Category Archives: Congress

Journalists Should Not Be “Disinterested” About Truth

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I’m a little late commenting on the bogus charge that John McCain was heckled by Michael Ware, but it’s been weighing on me so I’ll comment anyway.

I sometimes wish videos of President Lyndon Johnson’s press conferences were available on the web (if they are, let me know). As I remember it, at some point after the Vietnam War began the Washington press corps began to hound LBJ mercilessly. The press became openly antagonistic to Johnson, and I won’t say he didn’t deserve it. When reporters began to treat Richard Nixon the same way they’d treated LBJ, Nixon sent out Spiro Agnew to stir up faux outrage against the nattering nabobs of negativism and whine about liberal media bias; thus a myth was born. The fact is, as I remember it the press was a shade gentler to Nixon than it had been to LBJ. And by the time Reagan came along they’d become sufficiently defensive about “”liberal media bias” that reporters generally treated Reagan with kid gloves compared to the way they’d treated presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. And in comparison to the press corps in Johnson’s day, today’s White House reporters are a neutered and toothless lot, indeed.

I thought of LBJ’s press conferences yesterday after I saw this post by the Instaputz:

DISINTERESTED JOURNALISM: John McCain heckled by CNN reporter.

Ah, professionalism.

UPDATE: Hard to argue: “Michael Ware’s behavior here is flat out unprofessional. If CNN keeps him on staff after this incident, that says something, doesn’t it?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Tabin: “Heckling at a press conference is very rude, and wouldn’t be acceptable even from an opinion journalist (I wouldn’t dream of laughing in Nancy Pelosi’s face during a press conference). That said, isn’t it better when guys like Ware let their biases hang out, rather than embedding them in reports that are ostensibly objective?”

Wouldn’t it be better still if they just did an honest job of doing, you know, their jobs?

Later, Raw Story posted videos of the alleged heckling and, um, it wasn’t heckling. And to be fair, several rightie bloggers, including Reynolds, retracted their allegations.

But I want to address the part about reporters being “disinterested,” which means objective or neutral. Objectivity and neutrality are splendid. But “neutrality” and “objectivity” don’t translate into “pretending not to notice when a politician is lying his ass off.”

“Objectivity” used to mean that one shouldn’t allow personal biases to get in the way of telling the truth. Now it seems to mean one mustn’t tell the bare-assed truth about what politicians are up to, especially if they’re Republicans, because it makes the politicians look bad.

Regarding John McCain’s stroll through a Baghdad market (accompanied by 100 troops and two Apache helicopters), Kirk Semple writes in today’s New York Times:

A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

McCain and Pence and everybody else who staged that little stunt in support of the war deserved whatever razzing they got from the press. The fact that we are still being told about the soldiers and helicopters is not “media bias“; it’s “what a free press looks like.”

Dem’s Post-Veto Stretegy

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[Update: via email from John Kerry’s Senate office — Kerry will join Reid as a co-sponsor of Senator Feingold’s bill.]

The post-veto strategy is shaping up. Bob Geiger writes,

In anticipation of a Bush veto and the likelihood that they won’t be able to summon enough Republicans who care about the troops or public opinion sufficiently to override that veto, Senate Democrats are already rolling out a contingency plan that puts the GOP on notice about something very important: That they are going to be forced over and over again to be on the record as voting to strand our military men and women in the middle of a bloody civil war.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), long one of the gutsy leaders on the Democratic side of the Senate aisle, has announced that he will propose legislation immediately on return from this week’s break that will cut off all funding for the Iraq war in less than a year.

Upping the ante on another major showdown immediately following the expected Bush veto of the war-funding (and withdrawal) bill, is the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) supports the Feingold measure and has signed on as the bill’s first cosponsor.

On the other end of the wimp scale, Barack Obama believes the Senate will cave and pass a bill without the timeline because no one “wants to play chicken” over funding the troops.

“My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage.”

There are those who argue that would be a smart political move. I think they’re wrong; I think they’re misreading the public mood. I think a large majority of Americans would really like to see Congress stand up to Bush. On the other hand, the Dem political elite, long accustomed to caution and accommodation to the Right, are still tip-toeing. Jonathan Weisman writes in today’s Washington Post:

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk. He urged Democrats to stick to their turf on such issues as immigration, health care and popular social programs, and to prove they can govern.

“That’s where their strength is,” Panetta said. “If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that’s a recipe for losing seats in the next election.”

Um, Mr. Panetta, that’s the same thinking that caused the Dems to get swamped in the 2002 midterm elections.

Republicans these days are full of helpful advice for the Dems.

Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a “political price” at the polls: “If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react.” …

… Most Republicans are convinced the president will win his veto standoff over House and Senate war spending bills that would impose mandatory troop withdrawals from Iraq.

