Category Archive 'Congress'
25 Dec 2009
Senator Jim DeMint
The liberal media and left blogosphere are typically congratulating themselves on “winning ugly, but winning,” as Ezra Klein puts it.
The American voting public is experiencing profound revulsion at the sordid spectacle of ultra-partisan legislation they’ve witnessed recently, featuring open purchases of votes, behind-the-scenes horse-trades, and a host of favors for certain regions and constituencies. We’re reforming health care in very special ways for Libby, Montana, the entire state of Nebraska, longshoremen, and trial lawyers. The Congressional democrat leadership has greased the path to socialism with the purest of sleaze.
There will surely be a reckoning in 2010 and 2012 for all this, but in the meantime (sorry, Ezra!) it is not clear that they have actually won.
Dan Perrin, at Red State, points out that, because of the procedural objection by Senator DeMint, more of the same kind of votes recently won by razor-thin margins will need to occur in both houses.
When Senator DeMint engineered, and Republican Leader McConnell actually objected to the appointment of the conferees, he was really handing the ball off to the left wingers — progressives if you will — and now they have their shot to either hold their own clan members who are against the Senate compromises and force them to vote No, or have their policy demands be ignored and take the crumbs from Senator Nelson’s and Senator Lieberman’s table.
Now, because of the Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely… — then the Senate ObamaCare bill must be amended on the House floor to gain the votes they need to pass it on the House floor. And because of Senator DeMint’s objection to the appointment of the conferees, there will be no conference, or conference report.
If the House amends the Senate bill, they then have to send the amended bill back to the Senate — where all the 60 vote margin cloture votes still apply — cloture on the motion to proceed, and cloture to end the filibuster and cloture on any amendment.
Do I believe that this objection to the appointment of the conferees will kill ObamaCare? Yes, if the progressives or those 64 House Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment do not roll over and play dead.
Hat tip to Rand Simberg via Glenn Reynolds.
06 Dec 2009
Well, getting ObamaCare to the Senate floor cost US taxpayers $300,000,000 for Senator Mary Landrieu’s vote. Apparently they are four votes short right now, so start breaking open those piggy banks, Americans. Democrats are going to begin writing very large checks on your bank accounts to buy those missing votes.
Do you suppose the Congressional Budget Office will ever start factoring in the massive mordida involved in the passage of spending legislation as part of the overall cost estimate?
Bloomberg:
President Barack Obama plans to head to the U.S. Capitol to press Senate Democrats to agree on health legislation as lawmakers struggle to resolve disputes over issues including a proposed government-run insurance plan.
Democrats met throughout yesterday to seek an alternative to Senate Majority Harry Reid’s plan to create the new national program to cover the uninsured. Opposition within his party leaves Reid at risk of falling four votes short of the 60 he needs to pass the legislation, the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health-care system in more than four decades.
Obama’s scheduled visit comes as the bill’s backers need a jolt to come together, said Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry.
“We have to talk about how to put the final pieces together,†Kerry said. “It’s good to hear from the president now, because it’s getting to that stage where you have to come to a decision with your heart as well as your head.â€
Reid called the rare weekend session to meet his deadline of getting a bill by year-end. Republicans, unified in opposition, forced the Democrats yesterday to reiterate their support for cutting more than $40 billion in home health-care services funding under Medicare. It was the latest Republican effort to highlight the bill’s potential impact on the elderly.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans see the debate stretching into 2010 and that they gain the more the public learns. Republicans say Obama’s visit reflects a weakening Democratic position.
“The vote tally must be going in the wrong direction,†said Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.
30 Oct 2009
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.
30 Oct 2009
Peggy Noonan is feeling a bit depressed today contemplating 1990 unreadable pages costing $2.24 million dollars a word.
While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that.
It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don’t see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a sense of its limits.
When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?
I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don’t have the habit of worry. They talk about their “concerns”—they’re big on that word. But they’re not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa’s lap.
