Category Archives: Congress

Action Alert

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Make a Phone Call for the Constitution

Emails and faxes are good, too.

Update: ABC News —

A Democratic-led congressional panel defied President George W. Bush on Wednesday and authorized legal orders to force several White House aides to testify under oath about the firing of eight U.S. prosecutors.

Subpoenas! Here’s the news release from the House Judiciary Committee.

Judiciary Subcommittee Authorizes Chairman Conyers to Issue Subpoenas in US Attorney Investigation

(Washington, DC)- Today, the House Judiciary Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee (CAL) voted to authorize the full committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) to issue subpoenas for current and former White House and Justice Department officials Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, William Kelley, Scott Jennings and Kyle Sampson, as well as documents that the Committee has not yet received.

“The White House’s offer provides nothing more than conversations. It does not allow this Committee to get the information we need without transcripts or oaths,” Conyers said. “This motion allows the Committee to pursue good faith negotiations. We are continuing our talks with the White House, along with the Senate, but we must protect the interest of the Congress and the American people by maintaining the option to move forward with our investigation with or without continued cooperation from the Administration.”

“We have worked toward voluntary cooperation, but we have to prepare for the possibilty that the White House will continue to hide the truth,” said CAL Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sánchez. “This Congress respects White House prerogatives as a safeguard for the internal deliberations on the legitimate creation of policy, but they are not a ‘get out of jail free’ card. There must be accountability.”

The motion authorizes the Chairman to issue subpoenas at his discretion for the officials to appear before the Committee relating to the ongoing investigation. It also authorizes Conyers to subpoena additional documents relating to the issue – specifically, unredacted documents that have not previously been provided.

My understanding is that, if people receiving subpoenas refuse to comply, Congress could bring contempt of Congress charges. However, to do that Congress has to go through a (Bush appointed) U.S. attorney. Hmm.

It’s a Start

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Here’s a pleasant surprise — today the Senate voted 94-2 to repeal that part of the Patriot Act that allows the Attorney General to appoint “interim” U.S. attorneys who can serve without confirmation.

My next question is, who were the two? I’m guessing one was Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) who had tried to attach an amendment that would have required the Senate to vote on a U.S. attorney nominee within 120 days. That amendment was voted down.

The measure passed today would reinstate the previous law, which allows interim appointees to serve no longer than 120 days without confirmation. If the Senate fails to confirm a nominee within the time period, a court appointed another interim attorney. The White House then has the option of appointing someone else or continuing to haggle with Congress.

The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where I suspect it will pass easily by a veto-proof majority.

This Is Huge

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A White House document dump has provided new revelations about the U.S. Attorney purge. And the biggest revelation — although not a surprising one — is that the idea to fire U.S. Attorneys and replace them with politically compliant toadies originated in the White House.

I’m piecing together two news stories, one by David Johnston and Eric Lipton in today’s New York Times, and the other by Dan Eggen and John Solomon in today’s Washington Post. The story thus far:

In early 2005, White House legal counsel Harriet Miers asked D. Kyle Sampson, a justice department official, if it would be feasible to fire and replace all 93 U.S. attorneys. It appears the White House was unhappy with the attorneys because Republicans were alleging widespread voter fraud on the part of Democrats, and the attorneys were unwilling to bring indictments against the Democrats, most probably because the allegations were a fantasy. (Josh Marshall provides an archive of his posts on the voter fraud allegations going back to 2001.)

However, as Johnston and Lipton note, the documentation isn’t clear if the voter fraud issue was the real or only reason.

The documents did not provide a clear motive for the firings. Some suggested that department officials were dissatisfied with specific prosecutors, but none cited aggressive public corruption inquiries or failure to pursue voter fraud cases as an explicit reason to remove them.

As has been widely noted in the recent past, the pattern suggests that the White House and the Republican Party generally have been using the Justice Department as part of their election campaign process. In other words, Karl and Co. have been turning our criminal justice system into a Republican Party machine.

Sampson — who resigned yesterday, btw — replied to Miers that filling that many jobs at once would be too big a job. (The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the same thing at the time.) Instead, Miers and Sampson began working together on a select list of attorneys to replace. As they did this, Karl Rove and other White House officials helpfully relayed the complaints they were getting from Republican officials about the attorneys’ failure to indict Democrats on voter fraud.