“It’s going to be like the government shutdowns” of 1995 and 1996, predicted Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “The Democrats’ honeymoon is fixing to end. It’s going to explode like an IED.”

I don’t think the government shutdown episodes were anything like the potential standoff between Bush and Congress over Iraq. The shutdowns came out of a disagreement between Congress and President Clinton over the budget. At the time most Americans didn’t give a hoohaw about the budget. News reports were all about how much money was being wasted because of the shutdown and how citizens all over the country were being inconvenienced, including 2 million visitors turned away from closed national parks. Whatever principle Newt Gingrich was trying to stand on didn’t seem worth it to most folks.

Public reaction to the shutdown did explode on the Republicans like an IED, that’s true. But we’re looking at an entirely different set of facts here. In 1995, few Americans really understood (or cared) why Newt Gingrich was grandstanding over the budget. The Iraq War they understand — it’s a bleeping disaster. And they care about ending it with growing intensely. Read more about the false comparisons with the standoff episodes at Media Matters.

Back to the Weisman article in WaPo —

Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues — such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders — with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon.

For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed either the House or the Senate in the three months since Democrats took control of Congress.

Bills such as?

A House-passed bill would require the government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, highlighting what Democrats consider a shortcoming of the president’s landmark Medicare prescription drug law. Bush has promised a veto.

A Senate-approved measure would allow screeners at the Transportation Security Administration to unionize, prompting a veto threat. White House opposition to that in 2002 led to a legislative standoff over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security that proved devastating to Democrats, who were painted as soft on terrorism.

That’s not the whole story. When Bush decided to support creation of a Department of Homeland Security (a sudden flipflop) he inserted the anti-union provision into the bill as a “poison pill.” When Democrats balked at the bill because of the anti-union measure, Republicans hollered that the Dems were against a Department of Homeland Security (actually they had been pushing for it while Bush fought against it) and thus “soft on terrorism.” Most people who heard the Republican charge didn’t understand why the Dems were opposed to Bush’s version of a Department of Homeland Security.

A bill to ease the public release of official papers from presidential libraries also yielded a veto promise, although it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The measure would reverse one of Bush’s executive orders, which has helped keep reams of presidential documents under lock and key.

Budgets passed by the House and Senate assume the expiration of most of Bush’s tax cuts in 2012, and Democrats are demanding tough new standards for labor rights and environmental regulations as a condition of extending the president’s authority to expedite trade negotiations.

The White House has also vowed to block two separate House bills that would extend whistle-blower protections to national security and rail security workers.

My sense of the public mood — which I admit may be warped, since I live in one of the bluer blue states — is that a majority of Americans are leaning toward the Dem view on most of these issues. I don’t see how a Bush veto would hurt them politically one bit.

On the other hand, Dem attempts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and repeal the Patriot Act could still be politically dicey. The poll numbers I found on Gitmo and the PA were about a year old, and at the time approval-disapproval was at about fifty-fifty split.

Public education is critical. IMO the more the public knows about these issues, the more likely they will side with Democrats. The less they know, the more likely they will be taken in by Republicans.

Update: Russ Feingold writes “How Congress can end the war without hurting the troops” in Salon.

Next Steps

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Now that the House and the Senate have passed emergency appropriations bills to fund the war in Iraq, the next step is for members of the House and Senate to come up with a compromise bill. It is hoped a compromise bill can be agreed upon and passed during the week of April 16. Then it goes to President Bush, who has sworn loudly and stridently that he will veto it.

Let’s assume the compromise bill goes to Bush in April, and he vetoes it. There aren’t enough Dems to override the veto. I’ve heard suggestions that Congress should then pass whatever bill Bush wants, which sends a signal that this is Bush’s War. He and the Republicans own it, and whatever happens is entirely their doing. However, this also might send the signal that the Dems are caving in once again, mightn’t it?

Others want to keep sending Bush bills with conditions, perhaps passing monthlong spending bills (Rep. Murtha’s suggestion) in the meantime so Bush can’t say Congress isn’t funding the troops. Well, he’ll say it anyway, but who’s listening to the little creep at this point?

The talking point du jour from the Right seems to be that “pork” in the supplement bill somehow harms the troops. Exactly why the domestic spending items in the bill takes anything away from the troops is not clear, since both House and Senate bills provide every penny Bush asked for to fund his war. The House bill provides more money than Bush asked for, actually. The Republicans appear to claiming that the domestic items are monies taken away from the Pentagon’s request, but that’s not so.

Yes, pork is pork. An op ed in today’s New York Times by Thomas Schatz, “Pork Goes to War,” provides a chart listing the porcine items in the House and Senate supplement bills. He notes that emergency supplement bills are called “Christmas trees” because, as they are exempt from budget rules, they tend to get decorated with “ornaments.”

