Another Iraq withdrawal proposal has failed in the Senate due to the fact that it lacked the required number of votes necessary for moving it forward. The vote was a plan that would begin to move a significant number of troops home from the region within 9 months. According to the Washington Times, the failure of the bill marks a very bad week for Democrats as they were unable to press forward with their anti-war platform leaving them somewhat stymied. The bill was stalled at 47 -47. The votes were basically on party lines although Republicans were joined by Joseph Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor and Christopher Dodd. (Dodd, a presidential candidate, wants nothing less than rapid de-funding of the war) Democrats were joined by GOP members Olympia Snowe, Gordon Smith and Chuck Hagel. It would require 60 votes (two thirds majority) in order to break a Republican filibuster. It does not seem likely that mustering 60 votes on any anti-war legislation will be possible unless more and more Republicans join the fold.
It does not seem that this type of gridlock will change unless the violence security levels in Iraq get worse or there are decided political failures or deterioration in the Iraqi government. So, for the foreseeable future the Democratic leadership in Congress can do very little to end the war.
According to the AP, it would appear that President Bush may have settled on his choice for Attorney General and it is possibly (nothing is official yet) Michael Mukasey. Bush's previous top choice was the former solicitor general Theodore Olsen, the man who had become famous for successfully representing Bush before the Supreme Court in 2000 to settle the contesting of the presidency. Olsen's name, however, was pulled off the table after Democrats in the Senate threatened to block the nomination.
Mukasey would replace Alberto Gonzales, an Attorney General whose tenure was not exactly a dynamic one. In fact, many grass roots conservatives were happy to see him go as they generally considered him a fairly weak Attorney General without a clear agenda.
Mukasey is a moderate and would probably be more acceptable to the Senate, although there is some grumblings in the conservative base about his possible selection. Generally, the conservative base is lukewarm about moderates in positions of power, but there needs to be a bowing to reality on this issue. Without the votes to successfully confirm a candidate, the candidate will not be confirmed. This process of Senate confirmation was devised by the founding fathers as a means to limit executive powers and that is the way the system works.
GOP jailbird Bob Ney was replaced last year in Congress by Democrat Zack Space, who'll have to defend his seat next November. It's still early but Space is criss-crossing Ohio at a furious pace, running like it's October '08 and the polls are split down the middle. Why? Because the Republican Party is already breathing down his neck. The GOP has tapped this as one of the most important races in the county and set Space's defeat as one of its top goals.
many voters said they were preparing for one of the longest and most brutal Congressional campaigns they have ever seen. "The national Republican Party is going to dump a whole lot of money into this district," said Lynn Elliott, 59, a Republican and a dairy farmer.
Both parties see Mr. Space's seat as an important prize. The 18th Congressional District, which Mr. Space represents, is Republican territory; President Bush received 57 percent of the vote here in 2004. Winning the seat is essential for Republicans to regain control of the House next year, said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
The GOP have an uphill fight with this one, mainly because Space is pretty darn popular, his fundraising rates are strong and even Republicans are saying he's doing a good job. And secondly because there's no clear Republican contender yet.
It won't be until after the primaries that the congressional races come into focus but you can be sure that Ohio's 18th district will be one that both parties will be keeping a close eye on.
There will be continued pressure from Congress to try and get more troops home safer and faster and more resistance from the admonistration (yes, I meant that o) to keep them there longer. Why stay longer? Because success is (seriously) right around the corner. Look at what has been said:
"I think the next few months will be critical," Sen. Pat Roberts R-KS "Our efforts are now approaching a crucial moment" Presdent Bush "Developments over the next several months will be critical"General Petraeus
Just a little more patience, give the new strategy a chance, just give the surge a chance. Back the president for once instead of questioning all the time. All this would make sense if any of the above were said anytime this year. Those quotes and many others were said before 2006. Look at the timeline and see just how many times we've been told success is just around the corner, that's it's a critical time to just hang in. It seems most Americans have caught on to Bush Lucy and the football trick and we are no longer willing to be Charlie Brown and take it on the chin. How many times do we have to be told Iraqis are standing up, sitting down, or going on vacation? Yes, it is absolute hell for them, yes, some are trying to save their country and yes we owe them seeing as we have made their lives more miserable than ever. But Americans are facing the fact that our troops cannot end the war, they can only keep it going.