They don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.
We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice.
13 Jul 2009
Now we know, at least vaguely, what was behind the accusations against the CIA made in that June 26th letter from seven democrat House members.
After some months on the job, Leon Panetta learned of an inactive, never really implemented but potentially controversial, CIA program, initiated in the direct aftermath of 9/11, which proposed assassinating some important al Qaeda leaders. It would appear that such shenanigans were too Jack Bauer for the Bush Administration, so despite ink being spilled, findings being drafted, and probably warrior spooks training with silenced pistols off somewhere in the Virginia woods, nothing real ever came of any of this.
But good little Leon felt obliged to tattle anyway, and seven democrats thought the opportunity to play Gotcha! with the Agency was too good to miss. Ergo, the famous letter of June 26th. The Sunday Times dutifully clocked in yesterday with a deeply-troubled, chin-stroking article about the perfidy of Dick Cheney in concealing such dastardly doings.
The Wall Street Journal today actually supplies a lot more of the substance.
A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.
According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.
In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. …
One former senior intelligence official said the program was an attempt “to achieve a capacity to carry out something that was directed in the finding,” meaning it was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.
The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the finding, and that the CIA effort wasn’t so much a program as “many ideas suggested over the course of years.” It hadn’t come close to fruition, he added. …
(A) small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives, according to the three former officials. The Ford administration had banned assassinations in the response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
“It was straight out of the movies,” one of the former intelligence officials said. “It was like: Let’s kill them all.”
The former official said he had been told that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t support such an operation. The effort appeared to die out after about six months, he said. …
(I)n September 2001, as CIA operatives were preparing for an offensive in Afghanistan, officials drafted cables that would have authorized assassinations of specified targets on the spot.
One draft cable, later scrapped, authorized officers on the ground to “kill on sight” certain al Qaeda targets, according to one person who saw it. The context of the memo suggested it was designed for the most senior leaders in al Qaeda, this person said.
Eventually Mr. Bush issued the finding that authorized the capturing of several top al Qaeda leaders, and allowed officers to kill the targets if capturing proved too dangerous or risky.
Lawmakers first learned specifics of the CIA initiative the day after Mr. Panetta did, when he briefed them on it for 45 minutes.
What is really going on here is an attempt to gratify the democrat party’s bolshevik base with a little more witch hunting for Bush-Cheney war crimes, combined with the same party’s Congressional efforts to grab micromanagement control of US Intelligence operations.
Sensible people, and even Christopher Hitchens, have argued for some time that the battle with Congress over the CIA was lost long ago. It is past time to abolish the current agency, sell that campus at Langley for a football stadium, and establish a brand new unfettered agency operating covertly and free of Congressional oversight out of anonymous offices.
09 Jul 2009
Anna Eshoo (Calif.), John Tierney (Mass.), Rush Holt (N.J.), Mike Thompson (Calif.), Alcee Hastings (Fla.), Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), and Adam Smith (Wash.) reopened Congressional democrats’ attacks on the CIA, releasing yesterday a letter dated June 26th directly contradicting CIA Director Leon Panetta and asserting that “significant actions” were concealed from Congress and charging the CIA with misleading Congress.
The ball is now in Leon Panetta’s court, and I think his response will be interesting.
The Politico:
A letter released late Wednesday by six (actually 7 – JDZ) Democratic House members claims that Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta testified that “top CIA officials have concealed significant actions… and misled” members of Congress since 2001 — a claim the CIA is contesting.
The letter did not specify what actions were concealed, or how members of Congress were misled.
In it, the Democrats demanded that Panetta correct a statement he issued on May 15 – just after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of misleading her during the Bush years about the agency’s use of waterboarding techniques – stating that it is not the CIA’s “policy or practice to mislead Congress.â€
22 Jun 2009
Steve Chapman, writing in Reason, notes that Congress just proved all over again that our elected representatives never believe in letting the Bill of Rights get in the way of saving Americans from themselves.