(Schatz, btw, is the President of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit that appears to be a corporate front group. CAGW has campaigned on behalf of the tobacco industry and in favor of Microsoft and against open source software, for example.)

On the other hand, some senators yesterday tried to make the point that a congressional emergency supplement bill can rightfully contain funds for anything that Congress thinks is an emergency. One cannot tell from Mr. Schatz’s chart if the items are true emergencies or not. Yes, $20 million in the Senate bill for “Mormon cricket eradication” does sound suspicious, but Nevada may be suffering a deadly plague of Mormon crickets, for all I know.

Schatz’s chart does clear up the Great Spinach Mystery. Yesterday a Republican senator insisted on taking the time for a roll call vote on stripping all mention of spinach out of the Senate Bill. Sen. Patty Murray explained, somewhat tensely, that there was no spinach in the bill, so such a vote wouldn’t change anything. Sen. Harry Reid asked if they could skip the roll call if the Dems all promised to vote for the amendment. The Republican wouldn’t budge, and a roll call was taken to make the world safe from spinach. I see now that the House bill contains $25 million for spinach growers in California. (I suspect that has something to do with the e coli bacteria found in some packaged spinach last September. )

Back to what to do about the veto — I’d consider sending Bush the bill he wants with a great big warning that Congress will accept no more emergency appropriations requests for Iraq. If you want money for Iraq, Mr. President, from now on you have to go through regular appropriations procedures. After four years the dadblamed war ain’t an “emergency.”

Linda Bilmes explained in Nieman Watchdog last September:

The money already spent, in cash terms, is more than $400 billion. This has been approved through a series of “emergency supplemental” requests by the Administration. This is a technical but really important point: Normally, the Defense Department requests money through the traditional channels, which means that it gets vetted and analyzed by the Office of Management and Budget and the congressional committees. But for Iraq, there has been what I call an “accounting conspiracy” — all the money has been requested through 13 emergency supplemental requests which receive minimal scrutiny. This has resulted in a lot of fraud, corruption, overpayments to contractors like Halliburton, etc.

The legal purpose of the emergency supplemental is supposed to be an actual unexpected emergency, like Hurricane Katrina. By contrast, the administration has known for the past 3 years about its approximate financial needs for Iraq. It just chooses to fund the war this way so it does not need to request – nor does Congress need to vote – on the huge sums involved. Instead, Congress can vote on bite-sized chunks that don’t attract much attention.

I think it’s way past time for Congress to make a big bleeping deal out of the “emergency” appropriation funding. Bush wants to talk pork? Let’s talk about Bush’s piss-poor money management. He fancies himself the “CEO President”; a real CEO who played budget games like that would face some pretty wrathful shareholders, not to mention the SEC if Bush were using accounting tricks to cover it up.

Gonzo?

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The big news coming out of the Senate Judiciary grilling of Kyle Sampson — which began this morning and is still going on at 4:40 EST — is that Sampson’s testimony, um, differs from earlier statements of Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales claimed not to have been involved in meetings about the attorney general firing. Editor & Publisher has details.

I haven’t been home to watch the entire hearing. From what I did see and hear, I am struck by the apparent casualness with which Sampson and other staffers considered the firing of U.S. attorneys. Sampson’s testimony makes it seem that the original idea to fire U.S. attorneys was made, in 2005, for no particular reason except that they could. Sampson, who was more or less in charge of the Purge Project, didn’t bother to keep a file (so he says) to document who made decisions and why. It seems most of the written record of this episode was in emails drizzled about on White House and RNC servers. No files, no system, says Sen. Schumer; It seems ad hoc, it seems records weren’t kept.

I bet this poor kid keeps records in the future, assuming he ever gets a job again.

Paul Kiel has a blow-by-blow live blog of the hearing, here.

Loose Lips

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D. Kyle Sampson is scheduled to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee today. The Senate might also vote on the Iraq War “emergency” appropriations bill. If there are any significant developments I will post about them as quickly as I can.

First — Sampson and the U.S. Attorney scandal. Dan Eggen and Paul Kane write in today’s Washington Post:

The attorney general’s former chief of staff plans to testify today that other Justice Department officials knew about the “origins and timing” of the effort to fire eight U.S. attorneys, which began two years earlier in the White House, according to prepared testimony for a Congressional hearing.

But D. Kyle Sampson — who resigned earlier this month ahead of revelations that White House political officials helped direct the dismissals — also will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that he “never sought to conceal or withhold material fact about this matter” while helping prepare witnesses for Congress. Lawmakers are seeking to determine whether top Justice Department officials misled them while testifying on the matter in recent months. …

… Sampson’s prepared remarks offer few clues about the role of Gonzales, who has sought to distance himself from his former chief of staff. Gonzales is under increasing pressure from lawmakers to step down for mishandling the firings and their aftermath.

