the self-esteem of a pathetically dependent ally, or truth-trumpeting moralists suddenly blowing dry in the name of diplomacy. Progressives have a meta-political reason to like the Armenian issue: it always results in an equal distribution of hypocrisy.

Add a few drops of Bush blood and you get a media frenzy that far outdoes anything surrounding the issue in its cyclical past. Jon Stewart gave it two segments on the Daily Show.

Even the Washington Post draws the line at the shameful conduct of the democrat house leadership using bribes funded by the US Treasury to buy votes in favor of unconditional and irresponsible withdrawal.

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.

Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than $20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill—for whatever reason—will be voting to require that all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops who would remain behind.

The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. Yet the leadership is ready to piece together the votes necessary to force a fateful turn in the war by using tactics usually dedicated to highway bills or the Army Corps of Engineers budget.

Rep. John Shadegg’s (R-AZ) office reports:

(On Wednesday), Congressman John Shadegg reintroduced the Enumerated Powers Act, a bill that highlights the importance of the Tenth Amendment and forces a continual reexamination of the role of the federal government.

“The Enumerated Powers Act would require Members of Congress to include an explicit statement of Constitutional authority into each bill that is introduced. It would hold Congress accountable for its actions,” said Shadegg.

The Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

“According to the Tenth Amendment, the national government cannot expand its legislative authority into areas reserved to the States or the people,” said Shadegg. “It is a well-known fact that the size and scope of the federal government has exploded since the New Deal. Congress continues to operate without Constitutional restraint, creating costly and ineffective programs and blatantly ignoring the principles of federalism.”

We should be running this guy in 2008.

AP reports: House votes to “support troops,” but opposes sending additional troops to complete the mission.

Hat tip to Roger de Hauteville at Maggie’s Farm.

Investors Business Daily condemns the House democrat leadership’s “slow bleed” strategy

As chairman of the House panel that oversees military spending, (John) Murtha plans to advance legislation next month attaching strings to the additional war funds Bush requested on Feb. 5.

Murtha plans to stop the Iraq War by placing four conditions on combat funds through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. The Pentagon would have to certify that troops being sent to Iraq are “fully combat ready” with training and equipment, troops must have at least one year at home between combat deployments, combat deployments cannot be longer than a year, and extending tours of duty would be prohibited…

It’s not that the Democrats think we’re losing or that the war is unwinnable. They simply don’t want to win it. As House Minority Leader John Boehner said of Murtha’s proposals: “While American troops are fighting radical Islamic terrorists thousands of miles away, it is unthinkable that the United States Congress would move to discredit their mission, cut off their reinforcements and deny them the resources they need to succeed and return home safely.”..

Neville Chamberlain’s naivete may have helped bring on World War II, but at least he supported his country when war began. Norway’s Vidkun Quisling and France’s Vichy government under Marshal Petain may have collaborated with the Nazi enemy, but after their countries’ defeats, not before.

We’d have to go back to Benedict Arnold to find Americans as eager as Murtha & Co. to see an American defeat on the battlefield.

Read the whole thing.

————————————

But Robert Farley argues that these kinds of accusations have serious implications.

IBD seems to be claiming that the vast bulk of the Democratic Party (and no small part of the Republican) are the equivalent of the most notable traitor in American history, a man who undoubtedly would have been hanged or shot if he had been caught. The editorial has been linked to approvingly by Captain’s Quarters, Powerline (sic), Instapundit, and the Gateway Pundit. Reynolds further notes:

To some people, Vietnam wasn’t a defeat, but a victory. To them, the right side won. And lost. Naturally, they’re happy to repeat the experience.

Undoubtedly, the Perfesser and his ilk will claim that they aren’t actually calling for treason trials and executions of members of the Democratic Party. But why not? If Democrats really are the equivalent of Benedict Arnold, and if opposition to the war and the Surge is traitorous, then why shouldn’t we be tried and executed, or at least imprisoned? The rhetoric leads only one place. Either Glenn Reynolds believes that Democrats are traitors, or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he should tell us why, and should explain why he so often suggests that Democrats have committed treasonable offenses. If he does believe that Democrats are traitors, then he ought to step up and start calling for arrests. Treason is a capital offense; there’s not really a middle ground. We’re guilty, or we’re not.

Sadly, but perhaps fortunately, Reynolds et al are too gutless to pursue the logical consequence of their accusation. So far, anyway..