(T)he tobacco regulation bill recently passed by Congress indicates that the spirit of liberty is even scarcer than usual in the halls of government.
What motivates advocates of stricter tobacco regulation is the unassailable assurance that they are not only completely right but that their opponents are a) wrong and b) evil. This invigorating certitude makes it possible to justify almost anything that punishes cigarette companies, even if it does no actual good—or does actual harm.
One of the main purposes of the new law is to reduce the number of smokers in the name of improving “public health.” This is a skillful use of language to confuse rather than enlighten.
An individual decision to take up cigarettes is a private event, not a public one, and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. …
Cigarette makers are forbidden to use color in ads in any publication whose readership is less than 85 percent adult. They are barred from using music in audio ads. They are not allowed to use pictures in video ads. They may not put product names on race cars, lighters, caps, or T-shirts. From all this, you almost forget the fleeting passage in the Constitution that says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”
When it gets in a mood to regulate, Congress doesn’t like to trouble itself with nuisances like the First Amendment. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for Massachusetts to ban outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of any schools and playgrounds. So what does this law do? It bans outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.
The Court said the Massachusetts law was intolerable because it choked off communication about a legal activity. “In some geographical areas,” complained Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “these regulations would constitute nearly a complete ban on the communication of truthful information about smokeless tobacco and cigars to adult consumers.”
But to anti-smoking zealots, that effect is not a bug but a feature. The only problem they have with imposing “nearly a complete ban” is the “nearly” part.
Read the whole thing.
13 May 2009
George W. Bush may have been a bit of an idiot to allow liberal elements of the Intelligence Community to damage his administration with leaks of high-level national security information and the Plamegame disinformation operation, but one does have to admire the fact that Bush scrupulously followed what he (I think erroneously) believed to be the rules and never whined about what his opponents were doing to him.
The CIA had a lot better reason to do some leaking this time: to correct the historical record after Barack Obama and congressional democrats chose to use counter-terrorism interrogations as an alleged atrocity useful for indicting their Republican predecessors.
But the spooks are not playing with gentlemanly George W. Bush this time. Demonstrate that Nancy Pelosi was lying her head off, and out come the democrat senatorial thugs to cry foul.
The Politico has the story.
Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.
“I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think,†said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was briefed on interrogation techniques five times between 2006 and 2007.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he finds it “interesting†that a document detailing congressional briefings was released just as “some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism.â€
Asked whether the CIA was seeking political cover by releasing the documents, Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: “Sure it is.â€
30 Mar 2009
George Will makes an excellent argument. Let’s hope the Supreme Court intervenes.
[T]he Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) is unconstitutional.
By enacting it, Congress did not in any meaningful sense make a law. Rather, it made executive branch officials into legislators. Congress said to the executive branch, in effect: “Here is $700 billion. You say you will use some of it to buy up banks’ ‘troubled assets.’ But if you prefer to do anything else with the money — even, say, subsidize automobile companies — well, whatever.”
FreedomWorks, a Washington-based libertarian advocacy organization, argues that EESA violates “the nondelegation doctrine.” Although the text does not spell it out, the Constitution’s logic and structure — particularly the separation of powers — imply limits on the size and kind of discretion that Congress may confer on the executive branch.
The Vesting Clause of Article I says, “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in” Congress. All. Therefore, none shall be vested elsewhere. Gary Lawson of Boston University’s School of Law suggests a thought experiment:
Suppose Congress passes the Goodness and Niceness Act. Section 1 outlaws all transactions involving, no matter how tangentially, interstate commerce that do not promote goodness and niceness. Section 2 says the president shall define the statute’s meaning with regulations that define and promote goodness and niceness and specify penalties for violations.