The statement indicates that Sampson will emphasize the involvement of numerous other Justice officials in the dismissals — including Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty — while distancing Gonzales from the nitty-gritty details. Sampson’s statement also says that he “let the attorney general and the department down” by failing to better manage the political response to the firings, which he describes as an “ugly, undignified spectacle,” according to the statement.

Kevin Drum asks:

Gonzales has already told us he knew nothing about the two-year process to fire a bunch of U.S. Attorneys, and in this meeting he knew nothing about any of the specific grievances the USAs brought up. Sounds like a real hands-on kind of guy. What exactly does he think the job of Attorney General is all about?

It appears to me that Gonzales is still primarily George Bush’s attorney more than he is an attorney general. Instead of actually running the Justice Department, he has seemed more focused on enabling President Bush to do whatever he wants, which is the job he’s been doing for many years.

Stuart Taylor writes at Atlantic Monthly:

Gonzales was plucked by then-Gov. Bush of Texas from a big law firm where he was a relatively undistinguished partner. As the governor’s counsel, he sent Bush superficial memos that cleared the way for executions of more than 50 death-row inmates by dismissing their clemency petitions, while sometimes ignoring evidence of ineffective counsel, mitigating circumstances, and even possible innocence. His 20-some judicial opinions as a Bush appointee on the Texas Supreme Court were unimpressive, as have been his public performances as White House counsel and attorney general. People outside the administration who have tried to engage him in serious discourse about complex issues sometimes come away shocked by the superficiality of his knowledge and the shallowness of his analysis.

As White House counsel from 2001 through 2004, Gonzales had his fingerprints on Bush’s most grandiose and insupportable claims of power in the war on terrorism. These included Bush’s claim of virtually unlimited power to imprison for years, incommunicado, without real judicial review, anyone in the world whom he labeled an “enemy combatant.”

Gonzales also implicitly approved the infamous August 1, 2002, Justice Department legal opinion asserting that Bush had the authority to abrogate federal criminal laws and treaty obligations and to order (if he chose) wholesale use of torture in wartime interrogations.

David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg write in today’s New York Times that Gonzales was, perhaps, not as disengaged from the U.S. Attorney firings as Sampson might claim. And, of course, Karl Rove played a critical role also.

Almost every Wednesday afternoon, advisers to President Bush gather to strategize about putting his stamp on the federal courts and the United States attorneys’ offices.

The group meets in the Roosevelt Room and includes aides to the White House counsel, the chief of staff, the attorney general and Karl Rove, who also sometimes attends himself. Each of them signs off on every nomination.

Mr. Rove, a top adviser to the president, takes charge of the politics. As caretaker to the administration’s conservative allies, Mr. Rove relays their concerns, according to several participants in the Wednesday meetings. And especially for appointments of United States attorneys, he manages the horse trading.

“What Karl would say is, ‘Look, if this senator who has been working with the president on the following things really wants this person and we think they are acceptable, why don’t we give the senator what he wants?’ ” said one former administration official. “ ‘You know, we stiffed him on that bill back there.’ ” [emphasis added]

Further into the Kirkpatrick & Rutenberg article we find:

In New Jersey, Mr. Rove helped arrange the nomination of a major Bush campaign fund-raiser who had little prosecutorial experience.

That would be Christopher J. Christie.

Mr. Christie has brought public corruption charges against prominent members of both parties, but his most notable investigations have stung two Democrats, former Gov. James E. McGreevey and Senator Robert Menendez. When word of the latter inquiry leaked to the press during the 2006 campaign, Mr. Menendez sought to dismiss it by tying Mr. Christie to Mr. Rove, calling the investigation “straight out of the Bush-Rove playbook.” (Mr. McGreevey resigned after admitting to having an affair with a male aide and the Menendez investigation has not been resolved.)

Yesterday’s “document dump” of emails included one from Kyle Sampson with “RE: Draft response to Reid/Durbin/Schumer/Murray letter re Cummins-Griffin” in the subject line. Sampson had prepared a statement to the Senators claiming that Karl Rove was not involved in the appointment of Rove’s aide Tim Griffin to replace U.S. Attorney “Bud” Cummins. We now have copious evidence that Rove was very much involved. The Office of the White House Counsel signed off on Sampson’s “testimony.” Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker has more to say about this here and here.

