Repeated for emphasis. Reid’s decision here makes all the difference between immunity passing this time around (as opposed to after a presidential veto of a good surveillance bill), and Congress standing up the president with a ”NO” to immunity.

I’m positive it was a deliberate, thought-out decision, being mindful of the advantage that accrues to particular language being in the base bill.

He can point to the DEM Senators in the SSCI for a bit of cover, as they appear to have endorsed immunity on a 13-2 margin. The SSCI vote is being thrown up frequently as misrepresented (I think) as overwhelming committee support for immunity.

OTOH, maybe the SSCI and other senators feel the Rockefeller version of ”court review” isn’t immunity at all. Piercing the Rockefeller immunity sham requires a more complex argument, and is a more nuanced situation than outright ”throw it out of court.” See Feinstin’s and Specter/Whitehouse options (also amounting to immunity shams, IMO) to complete the picture of deep Senate support for a legislative solution to keeping the administration’s bogus legal logic from seeing the light of day.

In general principle, their stance makes sense. They don’t want to be seen as obstructionist, which is what they’d be labeled if they objected to voting on the Feingold amendment. So, they make a plea for the not-unusual expedient shortcut of agreeing to 60 vote margins on the front end of taking up a series of amendments.

It’s all part of the usual political posturing via parliamentary procedure.

Notice my above too, where I said having the SSCI bill as the starting point rather than as an amendment amounts to “stacking the deck” in favor of the starting point. Further evidence of his bias toward the SSCI bill is where Reid encouraged opposition to use the nuclear option of “tabling” (where 60 votes can’t come into play) the SJC version.

Even if a majority of Senators is in favor of the SSCI bill, Reid could have stacked the deck the other way, and required immunity to be added in via amendment. Then, instead of needing 60 votes to get it out, it would take 60 votes to get it in. As a general rule, the leader will stack in favor of the majority – that’s what is thought of as “fair.” And taking the nominal purpose of cloture, which is to permit objection in order to become informed enough to cast an informed vote, the use of cloture to force a supermajority is essentially parliamentary abuse. Not that the Senate isn’t a chronic and experienced abuser — but at bottom, the way the SSCI/SJC conflict came up was “fair” to the legislative body, being biased in favor of the majority.

That a majority of Senators are agreeable with retroactive immunity is the real travesty here.

But I think it bears repetition, a majority of the Senators appear to be in favor of immunity, by their votes. If so, it’s not inappropriate for Reid to “stack the deck” in favor of the likely outcome, if he’s truly trying to have the Senate express its will.

Yes but…

There you get into the majority of 51-49 votes versus starting to require 60 votes for legislation the (in my perception) skewed logic that Kit Bond and Chambliss tried to sell in their nutty tag team presenatation today.

The real question is why didn’t he force splitting immunity from the snooping oversight protocol. Senate leaders have the power to combine and split issues at will. Last time around, there was a move by Frist to combine Military Commissions with FISA. FISA got split off and never handled.

I think he put up the DNI/SSCI bill as he was “told” to do, by people he’s not sure he can argue around in case he doesn’t do what he’s told. Shorter version: he’s stupid, and rather than thinking creatively when confronted with the DNI bill, he just assumed the material had to be combined. Alternative: He knows what’s going on, and is a willing pawn.

As a procedural point, if the combination of snoop oversight and immunity ARE destined to be attached at the hip, then protocol as between competing committee versions is, best I can tell, indefinite. Neither committee has priority over the other, they are peers. The basic/bottom/first bill presented has the advantage, because amendments can be denied or forced into 60 vote thresholds.

But I think it bears repetition, a majority of the Senators appear to be in favor of immunity, by their votes. If so, it’s not inappropriate for Reid to “stack the deck” in favor of the likely outcome, if he’s truly trying to have the Senate express its will.

When Bill Frist kept rattling the “Nuclear Option” …

I studied that closely as it was going down. I agreed with it then and do now, but I do so because I view the context of nomination confirmation as very different from legislating. The language of the nuclear option was VERY narrowly tailored (yes, there was precise language) and IMO, was appropriate to the stalemate.

The “nuclear option” had leverage because a minority of senators were stalling executive, not legislative action. It failed because individual Senators (both parties) crave the power that accompanies “I object.” In the end, Frist capitulated the principle of “nominees deserve up or down votes,” as most of the contentious judicial nominees were, after the gang of 14, put on the shelf and never voted on. 4 or 5 of them withdrew their nominations a year later.

To those who say its up to the senate to make its own rules, I counter that the balance as between the executive and senate (concerning appointments of judges in particular) would be RADICALLY altered, if the Senate could set the threshold for confirmation anywhere it wanted to, say 75 or 90 vote supermajority. There was a period of time in Senate history where the was no cloture, and no means to force a vote. Literally, unanimity would be required to pass a nominee.

And on this subject, I am well aware that others hold exactly the opposite view to mine. I studied the question, and pondered how the system was intended to work, and obviously I think my conclusion is correct. But the issue certainly isn’t settled. It takes 60 (or more) votes to get a nomination through the Senate. Check out the “Treaties” rule sometime — cloture does NOT play there.

I don’t think I’ve asked these, and if I’m dense about it so be it.

1) Why do you think Reid brought the SSIC version of S. 2248 to the floor instead of the SJC version? It sure as hell has made things tougher for immunity.

2) When Bill Frist kept rattling the “Nuclear Option” (The maneuver was brought to prominence in 2005 when then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican of Tennessee) threatened its use to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush in case there is anyone who doesn’t remember it) to end fillibusters by majority vote, I never understood why it had much leverage, since if the Democrats got power, they could have reversed it the same way Frist imposed it?

I also thought the Dems came out hugely on the short end of the stick because so many Federalist society robocops got onto the bench after the “gang of 14″.

I haven’t noticed any misconstruction — at least none that causes me any frustration. I’m far from a clear, unambiguous communicator — so a certain amount of misconstruction is inevitable and my fault. It gets frustrating when people assign motives or beliefs to me, that I know I don’t have; or if, after I’ve produced a substantial volume of prose around an issue, expressing my view, a person who has provoked the extended production decides to cherry pick one statement (ignoring the rest) and claiming that’s a complete picture of my “argument” or point of view.

There are other variations on the theme. If you’ve blogged around I’m sure you’ve seen examples of bad faith back and forth.

On the FISA and legislative process comments you made in that post, I agree. AFAIK, conference committees are open to the public (mostly), and like any other process aren’t per se good or bad. But Congress uses them to legislate in secret.

Hopefully this is the correct link to my comment @246

Thanks for the tip, but I’m not sure if I can use it.

I run linux (gentoo, if anybody wonders) and mostly console applications. I’m sure I can find an application to trim, split, and otherwise mangle the audio I’m getting. Never had a need to, or at least not enough of one to motivate me to go searching. Next time I record some really oddball SEnate event, I might get motivated, now that I know how to get the audio on the web.