The problem is that the current administration has tried to make war while neglecting this particular line of logic. America’s Vietnam experience demonstrated the capacity of the radical peace movement to use its relations with the academic clerisy and the media to turn treason and defeatism into a de rigeur fashion statement of membership in the American elite.

During WWI and WII, the wars which America won during the last century, preaching defeatism and rendering aid and comfort to the enemy were simply not tolerated.

The US Government has the obligation to the members of its armed forces whom it sends into harm’s way to prevent their service and sacrifices being made futile by the domestic demoralization of the American public by a defeatist minority of radical leftists and pacifists.

Too cowardly to take an open stand insisting upon American defeat and withdrawal, which might have political consequences, the democrat leadership in the House of Representatives has devised a strategy in which John Murtha, now Chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, will bring to bear the same low cunning which served him so well during theAbscam investigation, when he declined to accept a bribe (while being taped) “at this point.”

At this point, Murtha will not try to defund the US military effort in Iraq, he will simply attach a variety of restrictions on spending and troop deployments, threatening Republicans with a complete cutoff of funds if they try to oppose such restrictions.

The Politico reports:

new restrictions on how the president can deploy combat forces from the United States to Iraq, allow combat veterans to have at least one year stateside before returning to the frontlines and prevent the Pentagon from keeping soldiers and Marines already in Iraq in uniform after their enlistments expire.

“This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge,” Murtha predicted of next month’s floor fight over the wartime supplemental appropriation. “We’re trying to force redeployment [of troops outside Iraq], not by taking money away but by redirecting it.”

Murtha is not pushing a total cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq…

The strategy being employed by Murtha and other House Democratic leaders would force Bush and Republican congressional leaders to accept the new troop restrictions, or face the possibility the supplemental spending bill would falter, thus cutting off all funding for the war.

Democrats are betting that Bush and the Republicans won’t take that risk and will go along with the Democratic proposals. And Republican leaders are not taking Murtha’s threats lightly.

The democrats in the House of Representatives, and a disgraceful handful of soi disant Republicans, are supporting the following disgraceful Resolution, specifically crafted to allow lawmakers to “support the troops” and to lend aid and comfort to the enemy at the same time.

Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq;

and Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

Let’s hope that real Republicans in these people’s home districts remember their names in 2008.

America’s first Muslim Congressman has obviously been the beneficiary of the conspicuous American tradition of tolerance, but to Minnesota’s Rep. Ellison tolerance is clearly a one way street.

The Hill reports Ellison’s Office called the Capital police to report a colleague for smoking.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) believes it is his right as a Muslim to be sworn into Congress with the Quran. But apparently, the freshman lawmaker doesn’t believe it’s Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-Colo.) right to smoke a cigar in his congressional office.

Ellison’s office called the Capitol Hill Police on Tancredo last Wednesday night as Tancredo was in his office smoking a cigar. The lawmakers have neighboring offices on the first floor of the Longworth House Office Building.

Tancredo was still stunned a day later. “It’s very bizarre,” said Tancredo, who has never met Ellison. “Seemed to me not a good way to say hello.”

And let’s face it. Calling the cops on a colleague takes the cake for the nerviest behavior so far among members of this year’s freshman class of Congress.

This is how it all went down. On Wednesday evening, around 6 p.m., Tancredo was preparing for his trip to Mississippi. And as he so often does, he was unwinding with a cigar.

Soon enough, however, a police officer walked in to check on the smoke. The officer told Tancredo that the officer came because he was required to do so and not because the officer wanted to. The officer had already told Ellison that Tancredo was permitted to smoke in his office. The visit was more a formality.

Tancredo said he would not stop smoking in his office. “Heck, no!” he said. “If he [Ellison] would have [had] the courtesy to say something I’m sure I would have been more accommodating to his wishes.”

To help keep his office free of impurities, Tancredo has three air purifiers. And he has no plans to meet Ellison anytime soon. “I’m sure we will, but I’m not going to make a point [of it],” the presidential hopeful said, adding that he supported Ellison’s right to be sworn in with the Quran.

Says Boston herald columnist Howie Carr:

Who really wants to save a U.S. House seat for Massachusetts? You gotta be kidding. The best thing that could happen for America would be for the commonwealth to shed several districts, and it’s a damn shame we can’t cede one of our two Senate seats as well.