Righties generally remain stuck on stupid — they’re still arguing that Presidents can hire and fire U.S. attorneys whenever they like, for any reason, so what’s the big deal? [Update: See Josh Marshall on this point.] Stuart Taylor at the Atlantic (link above) responds to this:

As for the U.S. attorneys, there is a world of difference between firing such a political appointee for 1) being a Democrat; 2) failing to press the president’s law enforcement agenda; 3) overstaying his or her welcome in a job that the White House wants for a political favorite; 4) prosecuting Republican lawmakers; or 5) failing to bring election-fraud prosecutions against Democrats on a timetable designed to help Republicans at the polls.

The first three are standard operating procedure. The last two—if they happened—would be unethical and arguably illegal. A minimally competent attorney general would instantly appreciate the difference. Did Gonzales? Perhaps. But the succession of misleading and contradictory statements from him and his aides—which may further weaken the presidency by fueling congressional demands for testimony by White House officials—inspire no confidence. Nor do Gonzales’s comments (as reported by Newsweek) to three senators who visited his office to discuss the matter: “Why do I have to prove anything to you?” And “everyone [fired] was in the bottom tier.” In fact, some had glowing performance evaluations.


Glenn Greenwald adds:

Much of the U.S. attorneys scandal has focused, as it should, on the question of whether the firings were motivated by various prosecutors’ refusal to pursue partisan-motivated but frivolous cases (or to suppress valid investigations for partisan reasons). But it is true that every administration has the right to prioritize the types of prosecutions which U.S. attorneys ought to pursue. And the DOJ e-mails that have been released reveal much about the unbelievably misplaced investigative priorities of the Bush administration.

In a time when we are supposedly facing the gravest and most epic War Ever to Save our Very Civilization, they are demanding that scarce law enforcement resources be squandered on the pettiest though still quite invasive and liberty-infringing matters. In Reason, Radley Balko has a great review of some of these issues.

The Radley Balko article cited by Glenn is a solid indictment of DoJ mismanagement under the Bush Administration, bringing up several critical issues (such as wiretapping) other than the U.S. Attorneys. See also “Prosecutors Assail Gonzales During Meeting” and “The Myth of Voter Fraud.”

Supplement Bill Update

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As I keyboard, senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel are introducing an amendment that would limit troops deployments and set requirements for training and equipment of troops.

The final Senate vote on the supplement could happen late today or sometime tomorrow.

Appropriate Appropriations

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Today the Senate is scheduled to resume consideration of H.R. 1591, the Supplemental Appropriations bill. There’s a summary of the bill here. If the Senate gets around to voting today I will post about it asap.

By now you’ve heard that the Senate rejected an amendment “To strike language that would tie the hands of the Commander-in-Chief by imposing an arbitrary timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, thereby undermining the position of American Armed Forces and jeopardizing the successful conclusion of Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The vote was 48 yes, 50 no. The vote split along party lines. One Dem — Pryor (D-AR) — and Joe Lieberman (whatever-CT) voted yes with the Republicans (Lieberman was a co-sponsor of the amendment). Two Republicans — Smith (R-OR) and Hagel (R-NE) — voted no with the Dems. The complete vote record is here.

Shailagh Murray reports for the Washington Post:

The defection of a prominent Republican war critic, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, sealed the Democrats’ win. Hagel, who opposed identical withdrawal language two weeks ago, walked onto the Senate floor an hour before the late-afternoon vote and announced that he would “not support sustaining a flawed and failing policy,” adding: “It’s now time for the Congress to step forward and establish responsible boundaries and conditions for our continued military involvement in Iraq.”

I don’t know how likely it is that the bill will pass as is. But if Congress does send a bill to the White House with conditions attached, expect to see the Olympics of Spinning in Washington. Who would get the blame if George Bush vetoes the bill and money for the Iraq War effort runs short? Seems to me the public might well blame Bush.

Elsewhere in Washington — Yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cut and ran from a press conference when reporters asked him questions about the U.S. Attorney scandal. But never fear; you can find a video of the AG contradicting himself at Crooks and Liars.

D. Kyle Sampson is scheduled to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow; should be fun.

Today Henry Waxman’s House committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be hearing testimony from Lurita Alexis Doan, who is accused of using her position as chief of the General Services Administration for partisan political purposes.

Update: See David Sirota, “The threat of a ‘clean’ Iraq supplemental still loom large.”

The Senate’s Turn

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Here’s an interesting development. Jeff Zeleny writes for the New York Times:

As the Senate opened debate Monday on a $122 billion Iraq spending bill, Republicans vowed not to allow Congress to impose a withdrawal date for American troops, but said they would rely on President Bush’s veto pen rather than procedural maneuvers to block it.

Mr. Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that establishes a specific timetable to remove combat troops from Iraq. The Democratic-led House has passed such a plan, and Senate Democratic leaders are seeking to advance a similar measure this week, but the party does not have enough votes in either chamber to override a veto.