Eggen and Solomon, WaPo (emphasis added):

The e-mails [between Miers and Sampson] show that Rove was interested in the appointment of a former aide, Tim Griffin, as an Arkansas prosecutor. Sampson wrote in one that “getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.”

Sampson sent an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 that ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers “exhibited loyalty” to the administration; low performers were “weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.” A third group merited no opinion.

In January 2006, Sampson sent a first list of attorneys to be fired to the White House. Four of the attorneys who would be fired were on this list: Chiara, Cummins, Lam and Ryan (the final list is here). This list also suggested Tim Griffin be one of the replacements.

Eggen and Solomon, WaPo:

In September, Sampson produced another list of firing candidates, telling the White House that Cummins was “in the process of being pushed out” and providing the names of eight others whom “we should consider pushing out.” Five on that list were fired in December; the others were spared. …

… Sampson also strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.

“I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed,” Sampson wrote in a Sept. 17 memo to Miers. “It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don’t have replacements ready to roll immediately.

“I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments,” he wrote.

By avoiding Senate confirmation, Sampson added, “we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House.”

[Update: See also Think Progress.]

Note that the Patriot Act provision came into being in March 2006, about a year after Miers and Sampson began work on their list. Coincidence? Not a chance.

Notice this little detail, from Eggen and Solomon:

Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor, was not on that list. Justice officials said Sampson added him in October, based in part on complaints from Sen. Pete V. Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.

You may remember that in October 2006 — shortly before the elections — Domenici had called U.S. attorney David Iglesias and asked him about the status of an investigation into a Democratic state senator. Domenici also spoke to President Bush. Then Bush spoke to Gonzales “to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud,” Johnston and Lipton write. Thus Iglesias was added to the purge list, even though he had received a “strong performer” rating from Miers and Sampson in the earlier stages of their list-making.

A White House spokeswoman insisted that the President did not call for the removal of any specific attorney. Nor did he know that Miers, Sampson, and Rove had been drawing up a list already. (Bush never seems to know anything that’s going on under his nose, does he? I find it hard to believe that Bush didn’t at least mention Iglesias to Sampson.)

A few weeks after the conversation between Bush and Gonzales, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.

Johnston and Lipton, NY Times:

On Dec. 4, 2006, three days before the dismissals, Mr. Sampson sent an e-mail message to the White House with a copy to Ms. Miers outlining plans to carry out the firings

“We would like to execute this on Thursday, Dec. 7,” Mr. Sampson wrote. Because some United States attorneys were still in Washington attending a conference, he planned to postpone telling them they were being fired. He wrote, “We want to wait until they are back home and dispersed to reduce chatter.”

Eggen and Solomon, WaPo:

On the day of the Dec. 7 firings, Miers’s deputy, William Kelley, wrote that Domenici’s chief of staff “is happy as a clam” about Iglesias.

A week later, Sampson wrote: “Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias’s body to cool).”

Domenici is so busted.

E-mails show that Justice officials discussed bypassing the two Democratic senators in Arkansas, who normally would have had input into the appointment, as early as last August. By mid-December, Sampson was suggesting that Gonzales exercise his newfound appointment authority to put Griffin in place until the end of Bush’s term.

Griffin’s appointment and his connection to Karl Rove was reported in Arkansas newspapers in mid-December. This was one of our first clues that something screwy was going on regarding the U.S. attorneys.

Miers resigned as White House counsel less than three weeks later, in early January.

As for D. Kyle Sampson, in a sidebar story the New York Times reports that he had been using his post as chief of staff to the attorney general to get named U.S. attorney in Utah, his home state, even though he had never worked as a full-time prosecutor. The White House and Justice Department backed Sampson, but Senator Orrin Hatch wanted Brett Tolman, “a one-time Utah federal prosecutor who had spent the previous three years working on antiterrorism issues for the Judiciary Committee staff.”

This suggests to me that Orrin Hatch has known about some of these shenanigans for some time. But let’s go on …

This put Mr. Sampson in an unusual position. As Mr. Gonzales’s chief of staff, he was fielding calls and letters from Mr. Hatch’s office, even though he was vying for the job that Mr. Hatch was writing about, two former officials from Mr. Hatch’s office said. That made at least some Senate officials uncomfortable.

“It was a little like the fox watching the hen house,” said one former Senate staff member, who asked not to be named because he now works in a different job.