In the long run, we will give them more supprt by pulling back and then pulling out while facilitating logistical, technical and humanitarian support. What I know for sure is success is not around any corner and being told for the 203rd time this period is critical and to just keep waiting while more troops are sacrificed is beyond stupid. It's way past time to stop the madness.
Fund points out a few inconvenient truths about the recently passed and signed Ethics "Reform" Bill. In January, the Senate unanimously adopted "sunshine" provisions for all bills, a device intended to publicly show the public the who, what, and where's of earmark spending. It was supposed to be codified in the reform bill. It wasn't. In addition, according to Fund:
The bill the rest voted for had been gutted: Disclosing an earmark is now voluntary (not mandatory), protecting an earmark requires only 41 votes (instead of 67), and the power to determine whether a spending provision inserted by a senator is officially considered an earmark will now be up to . . . Mr. Reid.
Last winter, the Democrats quickly adopted the mantra that the election of 2006 was all about getting out of Iraq. While that was probably true for the far left, the rest of those concerned about Iraq were more concerned about changing the failed tactics in Iraq towards ones that would give us a chance for victory. Even then, if you take both coalitions together (the stop fighting left and the start fighting middle and right), Iraq concerns were a distant second to the main concern of voters in 2006 -- corruption, specifically Republican corruption.
A move is afoot by Republicans here in California to change the way electoral votes are portioned out in the state. Right now in Cali, as in 48 other states, there is a winner-take-all system. In 2004 John Kerry won at the ballot box so he got all 55 electoral votes. What the GOP wants to do is rejigger the process (and quickly!) so those electoral votes would be sliced up by congressional district. Shades of gerrymandering, no?
The change could only come if it passes as a public initiative next June. And the GOP is firing up the money machine to make sure it gets on the ballot.
(Consultant Kevin) Eckery said the fundraising to begin this week is aimed at getting $300,000 to $500,000 for polling and other preliminary work before signature-gathering. Collecting the necessary 434,000 signatures could cost $2 million.
Proponents are optimistic that backers of the presidential candidates will ante up. Though there are federal limits to donations to candidates, California law places no bar on the amount donors can spend on initiatives.
"This is all about rigging the system, fixing the system, to tilt the electoral college to the Republicans, all under the pretense of being a reform," (Democratic strategist Chris) Lehane said.
Though it's unclear whether the Dems are organizing a fight against the measure.
Thank you, Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.), for staying with this and pushing through an important amendment to an important bill. The "John Doe" provision will protect those who believe they see a terrorist incident being planned and report it to authorities. It sounds like everyone would agree that it is a good thing... that is everyone but the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Democrats they support.
It sounds also as though King didn't have to give up too much in negotiations either:
The House Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, and Rep. Peter King, a Republican of Long Island, said last night that they had reached agreement to include what has become known as the "John Doe" amendment in the final version of a major homeland security bill to implement the recommendations of the commission established to investigate the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The bill is currently in a House-Senate conference committee, and a deal will be announced today.
The legislation to protect those who contact the authorities about potential crimes arose from a lawsuit supported by CAIR for the so-called "Flying Imams" who were acting strangely like the 9/11 groups led by Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and seventeen others. The moniker "John Doe" comes from the fact that those who reported the imam's behavior were not identified.
One of the things that I'm unsure of is if Republicans have done enough to purge themselves of idiots before the 2008 elections. This story from The Politico tells me that they have not:
Rep. Don Young attacked his fellow Republicans on the House floor Wednesday, as he defended education funds allocated to his home-state of Alaska.
"You want my money, my money," Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that, "Those who bite me will be bitten back."
Young took extreme exception to an amendment by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) to strike money in a spending bill for native Alaskan and Hawaiian educational programs.
Conservatives have stoked the ire of their fellow Republicans for years by challenging federal spending, both broadly and on specific projects. But it's rare that their GOP colleagues express that displeasure openly on the floor.
You want the money, Representative Young, then put propose the spending in an Education bill using the normal process. Don't do it through earmarks. Those should be reserved for emergencies. And as to your whine that "it's my money" - no, it isn't. It's the taxpayers money. Furthermore, that's probably not a good thing to publicly cry out when you've been forced to pay over $250,000 so far in legal fees in a federal corruption investigation in Alaska. Young, and members of Congress like him, just don't get it.