For weeks, Republican leaders have used procedural maneuvers to delay a debate over Iraq. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said he did not want to hold up financing for the war by spending more time than necessary on a measure that will never become law.

Republicans signaled that they would not use procedural measures to block the bill, but would instead let the White House kill it and then urge Democrats to pass a bill that provides funding for the war without setting any dates for troop withdrawals.

“We need to get the bill on down to the president and get the veto out of the way,” Senator McConnell said.

This might be the beginning of a Republican congressional retreat away from Bush. E.J. Dionne writes about last week’s House vote on the supplement bill and quotes Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.):

Now, Van Hollen argues, Bush’s “take-it-or-leave-it” approach to the bill is also “hurting the political standing of his Republican colleagues” in Congress by forcing them to back an open-ended commitment in Iraq at a time when their constituents are demanding a different approach.

Of the upcoming Senate vote, Dionne writes,

With most counts showing Senate Democrats needing only one more vote to approve the call for troop withdrawals next year, antiwar pressures are growing on Sens. John Sununu (R-N.H.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). All face reelection next year, as does Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), who is already seen as leaning toward the withdrawal plan.

What we might expect:

Bush’s threat to veto the House bill might be seen as either safe or empty, because the final compromise that emerges from the House and Senate will be different from the measure passed by Pelosi’s majority. But the president’s uncompromising language and his effective imposition of an April 15 deadline for the funding bill — after that date, he said, “our men and women in uniform will face significant disruptions” — may solidify Democratic ranks without rallying new Republican support.

If the compromise bill sent to Bush’s desk retains some conditions or timetables for withdrawal, even feeble ones, it will be a triumph for the Dems. If Bush then vetoes the bill, he will be further isolated even from his own party and politically weakened. It could get interesting.

Republicans are whining about pork in both the House and Senate bills. I don’t like pork, either, but I understand there hasn’t been an appropriations bill passed in living memory that didn’t have some sweeteners in it. The Republicans are desperate, in other words.

Be sure to read what else Dionne says about the House vote:

Last week’s narrow House vote imposing an August 2008 deadline for the withdrawal of American troops was hugely significant, even if the bill stands no chance of passing in the Senate this week in its current form. The vote was a test of the resolve of the new House Democratic leadership and its ability to pull together an ideologically diverse membership behind a plan pointing the United States out of Iraq.

To understand the importance of the vote, one need only consider what would have been said had it gone the other way: A defeat would have signaled House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s powerlessness to create a governing majority from a fragmented Democratic membership. In a do-or-die vote, Pelosi lived to fight another day by creating a consensus in favor of withdrawal that included some of her party’s most liberal and most conservative members.

Motives

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[Update: The bill just passed — by 218 votes.]

[Update 2: More updating below]

This is a follow up to the last post, on the Iraq War supplemental bill being voted on today (noonish, CSPAN says).

Today people whose opinions I respect are arguing both for and against passage of this bill. The arguments boil down to this:

No — It allows the war to continue for nearly 18 more months. We can do better.

Yes — It’s not an ideal bill, but this bill has a chance of passage. Actually passing an antiwar bill (as opposed to voting for something better that fails to pass) will weaken Bush politically and perhaps make it politically tenable to pass something tighter and stricter in the future. But if this bill fails, passing something tighter and stricter in the future will be even more difficult than it is now.

The hurdle is 218 votes. There are 233 Democrats in the House. Although it’s not impossible that a stray Republican might cross party lines and vote for an antiwar measure, realistically Nancy Pelosi has to get 218 Democrats to agree to vote for the bill to ensure passage. If more than 15 Dems vote against the bill, it will fail. And, like it or not, 44 of those 233 Democrats are Blue Dogs — moderate to conservative Dems who mostly represent “red” districts. Roughly 50 or so more House Dems are DLC Dems. A few — not all — Blue Dogs are also in the DLC, and right now I’m not inclined to spend the morning sorting out exactly how many are or aren’t. Let’s say about half. That puts us in the neighborhood of 60 House Dems who are on record as not wanting to get caught moving too far left, possibly because they’re afraid they’ll lose their seats if they do.

Let’s look at the liberal side of the spectrum: The House Progressive Caucus has 69 members. At Democrats.com, David Swanson asks the Progressive Caucus members to vote no on the supplement bill. His arguments against the bill are valid arguments. His arguments in favor of Barbara Lee’s “fully funded withdrawal” bill are valid arguments. I’d much rather the House passed Lee’s bill than the one they’re voting on today.

