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The Bolton and Miers contempt citations were originally approved in the Judiciary Committee last July. But now, you know, they’re busy…’n’ stuff:
House Democrats will postpone votes on criminal contempt citations against White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, while congressional leaders work with President Bush on a bipartisan stimulus package to fend off an economic downturn, according to party leaders and leadership aides.
Senior Democrats have decided that holding a controversial vote on the contempt citations, which have already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, would “step on their message” of bipartisan unity in the midst of the stimulus package talks.
Well you know, the way to not "step on the message" of bipartisan unity is also for the fucking Republicans to join them in voting for the criminal contempt citations, but everyone knows that’s not going to happen. Because Republicans don’t do that.
Can someone explain to me how "bipartisan" ever means anything but giving the wingnuts what they want so they don’t pitch a bitch in the corner?
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Zed?
Jane!
Ooops. Missed by … that much.
“Can someone explain to me how “bipartisan” ever means anything but giving the wingnuts what they want so they don’t pitch a bitch in the corner?”
It doesn’t.
Sen. Lieberman told me so.
Zed. There you have it. Your Congress wussies both House and Senate have failed to take a vote, both for several months after HJC and SJC took contempt votes and contempt passed.
I still say the Dems should hold off on the “Economic Stimulus Package” until all of the subpoenas have been satisfied (and retroactive immunity is dead).
I forgot; you’re kinda out of the Zed sweepstakes when a filter delays all your posts for 30 minutes.
Gotta keep that gunpowder dry!
All the best caviar is being shipped to the Harriet Meyers safe house these days.
Subpoena power -what does that have to do with Congress? (snark)
Well there were no stimulus package talks 6 months ago when the citations were issued now were there.
Well you know, the way to not “step on the message” of bipartisan unity is also for the fucking Republicans to join them in voting for the criminal contempt citations, but everyone knows that’s not going to happen. Because Republicans don’t do that.
Well, not until 2009, anyway.
Of course, since W is a bully, and the only thing he understands is being bullied, the way the Ds would get exactly what they want is to serve the subpoenas.
Yeah, and now baseball gods don’t think they have to show up either…
There isn’t near enough bitchin’ going on in that corner to suit me.
Full scale wailing would be nice.
I don’t really want to be a member of a party of cowards.
Have you noticed that bipartisn always means giving in to the republicans. When repubs use the word they mean dems should go there way. When dems say bipartisn spirit they too mean they go the repub way.
Heads I win. Tails you lose.
Quid pro quo for advancing the Dems a couple hundred Billion to spend in 2008 prior to taking the Prez in 2009.
OT
Ledger death. Amazing how strong the taboo against suicide is. Can’t be mentioned as one of the many possibilities, despite all the things in his life & apt that makes it one.
Or add a line to the stimulus bill that says the Executive Branch must respond to the subpoenas.
Let George veto that and try to explain why.
Mr. Reid, Mrs. Pelosi, et al: Please stop appeasing Bushco at every opportunity. Its bad for the country and bad for the Party. Any average American would be arrested for ignoring a subpoena from Congress. Do our laws apply to some, but not to others? What does this teach our children?
AAACK!
Ghouliani on Larry King.
NO WANT!
Can someone explain to me how “bipartisan” ever means anything but giving the wingnuts what they want so they don’t pitch a bitch in the corner?
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Because the R’s always will want to have people spreading lies about everyting all the time. The D’s don’t seem to have the stamin and biz aparatus to sit on the corner all day and spread lies.
- DK up on CSPAN, with remarks that he later withdrew!!
Will the Senate Dems ever recover from the Stockholm Syndrome they’ve been suffering from since Bush took office, or do we need to replace them to get anything done?
ACKKKK! Help me stop screaming. This is exactly the time to vote on this!
DK on impeachment in his striken comments.
CSPAN
Just how long *does* a contempt vote take, anyway? For how long they’ve been waiting it must take, like, weeks or something.
I thought the same thing.
ACKKKK! Help me stop screaming. This is exactly the time to vote on this!
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They are saying that Davos, the crash, and…the SC primary would not do well. The Dems don’t want to get their undies all in a bunch over this stuff when Joe voter has been getting screwed by Republicans over these many years.
Remind me again … is Reid a Democrat ?
We should probably replace them just to be on the safe side.
“Your prefix says ‘D’, but your actions say ‘R’…”
you want that answer in Friedman Units or election cycles?
Waxman is tied up with steroids and baseball… you know, the important stuff.
Stockholm Smockholm Syndrome. The dems are sells out just as the repukes are.
Just a few people at a time to puke them out all over the place.
Gotcha … thanks for that !
