Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Democrat Ethics Reform, Using Creative Legislative Process (9:34 am)

Jonathan Weisman for WaPo reports that Democratic “House leaders plan a major rollout of an ethics reform bill early next year to demonstrate concern about an issue that helped defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections.”

But they will do it with a twist: Instead of forwarding one big bill, Democrats will put together an ethics package on the House floor piece by piece, allowing incoming freshmen to take charge of high-profile issues and lengthening the time spent on the debate. The approach will ensure that each proposal — including banning gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as imposing new controls on the budget deficit — is debated on its own and receives its own vote. That should garner far more media attention for the bill’s components before a final vote on the entire package.
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The approach may be the first indication of how the Democrats plan to use their ability to control the House agenda as the majority power, setting the terms of debate while lifting the strict rules that Republicans used to curtail dissent.
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Because House rules changes are, by tradition, party-line votes, breaking the package into its components would also allow Republicans to support individual amendments, even though they probably would vote against the package in the end.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Janet Reno and 7 Other Former DoJ Officials Challenge Bush’s Pro-Torture Anti-Habeas Corpus Law (12:42 am)

Matt Apuzzo for AP reports

Former Attorney General Janet Reno and seven other former Justice Department officials filed court papers Monday arguing that the Bush administration is setting a dangerous precedent by trying a suspected terrorist outside the court system.
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Suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is the only detainee being held in the United States.
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“The government is essentially asserting the right to hold putative enemy combatants arrested in the United States indefinitely whenever it decides not to prosecute those people criminally _ perhaps because it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, perhaps because a motion to suppress evidence would raise embarrassing facts about the government’s conduct, or perhaps for other reasons,” the former Justice Department officials said.

Some of the eight attorneys named in the document are now in private practice and represent detainees at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Most served under President Clinton, though the list includes former U.S. Attorneys W. Thomas Dillard and Anton R. Valukas, who served under President Reagan.

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Monday, November 20, 2006

Olbermann Special Comment: Lessons of Vietnam Not Learned by Bush (8:00 pm)

Norm at onegoodmove has the video.

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Buddhist in the House (11:07 am)

Oliver Willis calls attention to congressional freshman-elect, Democrat Hank Johnson, who took the seat previously held by Cynthia McKinney.

He is one of three new black members and the only new practicing Buddhist.

My goodness, does Glenn Beck know?

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Florida-13 Election Results Now Officially Challenged, New Election Requested (10:48 am)

Jesselee at The Stakeholder reports

Sarasota, FL – Citing statistical and eyewitness evidence of significant machine malfunctions sufficient to call into doubt the result of the election for Florida Congressional District 13, the Christine Jennings campaign today officially contested the election in Circuit Court. The complaint specifically requests the judge to order a new election “to ensure that the will of the people of the Thirteenth District is respected, and to restore the confidence of the electorate, which has been badly fractured by this machine-induced debacle.”
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The complaint also cites significant eyewitness accounts describing a consistent pattern of voter difficulty in having their votes recorded in the House of Representatives race, but not in other races on the ballot.

“This is clearly a case of machine error – not ballot design error and not voter error,” added Jennings campaign attorney Kendall Coffey. “We’re asking the courts to ensure that the will of the people of the 13th District is respected and end the crisis of confidence among the electorate by ordering a new election.”

update: Eric Kleefeld at TPM Election Central reports

A new article in Roll Call spells it out (paid subscription): Election watchers around the country think that the race could end up before a House committee — the House Administration Committee, which oversees Federal elections. If so, the full House, which in the end is responsible for seating new members, could potentially vote on which of the two candidates to seat, thus deciding the race’s outcome itself — or could call for a new recount, or even declare the seat vacant and mandate a new election. Right now, of course, the House is still GOP-controlled, but by the time of this vote it could be in the hands of Dems — meaning Jennings could conceivably pull off a win after all.

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Comedy Show For Audiences Who Think Rush Limbaugh Mocking Michael J. Fox Is Funny (10:24 am)

Via HuffPo, Paul J. Gough for the Hollywood Reporter reports

Fox News Channel might air two episodes of a “Daily Show”-like program with a decidedly nonliberal bent on Saturday nights in late January, with the possibility that it could become a weekly show for the channel.

The half-hour show is executive produced by “24’s” Joel Surnow and Manny Cota and creator Ned Rice, who previously wrote for “Politically Incorrect” and “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” through This Just In Prods. It would take aim at what Surnow calls “the sacred cows of the left” that don’t get made as much fun of by other comedy shows.

“It’s a satirical news format that would play more to the Fox News audience than the Michael Moore channel,” Surnow said. “It would tip more right as ‘The Daily Show’ tips left.”

“Sacred cows of the left,” y’know, like stem cell research for Parkinson’s sufferers, civil rights, opposition to torture, honest elections. This is obviously the stinky brainfart of people who totally fail to grasp that the Daily Show is not “left” at all, it is simply anti-corruption, anti-hypocrisy, anti-dishonesty. Of course, then again, maybe that is “left” after all, since being “right” is pro-corruption, pro-hypocrisy, pro-dishonesty.

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Dead Presidents (12:45 am)

Matthew Healey for the NY Times reports

The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents. They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president.

The first coin, displaying George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other, will go into circulation in mid-February, in time for Presidents’ Day. After that, coins with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will be issued at three-month intervals.

Four more will appear, in order of each president’s service, every year until 2016. Designs are based on presidential medals made previously by the Mint and on portraits in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where today’s unveiling takes place.
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The coins were authorized last year by a law that also provides for a series of 24-karat $10 gold coins honoring all the presidents’ wives, which will be sold to collectors and investors rather than released for general circulation. The first of those, showing Martha Washington, will be issued before the end of 2007.

The law also calls for four new designs for the penny in 2009, to commemorate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Even Kissinger Says Bush Has Lost The Iraq War (2:30 pm)

Tariq Panja for AP reports

LONDON — Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq’s regional neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region.

“If you mean by ‘military victory’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Kissinger also rejects the strawman premise of Bush’s “stay the course” versus “cut and run” argument:

“I think we have to redefine the course, but I don’t think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal,” he said.