Mr. Sampson did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Hatch finally made a personal appeal to Mr. Gonzales to drop his bid to nominate Mr. Sampson. After a four-month delay, President Bush nominated Mr. Sampson’s rival for the job last June.

Sampson — did I mention he resigned yesterday? — is a religious conservative (a Mormon) who “told the Brigham Young University news service that he admired Mr. Bush because the president recognized that politics and religious beliefs could not be separated.” Apparently Mr. Sampson’s religious beliefs didn’t teach him anything about ethics.

This really is huge. The “underlying crime” in the Watergate scandal was the White House’s illegal activities — such as money laundering and breaking into Dem Party offices to look for something incriminating — to ensure Nixon’s re-election in 1972. Now there is mounting evidence that the Bush White House and other Republican officials have been trying to use the entire federal criminal justice system to win elections for Republicans. I say this has Watergate beat all to hell. So far we know thatGonzales has lied to Congress about the reasons for purging the attorneys, and certainly more juicy bits will be revealed as time goes on.

Yesterday Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said he intends to subpoena Karl Rove if he doesn’t testify to Congress voluntarily. Stay tuned.

Dems: 120 Days?

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This afternoon Dems in the House and the Senate announced an Iraq redeployment plans.

David Stout writes in the New York Times,

House Democratic leaders intensified their debate with President Bush over Iraq today as they announced legislation that would pull American combat troops out of Iraq before the fall of 2008.

“Only then can we refocus our military efforts on Afghanistan to the extent that we must,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. She said the Iraq withdrawal deadline would be attached to legislation providing nearly $100 billion requested by the Bush administration for the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns and money to expand health care for veterans.

Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the leadership’s proposal “will essentially redirect more of our resources to the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting the right war in the right place against the people who attacked us and who are giving Al Qaeda sanctuary.”

Sounds good to me, although I suspect the GOP will find some way to make the attachment to the veteran health care appropriation seem unethical, somehow. Watch for it.

Stout goes on to say the provision has little hope of passage, since Republicans are united against it.

Indeed, the Republican minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, practically invited his Democratic colleagues to bring the measure to the floor.

“Can you defeat this bill?” Mr. Boehner was asked at a Capitol news conference.

“Oh, we can,” he replied.

Fine. Bring it on, Boehner. I would like the provision enacted. But if there’s no hope, It’s good to see the Dems put forth a tangible, workable plan, even if the Republicans knock it down. Then they can go to the American people and say, look, we have a plan, but the Republicans block it.

Stout writes that Dems are split on the provision, because conservative Dems say it goes too far and liberal Dems say it doesn’t go far enough.

Ms. Pelosi refused to concede that the proposal’s chances are dim, even as a questioner noted that as many as 70 House Democrats want the United States out of Iraq by the end of 2007. “We will come together and find our common ground,” she said.

I firmly believe in not allowing perfect to become the enemy of good. At the moment, it seems more important for the Dems to present as much of a united front as possible.

Now for the Senate — this is from a news release —

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today joined Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, Democratic Conference Secretary Patty Murray, Senator Russ Feingold, and Senator Evan Bayh to announce a new Joint Resolution to revise U.S. policy on Iraq. Iraq has fallen into a bloody civil war, and as conditions on the ground have changed so must U.S. policy change to meet them.

The Reid Joint Resolution builds on the longstanding Democratic position on Iraq and the Levin-Reed Amendment: the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war. It contains binding language to direct the President to transition the mission for U.S. forces in Iraq and begin their phased redeployment within one-hundred twenty days with a goal of redeploying all combat forces by March 31, 2008. A limited number of troops would remain for the purposes of force protection, training and equipping Iraqi troops, and targeted counter-terror options.

Sen. Russ Feingold released this statement:

“Senator Reid has worked hard to rally the caucus in support of binding legislation to reject the President’s failed policies in Iraq and require redeployment of most U.S. troops from Iraq. While the legislation doesn’t go as far as I would like, it is a strong step toward ending our involvement in this misguided war. I will continue to push for Congress to use its power of the purse to end our involvement in this war.”

If Russ can live with it, so can I. Other opinions?

Bush’s Slow Bleed

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On the same day that Joe Biden writes in the Boston Globe in favor of repealing the 2002 war resolution, Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the Associated Press reports that Dems are backing away from the idea. Or maybe they’re just postponing it. Or not.