I’ve never set foot inside the House of Representatives, and I don’t presume to understand what’s possible and what isn’t. But The People Who Understand These Things say there is no way enough Blue Dogs and other moderate Dems would vote for Barbara Lee’s bill to pass it. Maybe they won’t vote for it because they think it’s political suicide; maybe they won’t vote for it because they genuinely don’t like it. In the real world, in order to get those 218 votes, Nancy Pelosi has to give the House something that most of the Blue Dogs and most of the Progressive Caucus will vote for, as well as most of the other Dems.

Yesterday Rep. Jerrold Nadler — long a solidly liberal Dem — was quoted in the New York Times —

To vote “no,” in effect would be to say, “Let the war go on.” There will be other votes, but this at least starts in the right direction. It’s not as far as I wanted to go, but it’s a substantial step.

As I’ve said, there are people of good will with reasonable opinions who disagree on this issue. Unfortunately, there are some who don’t get that. All week I’ve been hearing accusations that various people or organizations — Moveon.org is one — have “sold out” because they favor passage of the supplement bill. I’ve heard people say that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want to end the Iraq War. Late last night a commenter to my last post said,

The actual strategic hope of the people favoring this bill seems to be that the president will veto it. You can then show him to be against even an obligation to meet his own benchmarks, and this will demonstrate him to be an unreasonable man. Does that seem like the right way to understand what you are doing?

In other words, nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law. It’s just a messaging device. That seems to be Kos’s position.

‘Scuse me while I bang my head against a wall and scream.

First, Pelosi is putting forward a compromise bill that has some chance of passage, as opposed to an un-compromise bill that has no chance of passage. How does that translate into “nobody actually wants this bill to pass into law”?

Second, if Bush vetoes today’s bill, as he promises to do, what makes you think he wouldn’t also veto Barbara Lee’s bill?

Third, the Senate can’t even pull together enough of a majority to have a vote on a bleeping nonbinding resolution.

Sure I want the war to end tomorrow. I wanted it not to start. Our choices in Congress are to do something to end it, or to do nothing to end it. I’m for doing something.

If the supplement bill passes, as it’s expected to do, what should we as antiwar citizens do?

(a) Express support for congressional Dems, and do what we can to make pro-war politicians and the Bush administration feel more isolated against the tide of public opinion, thereby paving the way for more congressional action against the war, or

(b) Whine because it wasn’t the bill we wanted, and throw verbal brickbats at Nancy Pelosi and Moveon.org and everybody else who “sold out”?

You know where I stand on this.

Chris Bowers writes,

Right now, with few remaining progressives willing to vote against the supplemental bill, and with the House leadership probably having enough votes to pass it (for more on this, see here), the remaining progressive opposition is being cast as “principled,” in contrast to the “pragmatic” progressives who have decided to vote in support. This is certainly the dichotomy proposed by McJoan in her latest piece on the supplemental over at Dailykos. This is a binary opposition with which I disagree, primarily because I have always looked at ethics from an applied perspective, where the ethical value of a given action can only be judged in the context of the consequences of that action. In this circumstance, I am, not arguing that voting against the supplemental from the a progressive stance is unethical, just that it is not any more ethical than voting in favor.

In the same post, Chris pasted a statement from the Progressive Caucus that they would not block the bill. Josephine Hearn reports for The Politico (yeah, I know, it’s The Politico), “California Democrats Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Lynn Woolsey and Diane E. Watson said they did not want to stand in the way of the bill and have urged other liberal lawmakers to vote for it.”

I hope nobody accuses Barbara Lee of selling out.

Update: Here are the Dems who voted no, and it appears Lee, Waters, Woolsey and Watson were among the no’s.

Barrow
Boren
Davis, Lincoln
Kucinich
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Marshall
Matheson
McNulty
Michaud
Taylor
Waters
Watson
Woolsey

I’m not saying these Democrats are wrong. On the other hand, one more no vote would have, IMO, set back the antiwar cause enormously.

President Bush is expected to throw a public hissy fit about 1:45 EST.

Practicalities

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Tomorrow the House is going to vote on a bill that would end most military involvement in Iraq by the end of August 2008.

My understanding is that the House will be voting on one of Bush’s “emergency supplement” bills, which is how he likes to fund the war rather than through the regular budget. The bill would provide for $124 billion that will mostly go to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus “extra money tucked in for veterans’ health care, hurricane recovery and farm aid,” writes Renee Schoof of McClatchy Newspapers. But the House Dems are attaching conditions.

Briefly, the bill would

  • Add $1.2 billion more for the war in Afghanistan than Bush requested; $3.4 billion for veterans’ and military health care; $2.5 billion to prepare troops in the United States for combat; $6.4 billion for hurricane recovery; and $3.7 billion for agricultural assistance.
  • Require that the Iraqi government meet benchmarks that Bush outlined in January for quelling the violence. Redeployment would be sped up if the benchmarks weren’t met. Some American forces would remain in Iraq to train Iraqis, protect American diplomats and military forces, and fight terrorists.
  • Require that the president explain his decision if he sends any troops into combat who aren’t fully trained, rested and equipped.