Jane, I’m guess I’m just wondering if this whole financial screw-up wasn’t planned well ahead of time as a dodge for the real crimanal issues. Our criminal enemies are not stupid, and have been in a position to affect stock markets worldwide. Maybe I’m just over the edge, but something’s really, totally, and brilliantly F’d up.
I agree. Giving Ds credit for being victims is a step too far. It’s the voters who are the victims.
Another MacGuffin. Cleaning up baseball was not the objective; doing something other than voting on contempt was the objective.
Ghoul visited Two Jays Deli in Ft. Liquordale, FL yesterday. NPR did their best to fluff Rudy on an exclusive broadcast from the deli on their 6PM radio show. Too bad – it didn’t do the trick. Even Republicans can’t stand him.
That is what is interesting about the MSM “Bill Clinton is unhinged meme”…He is calling bullshit on their games and they don’t know whether to shit or go blind.
“Stockholm Smockholm Syndrome. The dems are sells out just as the repukes are.”
Sadly, I may be arriving at that very same conclusion soon.
Certainly in the case of contempt in the House and FISA in the Senate, it is the Democratic leadership itself that is doing the playing, and progressives are the ones getting played.
The problem is our side does not value or understand a concept my mother held dear in disciplining me. It was captured in one word: “NOW!”
The Repugs never lied about who they side with, the Dems have been deceiving their base since they won the Majority in ‘06.
I love the fact that Rudy’s Brilliant Campaign Strategy has infused him with anti-momentum.
too true.
Waxman is tied up with steroids and baseball… you know, the important stuff.
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This issue is important as well, but it is only part of the larger issue that they should look at. You are correct that this is the small stuff. It all fits a pattern of people cheating getting ahead (by breaking laws, rules, and getting unfair advantage to them and theirs). Sports stars use steriods and crowd out the real stars, farmer A hires illegal immigrants and puts farmer B out of work, and on up all the way to the top with Bush lying into war.
What do the Dems do… rebuke the 2006 election, and puke a 2008 election all over us. Its time for TLC over DLC!
Jane, I’m guess I’m just wondering if this whole financial screw-up wasn’t planned well ahead of time as a dodge for the real crimanal issues. Our criminal enemies are not stupid, and have been in a position to affect stock markets worldwide. Maybe I’m just over the edge, but something’s really, totally, and brilliantly F’d up.
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This is well discussed with consiparcy and everything for quite some time.
Put a fork in him. He’s as done as Hollywood Fred.
Ms. Pelosi said that “we” are the advocates and that they are the “leaders” which makes us sound like beggars in the street asking for alms. It seems to me that it is about time we made it clear that “we” are their bosses and that we could start paying them by the hour.
I did feel like I was supporting a particularly wimpy party today. I understand a little give and take, but enforcing the oversight duties was not a negotiable in my book.
Too bizzee…puh-lease. Makes me want to go straight for the donation log, knowing I will go “aha!” fairly soon after
Until this month, I had no idea that the Republicans had any campaign consultants clueless enough to make ours look good.
As far as Nancy Pelosi was concerned, subpoena power wasn’t the most important thing about the 2006 election.
Becoming Speaker was.
I hope Rudy stays in a while longer … what’s a circus without clowns ?!! *g*
NICE !
Another MacGuffin. Cleaning up baseball was not the objective; doing something other than voting on contempt was the objective.
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You would think you could get a commercial to show Congress working on ‘Roids and sitting on what they are not doing? Oh, no that would actually be the media doing research and having a story.
Yeah, it worked out really well for her and Harry. And Rahm, and Steny, and a whole bunch of other people who hate our guts.
Wonder if Rudy takes a clown car home.
How about we pay them by piece work … when they accomplish a task, then they get paid …
You’re waiting about the same length of time it takes to get outta Iraq. Iraq and Contempt Motions –they’re continuing with no meaningful action forever. Iraq can be resolved with a DRAFT. Contempt –well you can’t overcome your gutless Congress people and Senators. They were gutless, they are gutless, and they will be gutless. That’s Congressional Conjugation for ya.
Senate Judiciary voted 11-7 to hold Rove and Bolten in contempt December 13, 2007
House Judiciary approved contempt against Jush Bolten and Harriet Miers on July 25, 2007.
Pelosi promptly announced she was delaying the motion until September. They haven’t been heard of on this since.
Tony Snow called the action pathetic. He was certainly right there. That’s the MO the White House uses–that Congress is pathetic and they are.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Commercial and Adminstrative Law subcommittee on Judiciary, and other Democrats also complained that the Justice Dept. had ordered Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, not to initiate a legal case on behalf of the House if the contempt resolution is adopted by the body. Taylor’s office would normally handle such a case on behalf of lawmakers. The Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs sent Sanchez a letter on Tuesday night informing her of its instructions to Taylor.