But if the hacks truly want to inflate the state’s plummeting population by rounding up thousands of illegal aliens, it shouldn’t be difficult. First place to check is the hospital emergency rooms. They’re the ones with translators, and a lot of them will be wearing neck braces from the phony auto accidents they’ve staged. But if this harebrained scheme to celebrate diversity doesn’t work, which Mass. congressman will lose out in this low-stakes game of musical chairs? Come 2011, redistricting will be in the hands of the Legislature, where nothing is on the level, everything is a deal and no deal is too small. Let’s work our way east from the New York state line. Probably No. 1 on the 2011 Hit Parade would be Rep. John Olver of Amherst. He’s old, an unrepentant Bulger hack, and I’m not saying Olver is slow, but he’s one of the few human beings in the at-risk category for contracting Dutch elm disease. Next is Richie Neal of Springfield, a former mayor. He can make a claim few other Hampden County pols can: He has never been indicted. Not once. Moving east, we find Jim McGovern, D-Havana. This guy is so far to the left he makes Barney Frank look reasonable. Talk about your impeccable moonbat credentials – he was the first prominent hack to endorse Deval Patrick, but only because Fidel was too sick to make the run. With a Worcester County base of close to 300,000 people, he’s as entrenched as the memory of Che Guevara. Now that the Democrats control the House again, Barney Frank is going nowhere. As a committee chairman, Dick Armey’s favorite Bay State rep hasn’t had this much fun since he responded to Hot Bottoms XXX-rated personal ad. In the Fifth District, Marty “Midas” Meehan has $5 million and a solid base in Lowell. Plus, his district bumps up against a neighboring state (New Hampshire), which is always a good thing in redistricting, because it means there’s only so much gerrymandering that can be done. Marty’s not terribly popular on Beacon Hill right now, but you can buy a lot of friends with 5 million dead presidents. Next door in Essex County, John Tierney won’t make waves. He also won’t make the All-Star team. Like Midas Meehan, this empty suit would have liked to run for the Senate, but with John Kerry hovering at 5 percent in New Hampshire, that ain’t in the cards. Which brings us to the Dean, Ed Markey of Malden. After 30-plus years in Congress, most of his constituents couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, nor would they want to. Fast Eddie has outlived his district, and now it makes no sense whatsoever. Framingham? Still, Markey always survives redistricting. When it comes to the legislature, he knows how to kiss butt and spread campaign loot around. No one knows who’ll be calling the shots at the State House in 2011, but it’s a sure bet kissing butt and spreading loot will still work very well indeed

Mike Capuano from Somerville is the guy who should have Markey’s heavily Italian, eastern Middlesex enclave. Instead he represents a Cambridge-Boston district that skews black and gay, neither of which Capuano is. But he’s tight with Speaker Pelosi, so he’s safe.

Steve Lynch is from South Boston, and his district is the answer to the question, Where did Southie go? He’s safe, but Bill Delahunt might have a problem down the road. Technically he’s from Quincy but that’s Lynch-land. Rep. Dilettante’s real base is Venezuela. But he’ll be 70, and by then may be ready to cash out his various public pensions and succeed Bob Dole as a spokesman for Viagra. So what do you call getting rid of one of these dolts? A good start.

The Washington Post thinks it’s really cool that Keith Ellison (formerly “Keith Hakim”) the ridiculous black poseur Muslim elected by an utterly irresponsible one-party district in Minneapolis is going to become the first Representative in United States history to take his oath of office on a copy of the Koran, and is planning to borrow a copy from the Library of Congress once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

African American conversions to Mohammedanism are, in reality, preposterous examples of flamboyant identity display, pitifully evidencing the historical illiteracy and downright bad taste of the conversos. Christianity, the European religion and cultural identity being rejected by the rebellious black man, twice abolished Slavery. Slavery has always been a fundamental institution in Islam, was spread everywhere that religion flourishes, and exists throughout the Islamic world (sometimes faintly terminologically concealed) today.

The most famous African American converso, the illustrious boxer, changed his name from that of a renowned American Abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay to Muhammad Ali, the name of more than one prominent slave-trader.

There is something which provokes distinct psychic unease at the very idea of the rise of the influence of Islam in the United States to the point where the first representative of that lamentable sect will be taking his place in the Congress of the United States, in the same house where Randolph, Webster, and Clay once sat. How can America’s culture and identity have grown so flaccid and deracinated that even a parasitical and malcontent urban welfare community would abandon its own identity and traditions in time of war, in order to elect a coreligionist of the 9/11 hijackers?

