Not Enough Balls Among Them To Shoot Pool

I should have known Harry Reid couldn't keep it up.

Republicans have handed Democrats what could be a key to maintaining control of the Senate and House in the upcoming election: their steadfast support for keeping all of the Bush tax cuts in effect, including those for people making over $250,000. Imagine the sound bites to be obtained by forcing these guys to give floor speeches to support this porition just a few weeks before the election, especially since many of those same Republicans are willing to let the cuts expire for the poorest American if they can't get their way.

All it would have taken was for Reid and the Senate leadership to stand up and call their bluff. As the title of this post implies, that was its downfall; Reid has postponed debate and the vote until after the election, which shows he's as stupid as he is cowardly.

The upcoming voting includes three elections to fill Senate seats that are currently interim positions. By law, whoever wins these elections on November 2 must be seated immediately, which could well cost Democrats three seats they may desperately need for the lame duck session.

Now watch these chickenshit bastards whine about voter turnout if they lose in November.

Why Politicians Aren't Trusted

Ezra Klein interviewed retiring Indiana Senator Evan Bayh over the weekend. While discussing the importance of interpersonal relationships among senators in both parties, and how this can create the comity necessary for consensus, Bayh made the following comment:

My father [the late Indiana Senator Birch Bayh] was on the Judiciary Committee all 18 years. He had a good personal relationship with Jim Eastland. They probably didn't agree on practically anything, or very little, from a public policy standpoint. But they were willing to work through that to see what they could get done just because they knew each other and liked each other. Eastland was a strident anti-Communist and would routinely denounce Castro on the floor of the Senate, and called my dad in one day, sat down, and he's got this humidor and says, "Birch, can I offer you one of these fine Havana cigars?" So there was an example of even Senator Eastland putting pragmatism ahead of ideology.

James Eastland was not a pragmatist; he was a hypocrit and criminal. For someone to "routinely denounce Castro on the floor of the Senate" while violating the embargo on Cuban goods is prima facie evidence of both. (We'll leave aside the fact that Eastland was an ardent racist for a different discussion.)

Congress has long made itself above the people it has sworn to govern; laws that apply to the rest of us don't apply to them. That's not whining about their sense of entitlement; the laws are actually writtne that way. The next time a congressman or senator laments the low esteem in which the public holds our government institutions, hand him a mirror. The clean-up can start there.

Cowards and Hypocrites

Yesterday the Senate passed a resolution that raised the debt ceiling for the Federal government. A distasteful process to be sure, but without it the government defaults on its outstanding debt, which could be an economic catastrophe in several levels.

The following exchange took place, as chronicled by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

Before the debt-ceiling vote, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, warned that a default by the Treasury would have a "cataclysmic result in the financial markets."

Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on budget matters, rose in opposition. "It is not responsible to raise the debt ceiling in this manner if you're not going to put in place any responsible activity to bring under control the rising debt."

Not going to put in place any responsible activity to bring under control the rising debt? The Senate voted Tuesday on just such an activity, a debt commission whose recommendations would get an up-or-down vote in Congress. Gregg joined Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) in introducing the bill, and Obama endorsed it. But a majority of Gregg's GOP caucus opposed the panel.

Baucus, the Democratic floor leader, realized he was wasting his breath. "I think we all know where we are," he said before one of Thursday's votes, declining the time he had been given to speak.

Baucus’s big mistake here was in ceding his remaining time. He should have called bullshit on Gregg, who is as big a phony as can be found in the Senate. This is why Democrats consistently lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the public. Republicans repeatedly obfuscate, lie, and repudiate what were allegedly the sincere and heartfelt convictions of only a few years ago, and the Dems never call them on it.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should have staffers lined up, ready to hand rebuttals to any Democrat who follows a Republican who makes a false or hypocritical speech on the floor. Define “death panels” right after the lie is put out. Keep both images, the true and the false, in the public’s mind. Ask hard questions. “I ask my distinguished colleague why he stands so squarely against accumulating debt when he voted six times for budgets that increased the deficit during the Bush Administration?”

But they won’t. It’s hard to decide whether they’re more cowardly than they are stupid sometimes.

Lowering This Bar Requires Digging a Hole

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-The Hartford) was, for years, one of the more liberal members of the Senate. He fell for the arguments behind the Iraq War hook, line, and phony rationale, which left his still-liberal constituents in Connecticut less than pleased. So less then pleased were they, Joe lost the 2006 primary for his own seat, something that happens about as often as Dick Cheney buys a panhandler a steak dinner at Morton’s.

Lieberman ran as an Independent and won. (Technically, he ran on the Connecticut for Lieberman ticket, a party created just for him. More on that later.) Since then, Lieberman has repudiated virtually every liberal position he held in the past, notably, and most damagingly, his support for universal health care. The vestigial public option was stripped from the current bill as his demand, as he is this week’s 60th vote.

The Low Brass Correspondent thinks Lieberman is in the pocket of Connecticut’s insurance industry. I think Ezra Klein is closer: Lieberman is sticking it to liberals any way he can. (“But if you had attempted to forecast Lieberman's positions based on his ongoing grudge match with the liberals who defeated him in the 2006 primary, you'd have nailed it perfectly. He has, at every point, taken aim at the policies that liberals support, even when they are policies that Lieberman himself has supported.”) Why? Because they had the temerity to spurn him when he went off the rails? Politicians rarely show leadership; the country is governed by poll. Normally Lieberman would earn praise here for rejecting the general opinion of his constituents about the war and doing what he thought was right. He doesn’t, because he ignored the obvious caveat: showing such independence has risks. He was not prepared to accept those risks, and has blamed liberals for not following him ever since. That’s not taking a principled stand; it’s exercising a sense of entitlement.