LOL !!!
I wasn’t even going to mention it tonight … *g*
Last week, Conyers announced the legislation for the Voter Caging Prohibition Act of 2008. I have heard nary a word in the news or anywhere about it. It sure seems like an opportunity for a 1-2 punch in combination with the Miers/Bolten contempt citations. If R’s want to bitch about the legislation, point to the need for Miers, Rove, and Bolten to testify and clear the air and get it passed anyway.
Teddy, you are correct. And, you know how AbFab Nancy loves to titter.
“Being speaker of the House is Absolutely Fabulous”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEX_M7qviFw
I really don’t think their government salaries are their primary source of income – most of them probably wouldn’t even miss it.
Nancy will get around to it but first there is the largely ineffective stimulus package to get through. She doesn’t want to antagonize any Republicans whose cojones she will be pulling out of the fire. So you can see they have a right to be upset. Then there’s Easter. But after that there will probably be a supplemental for the Iraq war, and Pelosi is likely to infuriate them again by agreeing to everything they want. And then there are all those bills that Nancy likes to pass in the House that go nowhere in the Senate. That will take a lot of time too. By the time that’s over. There will the August recess, the Presidential conventions, and campaigns. There’s that garden that Nancy wants to plant. It’s hard to see when she can work in anything that smacks of Congress being a coequal branch but if there are any cancellations I’m betting she will jump on it as fast as she would on impeachment. Cuz that’s the kind of Speaker she is, the best Republican Speaker of the House we have seen in a while.
Don’t you dare start that ! :) :)
Well, that is debatable. Repugs lie about representing the best interests of working people. The way they do it is to blame gays, women, minorities, immigrants, and the lack of piety for everything that is wrong with America. Meanwhile, they set up laws to expedite workers’ jobs to China and India.
…Or just ask the Republicans why they hate democracy. Which is what they should have been using election reform to hammer Republicans with all along.
Not to mention that we really fucking need it.
True … how then to pressure them to actually fulfill their promises ?
Will the Senate Dems ever recover from the Stockholm Syndrome they’ve been suffering from since Bush took office, or do we need to replace them to get anything done?
That is what is interesting about the MSM “Bill Clinton is unhinged meme”…He is calling bullshit on their games and they don’t know whether to shit or go blind.
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He is calling bull on their games (as he is playing them) and he is getting his attacks in to the other candidate at the same time as well as personally attacking the reporter (as well as their entire craft). I said before he has a partial good argument, but he is picking that clip and he knows it. I sure don’t know why, he either does not care and is riffing or is going for a few percentage points.
Tom Tomorrow says it all
Ya think Rudy wears those big floppy shoes with his skirts and blouses?
How can you possibly compare a child’s game with the business of running a Nation, decisions which literally affect the entire world? Many, if not most of could give a shit about steroids, if an overpaid lug wants to destroy his liver, so what? I want my elected officials to attend to the people’s business, let the Baseball Police, the FDA or even the DEA & their world famous “War on Drugs” deal with this other crap.
Thank you very much for an image that will haunt my dreams tonight … *g*
LOL. Like an old joke my brother told to get a “big gulp” soda out of my parents during a summer trip. Classic tale.
exactly, that’s all it ever means to these wing nutz
I think the dems need to get real tough with repukes and screw the bi partisan approach. Make political war. Crush the opposition… that’s what they try to do.
This one’s better
OT..Some good news…
link
Actually they gave themselves a several thousand dollar raise. The less they do, the more they are slaves to Bush, the more they make.
There has been no effective oversight for 7 years as Glenn Greenwald says. You’ve been stuck with total putzes in the House and Senate, and you’re seeing what putzes can get done.
If Osama Bin Ladin were Speaker of the House, you’d have roughly the same level of inactivity.
If I were bin Ladin, I’d be very satisfied with the way the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches have conducted themselves since 911. They have produced an exponential number of bonuses he could not have anticipated.
Hey John!
How can you possibly compare a child’s game with the business of running a Nation, decisions which literally affect the entire world? Many, if not most of could give a shit about steroids, if an overpaid lug wants to destroy his liver, so what? I want my elected officials to attend to the people’s business, let the Baseball Police, the FDA or even the DEA & their world famous “War on Drugs” deal with this other crap.
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I do not, what I was implying is that it is all in the same vein from the root to the fruit…BUT that they are stupidly picking the least troublesome of the very serious problems in the vein (#1 being trials of people voted into office).
on the cnn crawl it says the administration is sending out Cheney to threaten the congress. who cares about him..his approval rating must be a minus.