There’s a lot more which is illuminating and agreeable in the culture of Japan than in that of the True Believers, but it is difficult to imagine even the most delinquent and corrupt congressional district of the WWII era sending a Shinto-ist to Congress to take his oath on what? a sharp katana? or a bale of rice?

I find the image of an unsympathetic translation of the Alcoran, once perused with ironic skepticism by Mr. Jefferson, translated by time into the hands of a former Catholic convert to superstititous creed of the enemies of the West amusing, to say the least. Offering Jefferson’s Alcoran to Mr. Ellison-Hakim is rather in the character of inviting the newly elected Count Dracula to take his oath of office upon an early tract on vampire-hunting.

Scrappleface identifies another impressive Pelosi key House committee appointment:

(2007-01-01) — Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi today defended Rep. John Conyers’, D-MI, as “the ideal pick for judiciary committee chairman” after the House Ethics Committee sanctioned Rep. Conyers for using taxpayer-funded staffers for political campaign work, babysitting and personal errands.

“I can think of no one better to head up oversight of the federal courts and law enforcement,” said Rep. Pelosi, “than a man like John Conyers who understands the subtleties of the law, the gray areas of ethics, and the potential for corruption even in the hearts and minds of those with legal training, who have sworn to uphold that law.”

“The country doesn’t need a naive neophyte,” she said, “but rather someone with demonstrated experience in pushing the ethical envelope, blurring the line, and in fact stepping over that line. Only a mind forged in the cauldron of ethical transgression will have the insight to spot opportunities for corruption in our judiciary system.”

Read the whole thing.

Those who were relieved when incoming democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi, under pressure, reconsidered her first choice for House Intelligence Committee chairman, and refrained from appointed Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, who was previously removed from the federal bench for corruption, are worrying again.

Canada Free Press reports:

Law enforcement and intelligence experts are scratching their heads in disbelief upon discovering that the next House Intelligence Committee Chairman doesn’t possess even a basic understanding of terrorism or terrorist groups. In fact, he’s never heard of Hezbollah.

Representative Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), who was Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi’s second choice to head the sensitive and vital committee, did not know what Hezbollah was and incorrectly described Al-Qaeda as being Shiite rather than Sunni.

Rep. Reyes appeared disoriented when a reporter asked him basic questions about the Islamic groups that are the principal targets of America’s intelligence agencies, including Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and others.

“Al-Qa’eda is what — Sunni or Shia?” Jeff Stein, the Congressional Quarterly magazine’s national security editor, asked Mr Reyes. “Al-Qaeda, they have both,” replied Reyes.

“You’re talking about predominately?”Predominantly — probably Shiite,” said the puzzled Democrat from Texas.

As Mr. Stein noted in his CQ column, “He couldn’t have been more wrong. Al-Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an Al-Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.”

He also asked Reyes about the terrorist group Hezbollah. “Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah…” he said, laughing. “Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

“This is no laughing matter. Where was this man when Israel and Hezbollah battled for almost two weeks?” asked a former intelligence officer and now New York City detective.

“We went from an impeached judge to a man ignorant of the basic facts regarding terrorist groups. What kind of oversight will that be?” he added.

Jim Kouri discusses Nancy Pelosi’s possible House Intelligence Chairman appointee Alcee Hastings’ past and notes the silence of the MSM.

The fact that Hastings is being seriously considered for such a sensitive position and the mainstream news media don’t appear outraged adds to the enormous amount of evidence that the MSM are lapdogs for the Democrats. Imagine if Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert appointed an impeached judge to a key committee chairmanship. Would not that be tied into the mantra “a culture of corruption” by the elite news media?

Read the whole thing.

Can rumors that Nancy Pelosi intends to appoint Rep. Alcee Hastings to the Chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee possibly be correct?

House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra suspended an unidentified individual working on the staff of one of the democrat committee members on Thursday, when it was established that the staffer had requested a copy of the National Intelligence Estimate from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before selected leaked portions of the document were published in the New York Times.

It has since been learned that the suspended staffer was Larry Hanauer, employed by California democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman .

Cooperative Research tells us:

After George W. Bush took office in 2001, Larry Hanauer, who has long been at the Israel-Syria-Lebanon desk and who is known to be “even-handed with Israel,” is replaced by David Schenker of the Washington Institute. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004.

Harman has stated that she is “appalled,” and is demanding Hanauer’s reinstatement.

The suspension is evidently payback for Harman’s unilateral release earlier this week of an independent investigator’s report on the bribe-taking of resigned-convicted-and-imprisoned former Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham.