Well, it's happened. 24 Republicans crossed over and joined 39 Democrats and Joe Lieberman and voted for cloture. Now the immigration bill heads for an up-down Senate vote and only needs 51 to pass. Among those crossing were Norm Coleman (R-MN), Kit Bond (R-MO) and John Ensign (R-NV).
The fight is not over, but the support of conservatives for those 24 senators and President Bush is:
"It's clear there's a large number of the House Republicans who have serious concerns with the Senate bill," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader.
Several of the Republican amendments slated for upcoming Senate votes would make the bill tougher on unlawful immigrants, while those by Democrats would make it easier on those seeking to immigrate legally based solely on family ties.
Particularly worrisome to supporters, including the Bush administration, is a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., that would change the bill's new program for weeding out illegal employees from U.S. workplaces.
Politics, it's said, makes for strange bedfellows and it's been no truer than today. I find myself on the same side as Sens. Barack Obama and Max Baucus (although for different reasons). This is a pretty smart play by Obama for the record.
The campaign for the presidential nomination is always a perilous affair; near-constant media attention that magnifies every gaffe, speeches to numerous special interest groups and the daily risk of being asked an uncomfortable question on the stump. That's politics in the new millennium and it's more akin to a war of attrition than campaigns of the past.
A peculiar thing has happened in the last several decades, however. While both parties must patronize their base, it seems to hurt Democrats much more than it does the GOP when it comes to the general election:
"They're responding to the reality of the primaries, where the center of gravity is far to the left of the electorate as a whole," said Erik Smith, a Democratic consultant who is not affiliated with any of the 2008 candidates. "The discussion with the greater American public is just getting started. They have plenty of time to define themselves, but you don't come all the way back to the center."
Liberals will never agree, but the mainstream American citizen is much closer to the cultural beliefs of Republicans than to Democrats. Americans are appalled by abortion on demand (although many don't wish to see it outlawed), rampant casual sex and other liberal social issues. While the Democrat candidates don't exactly support these views, they must cater to those who do when trying to win the nomination so they appear to approve.
It's alive! The immigration bill that is. Fully a week after most of the media and political punditry announced it dead and buried with good riddance, Sens/ Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell announced that the bill would be on the Senate schedule immediately after the energy bill.
But last week conservatives blasting the bill as an "amnesty" for people who blatantly broke the law prevented it from proceeding to a final vote, handing Bush a setback in his hopes for a signature domestic achievement in his second term in the White House.
The breakthrough Thursday came hours after Bush backed an almost $4.4-billion burst of immediate spending to secure US borders, in answer to critics of the bill who said its security component was inadequate.
"This funding will come from the fines and penalties that we collect from those who have come to our country illegally," Bush said.
If the idea is to appease conservatives, this is not going to help. The first thing the conservatives will do is rightly ask why the bill can't impose the fines and border spending without the amnesty. Then wait awhile and see whether amnesty is even needed.
As a conservative, it shouldn't be shocking that I often target Democrats, but an outrageous item in the NYT highlighted by my fellow Ohio blogger Porkopolis gives me a chance to be an equal opportunity blogger.
An article from June 6 highlights the strange case of a $10 million earmark for a federal highway interchange located at a prime location in Florida for raising certain property values. The earmark appeared to be placed by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska:
Mr. Young, who last year steered more than $200 million to a so-called bridge to nowhere reaching 80 people on Gravina Island, Alaska, has no constituents in Florida.
The Republican congressman whose district does include Coconut Road says he did not seek the money. County authorities have twice voted not to use it, until Mr. Young and the district congressman wrote letters warning that a refusal could jeopardize future federal money for the county.
The Coconut Road money is a boon, however, to Daniel J. Aronoff, a real estate developer who helped raise $40,000 for Mr. Young at the nearby Hyatt Coconut Point hotel days before he introduced the measure.
This is, of course, an outrage. $40,000 in campaign contributions returned $10,000,000 in federal money to raise the property values of Aronoff's holdings. That's quite a return on investment.