Crush the thugs and get them out of the way of passing legislation that benefits the nation and her people not the wealthy.
The pukes have been waging class warfare on those without stock portfolios. Fight back.
“Bipartisan” means having Joey “Short Ride” Lieberman standing with you on stage while you make your victory speech, even though you are a Republican and it was a Republican primary that you just won.
But the Big Dick has the skinny on all the punks in congress.
I don’t know either. The media want people to think he mentally compromised, which is possible, but I think they underestimate the only two term Dem since FDR.
The Michael Weiner show will become quite flaccid without sponsors to shore it up.
Cheney is skeered he might get in trouble with the law… it was HE who was behind the wire tapping and I am sure they used it for political purposes.
Let’s see the intel which caught and prevented all the terra attacks. We have tried and convicted 3 terrorists in 7 yrs. hahhaha
I think the #1 thing that they respond to is a threat to their job security. But they sure are responsive to big lobbyist money, too – or they wouldn’t be pushing so hard for telecom immunity.
I’m trying to find a post I wrote a little while back about Congress instantly snapping to attention when some lobbyists flooded the zone with cash, as opposed to the way they grudgingly pay insincere lip service when thousands of ordinary citizens cry out in anguish.
Right. And Bin Laden is still on vacation.
Ah, here it is:
If you have tons of money, getting Congress to do your bidding is actually pretty easy. But we don’t have tons of money, so we don’t matter.
He doesn’t need to blackmail Democrats. They cave on their own.
Hi Mary,
Should have come with us – not last weekend but the one before – to NV canvassing for Edwards
Was snowing most of the way up the hill though. We ended up with some pretty swanky neighborhoods up in the hills (whew! got a workout) ;-)
Money is not speech.
I don’t know either. The media want people to think he mentally compromised, which is possible, but I think they underestimate the only two term Dem since FDR.
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The media is sure as hell more dumb and compromised them him, and they largely took part in that/his hit job as well. I know he is smart so its unbecoming, but up to them to determine strategy and what to say and how to say it (personal terms). Implying the media to “do right” type thing is likely far worse than attacking the other candidate(s).
If you perceive most of them as lobbyist call girls, you’ll be right on the money.
No, it’s power.
There is a very thin line between a campaign contribution and a bribe…
Let’s limit money. We can do that without limiting speech.
Preachin’ to the choir. You too, Jim.
I think publicly financed campaigns would be a *huge* game-changer, but it’s hard for me to see how we get there, given that incumbents are the ones making the laws.
Bet y’all didn’t realize that there was a vicious in-bred Republican caucus down in Bobby Jindahl-land tonight. Yessirree! The Louisiana Republicans had an in-family Festivus wrestling match and airing-of-grievances that has almost all of them heated.
http://reason.com/blog/show/124573.html
http://afp.google.com/article/…..3Qc4oc_cdQ
Apparently McCain came in first, but there was a huge appearance by someone named PLPF. Nope, that’s not the Popular Liberation of Palestine Front. It stands for Pro-Life, Pro-Family. It’s candidates are presumably “Uncommitted”, but I really doubt that. I suspect that they were rounded up from the nearby asylums.
Then there was the real shocker. Ron St. Paul emerged from the primordial ooze to slither into third (or second). But the Paul acolytes say that they was robbed by Party Officials. The most obvious thing was that they disallowed them access to the caucuses. Apparently Paul supporters mobbed the venues, and were told that if they were not on the Republican Registration lists they couldn’t participate, and scores were turned away. Some were allowed to vote by provisional ballot but not actually participate in the discussions, etc.
But then it has emerged that the other candidates formed a secret cartel. The Mittster, Giuliani and Huckabee supporters AND sent some of their support to McCain to prevent Paul from coming in FIRST. Thus they unified to form the PLPF slate. The Paul supporters are righteously p.o.’d.
Odd that this event was so much out of the media spotlight as they almost have as many delegates as the Carolinas, Iowa, Nevada, or NH. 15 delegates are selected in the caucuses and another 15 in the later Primary.
Tell that to the Supreme Court.
Putting it into CFR the right way could just do that.
A guy can dream, huh?
This is total, utter, complete, 100% bullshit. Where’s a 3rd party when you need one?
The Democrat bench warmers in congress know that they don’t have to
deliver on anything because people will for the most part, will
sacrifice on their principles and vote to re-elect them anyway..
Now that is righteous anger Jane Hamsher :)
fuck unity!
(Real Democrats) divided by (blue dogs + bush dogs)times pixiedust = Rove`s Math