Surely this would be incompatible with the Vesting Clause. Where would the Goodness and Niceness Act really be written? In Congress? No, in the executive branch. Lawson says that nothing in the Constitution’s enumeration of powers authorizes Congress to enact such a statute. The only power conferred on Congress by the Commerce Clause is to regulate. The Goodness and Niceness Act does not itself regulate, it just identifies a regulator.
The Constitution empowers Congress to make laws “necessary and proper” for carrying into execution federal purposes. But if gargantuan grants of discretion are necessary, are the purposes proper? Indeed, such designs should be considered presumptively improper. What, then, about the Goodness and Niceness Act, which, as Lawson says, delegates all practical decision-making power to the president? What about EESA? …
As government grows, legislative power, and with it accountability, must shrink. The nation has had 535 national legislators for almost half a century. During that time the federal government’s business — or, more precisely, its busy-ness — has probably grown at least twenty-fold. Vast grants of discretion to the executive branch by Congress, such as EESA, may be necessary — if America is going to have constant governmental hyperkinesis. If Washington is going to do the sort of things that EESA enables — erasing the distinction between public and private sectors; licensing uncircumscribed executive branch conscription of, and experimentation with, the nation’s resources.
Since the New Deal era, few laws have been invalidated on the ground that they improperly delegated legislative powers. And Chief Justice John Marshall did say that the “precise boundary” of the power to “make” or the power to “execute” the law “is a subject of delicate and difficult inquiry.” Still, surely sometimes the judiciary must adjudicate such boundary disputes.
The Supreme Court has said: “That Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the president is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution.” And the court has said that properly delegated discretion must come with “an intelligible principle” and must “clearly delineate” a policy that limits the discretion. EESA flunks that test.
27 Mar 2009
A security guard at the Fairfield home of AIG Financial Products executive Douglas Poling reasoning with demonstrators, who are being egged on by the press
Elections have consequences. One conspicuous consequence of the last election is angry mobs at the front doors of suburban Connecticut homes. As if they were living in some Third World country, American executives in Fairfield County now need to protect their families with bodyguards.
AIG employees and their families became victims of mass hatred and were placed in real physical danger by deliberate policy crafted at the highest levels of the Government of the United States.
The Obama Administration and the corrupt democrat congress have cynically chosen to advance their socialist agenda by the left’s traditional tactic of divisive agitation.
Paul Kengor, at American Thinker, puts the AIG show trial into perspective.
“We must teach our children to hate,” Vladimir Lenin instructed his education commissars. The Bolshevik godfather declared that hatred was not only “the basis of communism” but “the basis of every socialist and Communist movement.”
Class envy has been a defining staple of the left for centuries, from the frenzied mobs leaping around the French guillotines to the Soviets to, well, the new masses circling AIG executives today. …
Historically, this behavior is both foreign and antithetical to the American experience. Unfortunately, modern Americans don’t understand their founding and the nation’s core principles — our educational system doesn’t teach those things. Thus, they are now voting, and behaving, in kind. And we are now witnessing our own homegrown socialist movement in action, inspired by hate.
Some Americans, whipped into poisonous hatred by their elected representatives, have literally called for death for AIG executives, and one U.S. senator openly requested that these businesspeople commit suicide.
Liberals in Congress, from Senator Chuck Schumer to Senator Chris Dodd, plus a wild gaggle of unleashed central planners in the House, have conducted a show trial of AIG executives, with the larger purpose of placing American free enterprise in the dock. …
As members of Congress target the likes of AIG chief executive Edward Liddy, mobs target the homes of AIG employees in Connecticut. …
AIG workers are being demonized, noted the Times; they are hiring bodyguards. And it isn’t only AIG. Merrill Lynch is dealing with similar assaults.
And that’s just the start. It’s only a matter of public exposure until another group of private-sector “reptiles” — Lenin’s word — is identified for the proletariat. Congress and the White House will be happy to call out the next group of kulaks. …
[T]he mob wants someone’s head on a platter — now. Time to eat the rich. Perhaps our dear leader, President Obama, can go to Connecticut to play the role of healer, addressing the faithful, calming their fears, a political sermon on the mount. Blessed would be the peacemaker.