Former Congressman (as she preferred to be titled) Helen Chenoweth-Hage died today in a one-car crash near Tonopah, Nev., 172 miles northwest of Las Vegas. She was 68.

Helen Chenoweth-Hage was born in Topeka, Kansas, grew up in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, and attended Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. She married Nick Chenoweth of Orofino, Idaho in 1958. They had two children, and divorced in 1975. From 1975-1977, she was Executive Director of the Republican Party in Idaho. She was subsequently chief of staff and campaign manager for Steve Symms.

In 1994, she ran for Congress for the Idaho First District, pledging to occupy the office for no more than three terms. She defeated a two-term incumbent in a colorful campaign which saw Chenoweth hosting “endangered salmon bakes.”

She was an arch libertarian, and ranked as one of the most conservative members of Congress. I remember her with affection.

She was a defender of militia movements, and frequently attacked over-militarization of federal law enforcement. One can perceive just how sound she was by reading this commie attack piece identifying her as a “Poster Child of the Militia.”

She was a severe critic of William Jefferson Clinton, and was one of the first to call for his resignation. In return, her own private life was attacked by a sleazy Pacific Northwest leftist in a shameful hit piece in Salon.

In 1997, she introduced H. J. Res 83 in the 103rd Congress, a new version of the famous Bricker Bill attempting to place restrictions on treaties and executive agreements entered into by the United States. Unfortunately, that Congress neglected to pass this highly desirable measure.

Faithful to her word, despite being re-elected by comfortable margins, Helen Chenoweth declined to run for Congress again after her third term.

In today’s automobile accident, Helen Chenoweth-Hage was a passenger in the car driven by her daughter-in-law, and was holding her infant grandson in her lap. She was thrown from the car, but succeeded in protecting the infant while suffering fatal injuries herself.

The House of Representatives, in a moronic 394-22 vote, inserted into the annual Defense Spending Bill a ridiculous feel-good clause forbidding the construction of permanent US bases in Iraq, and stipulating that all facilities under construction will be handed over to the Iraq Government.

What with Iran functioning as a principal sponsor of terrorism, and well on the way to acquiring nuclear weapons, who could possibly have any legitimate use for a permanent US base on Iraqi soil? All our effort and sacrifices and expenditures in Iraq really should be looked upon as a completely disinterested, no-strings-attached gift to a bunch of bigoted primitives who hate our guts, and desire our Civilization’s conquest. We defeated them in battle twice. The least we could do is spend a few trillion dollars, rebuild their infrastructure, replace their home-grown dictator with a democratic government, hand them a bunch of flowers, and walk away. It’s only right. Why should we get anything useful out of any of this?

If today’s morons were running the country during WWII, I’d be writing this in Japanese ideograms.

LA Times story.

President Bush intervened in the conflict between the Justice Department and Congress, ordering the material taken from Rep. William Jefferson’s office sealed for 45 days, obviously in order to provide time for judicial review.

The president deserves commendation for acting responsibly on the occasion of a conflict in the Constitutional balance between federal branches. I think myself that a number of usually extremely perspicacious commentators on the Right went off half-cocked on this one.

Readers will recall that the FBI searched Rep. Jefferson’s office on Saturday and Sunday, and that the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 6, says:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

——————
In evaluating these kinds of issue, I think that a good starting point is always Justice Joseph Story (Y 1798)’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833).

On Article 1, Section 6, Justice Story decidedly notes the importance of legislative immunity :

§ 856. The next part of the clause regards the privilege of the members from arrest, except for crimes, during their attendance at the sessions of congress, and their going to, and returning from them. This privilege is conceded by law to the humblest suitor and witness in a court of justice; and it would be strange, indeed, if it were denied to the highest functionaries of the state in the discharge of their public duties. It belongs to congress in common with all other legislative bodies, which exist, or have existed in America, since its first settlement, under every variety of government; and it has immemorially constituted a privilege of both houses of the British parliament.

It seems absolutely indispensable for the just exercise of the legislative power in every nation, purporting to possess a free constitution of government; and it cannot be surrendered without endangering the public liberties, as well as the private independence of the members.

§ 857. This privilege from arrest, privileges them of course against all process, the disobedience to which is punishable by attachment of the person, such as a subpoena ad respondendum, aut testificandum, or a summons to serve on a jury; and (as has been justly observed) with reason, because a member has superior duties to perform in another place. When a representative is withdrawn from his seat by a summons, the people, whom he represents, lose their voice in debate and vote, as they do in his voluntary absence.