Right now Lieberman couldn’t get the Connecticut electorate to vote him a brush if he was appointed public toilet cleaner. Even Connecticut for Lieberman has disowned him. He’s pissed, and this is his way of getting even. Lieberman doesn’t need insurance industry contributions anymore; the only thing he’s running for now is a job as their lobbyist, and he’s already getting in shape to carry their water.

The plan for this post was to declare Joe Lieberman the worst person in the Senate; good thing I read today’s paper first. The hands-down winner is Senator John Cornyn (R-Hell), who offered the following prayer on the floor of the Senate yesterday, in anticipation of this morning’s 1:00 AM health insurance reform vote: “What the American people ought to pray is that somebody can't make the vote tonight. That's what they ought to pray."

Hard to imagine he was talking about anyone other than Robert Byrd (D-Hospital); Ted Kennedy’s already dead. Byrd’s 92 years old, confined to a wheelchair, and probably shouldn’t be in the Senate anymore. Still, he is, and for Coburn to wish him—or any other senator—ill is beneath contempt.

There was a time when the untimely death or illness of a senator who would have cast a deciding vote for or against a filibuster would provoke a response from the opposition that reflected the fact the other side had the votes but for a calamity, and some senator who stood more for the body’s professed collegiality would have cross over, or at least have the vote delayed until the indisposed member was capable again. Today’s crew actively campaigns—not just campaigns, prays—for the misfortune of a colleague.

This country is in a crisis, in large part because the government is gridlocked, and that gridlock can be firmly laid at the feet of the Senate. Its rules were established to cater to an atmosphere of cooperation that no longer exists. It was expected its members would put aside their differences to accede to the general will except in extraordinary circumstances; now no bill can pass unless it has the 60 votes needed to kill a filibuster. This is an abomination of the intent of the body’s rules; unfortunately no one can change those rules except the diseased body itself, and it would rather protect its power to obstruct when in the eventual minority than do the people’s business.

This is where “God help us all,” might be a suitable comment, though the mere existence of the United States Senate argues against the existence of such a divine and merciful being.

A Win-Win Scenario

It’s hard to see understand the controversy over closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Those who want to play the fear card—which includes 90 senators—act like the Obama Administration is going to drop these guys off in Miami with bus tickets for the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. How placing a couple of hundred alleged terrorists into solitary confinement can endanger a nation of three hundred million seems to be a more relevant question than what Obama plans to do with them. (Shackle them and move them under heavy guard seems a reasonable answer to the latter.)

Here’s an idea that should please everyone: build a facility in Texas. I’m sure Crawford’s economy could use a lift, now that all the media and protesters are gone. It’s too bad Bush is gone, too, but his gated community in Dallas is close enough for him to feel a sense of accomplishment for creating this “all locked up with no place to go” scenario. (Funny how his “just folks” attachment to the ranch disappeared about the time it was no longer politically profitable.)

Here’s where we satisfy the Senate: If Rick Perry has his way, Texas will no longer be part of the United States by the time we get the detainees moved, so they won’t be coming to the United States after all.

I don’t know why they just don’t come to me to settle these things.

Who's in Charge Here?

It’s been a while since I bashed Hapless Harry Reid. This week’s excuse was another defeat in the Senate. Not that I’ll post something to rip Harry every time he gets rolled by the Republicans. I have a full-time job already.

Harry finds himself, and the party that has lashed its ambitions to his incompetence, stuck in what may be a unique situation in American politics: he can’t do anything worth doing without sixty votes. The Republicans threaten to filibuster anything he might try, so the usual “majority rules” principle doesn’t apply.

While the Republicans may be superior parliamentarians, they’re still fascists. This week they quashed a bill that would have restored habeas corpus, a right that had withstood all manner of threats from 1215 till last year’s passage of the Military Commission Act.

Before my Republican friends get their glands on their shoulders over the term “fascists,” let’s examine the evidence. Habeas isn’t one of those “penumbra” rights they claim were invented by the Warren Court and its heirs, like Miranda or abortions. It’s a fundamental right of a free society. Latin for, “produce the body,” it’s the principle through which someone held by the government can demand to hear the charges against him, or be set free. To say anyone can be held indefinitely, without charge, is patently anti-American. It’s the kind of thing the Nazis would have done, and did. Ergo, fascists.

Here’s the question I can’t answer: if the Republicans can hold up the restoration of habeas corpus with the threat of a debate, why didn’t Harry save it that way in the first place? Walk up to then-Majority Leader Bill Frist and say, “Habeas stays, or we’ll shut the whole operation down.” Probably because he was afraid Frist would invoke the dreaded “nuclear option,” thus rendering filibuster obsolete. Mitch McConnell, the current Minority Leader, doesn’t have that fear. He’s already bluffed Harry into a ghost filibuster with every bill.

Here’s a suggestion: let them filibuster. Shut down the whole operation. It’s not like the Senate is accomplishing anything, anyway. If you’re going to get nothing done because the Republicans are being obstructionist, let the world see how obstructionist they really are. Losing votes is the quickest way to make a majority look like a minority with a big mouth, while allowing the minority with a big mouth govern as though they were the majority.

Enough should have been enough a long time ago.