Back in January of '06, when John Boehner won the contest to succeed Dennis Hastert as majority leader of the congressional GOP, a lot of conservatives were disappointed that their favorite candidate, Mike Shadegg, did not get the job. Since then, Boehner lost the congressional majority and you might think that would be enough to sour folks on his going forward.
But Boehner has been very busy lately spotlighting Democratic ethics problems, working on public relations and the latest effort to declare war on earmarks. I'd have to say that considering the Democrats actual legislative output from the House so far, that Boehner has either been highly effective or lucky to have incompetent opposition. I'm OK with it either way. Even a gaffe like this remark, when he was too candid about the Bush immigration bill, only served to endear him more with the GOP rank-and-file.
Yesterday, Boehner had a conference call with various Ohio bloggers and opened up the floor to questions. Follow the link here to weapons of mass discussion (with links to the other participants and their reactions). This was mainly in support of his no-earmarks drive, but many questions revolved around immigration, and the prospects of various Ohio congressional races. The fact that he's talking with bloggers at all is the interesting part. A chance to talk with someone other than media, lobbyists, or D.C. professionals is a very good thing.
It's safe to conclude that Boehner has learned the lesson from November '06 -- that the Republican image problem is real. All of his efforts on ethics and earmarks help position the Republican party where it needs to be in 2008 as the party of reform and ethical behavior. I don't know if he will succeed or not, but he's recognized theproblem and he's working to fix it. That's a strong start.
Newt Gingrich has a column out today where he takes mainly his fellow Republican and President George W. Bush to task. In it he makes the explicit accusation that Bush is threatening to not enforce the law if he doesn't get the comprehensive immigration reform passed into law:
The Attempt to Blackmail the American People by Threatening to Refuse to Enforce the Law Without a New Bill Is Disgraceful: A number of powerful figures in the Bush Administration and in the Senate have been saying that if we do not agree to pass this destructive bill, they will never enforce the law. Tell your senator that this is an extraordinary effort to blackmail the American people by having officials state that they will fail to perform their sworn duty, and we won't stand for it.
It's nothing that hasn't been said before, but it's strongly worded and it's said by someone (Newt) who has a lot of credibility with conservatives. At this point within Republican circles, the fight with the Democrats is almost a sideshow. The main event is between GWB and the rank-and-file. He wants immigration reform, they want the current laws enforced. This threat to hold the enforcement hostage to amnesty is doing nothing but increasing the intensity level and anger of the base.
And rightly so. The president had been hovering in the mid-thirties for months. Those who represent that 30 percent are the people -- such as myself -- who know that wavering on the War on Terror would be extremely detrimental to our nation. We have hung tough with Bush because we know that we are at a turning point and the end result must be victory.
This week President Bush did waver in a crucial portion of the overall security requirements:
Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen Reports poll found Mr. Bush's approval rating dropped to an all-time low for that poll, at 34 percent.
"The president's ratings have tumbled each time immigration reform dominates the news," Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, said in his analysis.
Mr. Rasmussen said that his polling last year, after Mr. Bush gave an Oval Office address laying out his plans for more border enforcement and giving illegal aliens a path to citizenship, found only 39 percent supported the president's position.
The border issue is of paramount importance to those who see that our enemy will not stop attacking us and will continue to probe until they find an opening. That was shown to be even more important in the wake of the Fort Dix arrests. The President has ignored us, his biggest supporters, to try to gain favor with the Hispanic vote for the next and future elections. Not for him as he's not running again, but for the good of the party. If he's going to spend the next year and a half doing that, he might just as well pull the troops out of Iraq. We can't win the overall war without shoring up our borders and granting amnesty to 12-million is not the way to do it. Border security is as much a part of the overall WOT strategy as is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By joining with Ted Kennedy on this bill, the president has ensured a perpetual Democratic majority in the House and Senate. To add insult to injury, the illegals now living here will not have to pay billions of dollars in back taxes at the insistence of the President. Thanks for nothing, Mr. President.
Thank you, Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.), for staying with this and pushing through an important amendment to an important bill. The "John Doe" provision will protect those who believe they see a terrorist incident being planned and report it to authorities. It sounds like everyone would agree that it is a good thing... that is everyone but the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the 
Back in January of '06, when 