But not yet — for now, this hate is just too excellent, too perfect for advancing the agenda of the leftist ideologues and envy-mongers running the republic.
Who’s to blame? The American people are to blame. I’m tired of the populist nonsense from talk-radio on how Americans “deserve better than this.” They do? Why? They voted for this. Obama is being Obama. Pelosi is being Pelosi. Schumer is being Schumer. The American people cast the ballots.
You reap what you sow. Enjoy the hate, America. You elected it.
Read the whole thing.
20 Mar 2009
Charles Krauthammer puts into perspective the scale of the AIG bonuses which have occasioned such histrionics in Washington. Targeting executives as overpaid is a handy way of diverting the public’s attention from the really significant looting going on at the hands of Congress itself.
A $14 trillion economy hangs by a thread composed of a comically cynical, pitchfork-wielding Congress, a hopelessly understaffed, stumbling Obama administration, and $165 million.
That’s $165 million in bonus money handed out to AIG debt manipulators who may be the only ones who know how to defuse the bomb they themselves built. Now, in the scheme of things, $165 million is a rounding error. It amounts to less than 1/18,500 of the $3.1 trillion federal budget. It’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the bailout money given to AIG alone. …
[A] contract is a contract. The AIG bonuses were agreed to before the government takeover and are perfectly legal. Is the rule now that when public anger is kindled, Congress summarily cancels contracts?
Even worse are the clever schemes now being cooked up in Congress to retrieve the money by means of some retroactive confiscatory tax. The common law is pretty clear about the impermissibility of ex post facto legislation and bills of attainder. They also happen to be specifically prohibited by the Constitution. We’re going to overturn that for $165 million?
Nor has the president behaved much better. He too has been out there trying to lead the mob. …
It is time for the president to state the obvious: This recession is not caused by excessive executive compensation in government-controlled companies. The economy has been sinking because of a lack of credit, stemming from a general lack of confidence, stemming from the lack of a plan to detoxify the major lending institutions, mainly the banks, which, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, is where the money used to be.
19 Mar 2009
Michael Graham, at the Boston Herald, observes that the 4th District of Massachusetts’ representative in the House has a lot more to do with the current financial mess than AIG does.
The only thing more painful than watching 180 billion tax dollars swirl down the AIG drainpipe is listening to Barney Frank bloviate about it.
I don’t know The World’s Most Expensive Legislator personally, but I hear he’s quite a cut-up at cocktail parties. However, as legislator and politician, he is an unmitigated disaster. Frank combines the economic success of AIG, the business ethics of Enron and the personal accountability of Ruth Madoff.
Frank began his career opposing Reaganomics, an opposition that stubbornly resisted 25 years of nearly constant economic growth. In the 1990s, Frank sat on the Banking Committee regulating Fannie Mae, even as his then-partner, Herb Moses, worked as a Fannie exec.
Is it a coincidence that Frank has been a die-hard advocate for expanding Freddie/Fannie at any cost?
Since at least 2002, Frank fought an ever-growing drumbeat of calls to slow down the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac train wreck.
In 2003, he famously said that Freddie and Fannie were “not in a crisis,†that they were “fundamentally sound financially.†He repeated that expert testimony in 2005, all the while rejecting the argument that the taxpayers were responsible for Freddie and Fannie’s bills.
And in 2007, he actually proposed raising the caps on Fannie/Freddie’s portfolios – exposing taxpayers to even more risk – and then dumping the new money into (drum roll, please) even more subprime mortgages.
Less than a year later, the Fannie/subprime/derivatives catastrophe was upon us. And the cheerleader for all three? Our Barney.
Which is why it so astonishes that anyone takes him seriously as the self-declared watchdog of Wall Street. Please, Barney, just shut up.
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