    • It’s not a de-funding bill, but the way it was talked about on some of the cable news shows this afternoon made it sound as if it was. I finally figured out that the Republicans are warning that, since Bush will certainly veto the bill, this would delay funds going to the troops.

    And that would be proof that Bush doesn’t support the troops, I say. He’s the one who waits until the last minute and then hits up Congress for “emergency supplement” bills. Why wasn’t this stuff in the budget? OK, I know the answer. First, keeping much of the Iraq War costs out of the budget helps the Bushies lie about balancing the budget. Second, it’s harder to trace where off-budget monies go.

    Other Republicans whine that Congress shouldn’t “micromanage” the Commander in Chief. First, the bill is hardly “micromanagement.” And I say Bush has had four years to manage the war, and he hasn’t. It’s time for someone else to provide some direction, since he clearly can’t do it.

    Tonight there are predictions the bill will pass. The magic number is 218 votes. The magic number for a similar measure in the Senate is 60 votes, which is probably out of reach.

    David Sirota:

    Immediately after the 2006 election, pro-war Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D) told the New York Times that she hoped Democrats played a “kabuki dance” with progressives – pretending to be one thing, then doing another. It was an insulting comment – but the shrewd use of a “kabuki dance” should not be discounted as a critical political tool. And that’s exactly what’s going on with the supplemental on behalf of progressives.

    Right now, Obey’s Iraq bill is being painted in the media as something of a moderate compromise. That has led some organizations on the left to label the bill as a full-on sellout. But as progressives, we must ask ourselves: Would we rather own the public debate, or wield real power?

    Here are the facts: The Iraq supplemental bill begins redeploying troops by March 2008, and completes a full withdrawal by September 2008. You can label the bill anything you like. For all I care, you can label it the Iraq War Indefinite Continuation Act and Fox News can run slick graphics cheering on the legislation as the greatest escalation of militarism since Genghis Khan. But as long as that language is in there and the bill passes, then at the end of the day, real, binding power has been wielded to end the war.

    You might remember Rep. Obey from the YouTube video, in which he became exasperated at a hopelessly uninformed “activist” and called her a “liberal idiot.” The activist preferred another bill that would have provided money only for a withdrawal. That bill was proposed by Rep. Barbara Lee, who I understand has agreed to vote for Obey’s bill tomorrow.

    David Sirota continues,

    Congressional progressives now face the same pangs that come with evolving into a movement with majority power, rather than serving merely as contrarian voices in the minority. They are undoubtedly being pressured by a small but very vocal group of organizations that make up what’s known as the Professional Protest Industry – organizations that exist solely to see the world as they want it, not as it is (a note: not everyone working to kill the supplemental is part of the Professional Protest Industry – many folks just legitimately believe stopping the supplemental is the best way to go, and I absolutely respect that even though I think it is the wrong strategy – however, there is no denying that there is a loud, vocal Professional Protest Industry – check out International ANSWER or the LaRouchies for a few examples). As a matter of existence, this industry wants – no, needs – to prioritize the public debate over wielding real legislative power, because that is the niche that makes them relevant. That these organizations have attacked some of the most steadfastly progressive groups for not being antiwar “enough” shows exactly where their priorities are.

    But lawmakers are not professional protest organizations. They are elected to wield power – that is their job. To be sure, noise and protest and press conferences can play a key constructive role in shaping legislation. But when legislation in question ultimately comes to a vote, power is wielded with the quiet force of the law, which is why the binding redeployment language must remain, by far, the most important element of this bill to anyone who is interested in ending the war.

    Finally, if one can appreciate the difference between packaging and power, consider that it is not a reach nor spin to consider the current supplemental a version of a “fully funded withdrawal.” Though it does not include language saying that the money appropriated to the Pentagon can only go to fund withdrawal activities, it is a bill that is funding for the military with the explicit, binding order that the war end by a date certain. In accepting the orders of the bill, the military knows it is being ordered to spend the money consistent with the language that says the war ends by September 2008 at the latest.

    The bottom line, as I see it, is that if this measure passes tomorrow it will weaken and isolate Bush and the hawks. If it doesn’t, the spinners will hoot about the Dems being “divided” and that they are selling out their constituents by not working hard enough to end the war. And Bush will be seen as the “winner” who can go ahead and do as he pleases.

    There are some progressive antiwar Dems who say they will vote with the Republicans because they want a better bill. I think that would be a huge mistake. If the House falls short of 218 votes for that reason, names will be named.