The legislative immunity in Britain, Story notes, was confined to intervals only modestly longer than the actual sessions of Parliament.

§ 858. The privilege of the peers of the British parliament to be free from arrest, in civil cases, is for ever sacred and inviolable. For other purposes, (as for common process,) it seems, that their privilege did not extend, but from the teste of the summons to parliament, and for twenty days before and after the session. But that period has now, as to all common process but arrest, been taken away by statute.

The privilege of the members of the house of commons from arrest is for forty days after every prorogation, and for forty days before the next appointed meeting, which in effect is as long, as the parliament lasts, it seldom being prorogued for more than four score days, at a time.

In case of a dissolution of parliament, it does not appear, that the privilege is confined to any precise time; the rule being, that the party is entitled to it for a convenient time, redeundo.

In today’s United States, when it ordinarily takes a year or more to go to trial, one would expect legislators to be able to claim very long intervals of immunity.

Even in Britain, Story notes, that Spirit of Modernity has tended to curtail the principle of legislative immunity short of the point where it might benefit the contents of Rep. Jefferson’s office.

§ 859. The privilege of members of parliament formerly extended also to their servants and goods, so that they could not be arrested. But so far, as it went to obstruct the ordinary course of justice in the British courts, it has since been restrained.

In the members of congress, the privilege is strictly personal, and does not extend to their servants or property.

Note that Justice Story accords Congress only a lower case “c.” The American principle of Republicanism was decidedly stronger and more keenly felt in 1833 than it is today, when presidents are accompanied routinely by a complement of bodyguards and functionaries the Sultan of Byzantium might envy. I think Justice Story’s observations are informative, as always, but I think an able attorney would not have the least difficulty in arguing either side of Rep. Jeffeson’s claim to the application of Article 1, Section 6 privileges to his office papers (and bags of currency).

FBI agents reportedly searched the House office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, on Saturday evening and last Sunday in connection with a bribery and corruption investigation.

Prominent Repubican Congressional leaders, including former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and current Speaker Dennis Hastert, have criticized the FBI’s conduct, and raised Constitutional objections.

Some of the most respected voices on the right side of the Blogosphere, including Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and Roger L. Simon have objected to the position taken by the Speakers.

Our good friends need to pause for breath, and reflect seriously. The principle of separation of powers matters greatly. Congressional immunity from arrest matters tremendously. These principles of Republican government are infinitely more important than the successful conviction of one more corrupt democrat congressman. History demonstrates abundantly that we can survive the culture of political corruption of the democrat party. But free government could readily be brought to an end by the domination of the several branches of the federal government by a single branch.

In recent history, Congress has been far more guilty than the Executive of arrogating unauthorized powers to itself, and attacking the Executive on the basis of trumped up and exaggerated charges. But, it is certainly possible to imagine an aggressive ultra-liberal president trying to remove Congressional opposition by false allegations of corruption. Some of us believe that the House Majority Leader was successfuly removed by false charges lodged by a partisan county prosecutor in Texas.

It is on rare occasions like this, in which political leaders take principled positions, ignoring their own party’s interests, that our faith in our system of government and its institutions is justified and confirmed.

Read the US Constitution, Article I. Section 6 which states:

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

I think it is impossible to avoid considering Congressional offices as part of the “going to and returning from the same” aspect of Congressional attendance. And the 18th century concept of a felony would apply to what were then commonly capital crimes of violence, not to ordinary bribery and corruption.

Of course, the determination of all this may, and should be left to the wisdom of Third Branch of the Federal Government, the Supreme Court. But, in the meantime, we should be proud that Republican Legislative leaders will defend the rights of their branch of government, even in the case of its least worthy member.

Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona entered the race for House Majority Leader today. And a group including many of the most repected bloggers on the Political Right issued the following statement addressed to House Republicans:

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers
We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber’s Corner
Lorie Byrd, Polipundit
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain’s Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh

——————————————————————————————————————————
I’ll sign it too. But I’d like to add the request that, in addition to battling lobbyist corruption, Republicans remember that they were elected to do something other than buy themselves votes with the taxpayers’ money. Democrats were already doing exactly that, and they lost the majority in both houses of Congress precisely because the voters in this country had tired of old style special interest politics and pork.

And I would ask Republicans to make sure that the clean-up includes some of those undoubtedly eminently deserving democrats as well.

Signed,
David Zincavage, Never Yet Melted