However, later in the article, Hirschfeld Davis claims that a rift has developed between Jack Murtha and Nancy Pelosi over plans to use congressional spending powers to force a change in Iraq policy. But a closer look reveals that Hirschfeld Davis is suffering a rift between her keyboarding fingers and her brain. HD writes,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, said she doesn’t support tying war funding to strict training and readiness targets for U.S. troops.

The comments distanced her from Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who has said he wants to use Congress’ spending power to force a change in policy in Iraq, by setting strict conditions on war funding.

Pelosi said she supports holding the administration to training and readiness targets, but added: “I don’t see them as conditions to our funding. Let me be very clear: Congress will fund our troops.”

Asked whether the standards should be tied to a $100 billion supplemental war spending measure _ as Murtha has proposed _ Pelosi demurred, saying it was up to the panel that drafts funding bills.

HD of the AP is comparing apples to oranges and coming up with spinach. To understand where Pelosi and Murtha are coming from, check out what Lolita Baldor (who would name a kid “Lolita”?) reports for the Associated Press —

Strained by the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a significant risk that the U.S. military won’t be able to quickly and fully respond to yet another crisis, according to a new report to Congress.

The assessment, done by the nation’s top military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represents a worsening from a year ago, when that risk was rated as moderate.

The report is classified, but on Monday senior defense officials, speaking on condition on anonymity, confirmed the decline in overall military readiness. And a report that accompanied Pace’s review concluded that while the Pentagon is working to improve its warfighting abilities, it “may take several years to reduce risk to acceptable levels.”

Just one more indicator that Bush’s Folly is making us more, not less, vulnerable. Anyway, Nancy Pelosi just issued this statement:

This unacceptable state of readiness affected our military long before President Bush ordered an escalation of the Iraq war in January, but the escalation is making it worse.

The harmful effects on the readiness crisis of the President’s escalation plan are just beginning to be seen. Two Army brigades scheduled to go to Iraq in the spring will do so without completing their normal training cycles and without all of the equipment required to do their jobs. We should not be sending troops to Baghdad unless they are fully trained and fully equipped. We already owe a great deal to our troops, and we do them a disservice by putting them in dangerous situations without being fully prepared.

What Pelosi says it not at all at odds with what Jack Murtha has proposed. To the contrary; as David Sirota explains, Murtha’s plan also supports troop readiness. Although you wouldn’t know that from reading the “mainstream” media. Quoting the Washington Post:

To be sent to battle, troops would have to have had a year’s rest between combat tours. Soldiers in Iraq could not have their tours extended beyond a year there. And the Pentagon’s ‘stop-loss’ policy, which prevents some officers from leaving the military when their service obligations are up, would end. Troops would have to be trained in counterinsurgency and urban warfare and be sent overseas with the equipment they used in training.

Hmm, you might be saying. I thought Murtha’s plan was all about de-funding the war; what the Republicans are calling a “slow bleed.” In fact, “slow bleed” is what the Bush Administration is doing to our military, and Jack Murtha is trying to stop the bleeding.

What Murtha proposed was tying war funding to readiness. According to the WaPo article by Jonathan Weisman and Lyndsey Layton linked above, Murtha “botched” this proposal.

The plan was bold: By tying President Bush’s $100 billion war request to strict standards of troop safety and readiness, Democrats believed they could grab hold of Iraq war policy while forcing Republicans to defend sending troops into battle without the necessary training or equipment.

But a botched launch by the plan’s author, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action, a score of House Democratic lawmakers said last week.

For the life of me I can’t figure out what it was Murtha “botched.” After wading through several paragraphs reeking with hysteria, it appears that Murtha’s only “flub” was that he announced the plan on a web site associated with Moveon.org. After which all of Washington came down with the vapors.

Please.

Anyway, since Weisman and Layton announced that the Dems are rifting, our gal Hirschfeld Davis picks up the cry:

The developments on both sides of the Capitol reflected a new level of disarray in Democratic ranks on Iraq. Swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war, Democrats have seen their efforts falter under a reality more complicated than they found on the campaign trail.

Hirschfeld Davis doesn’t mention that most of the “complications” are being manufactured by the Right Wing Echo Chamber. The fact is, you have to go to leftie web sites to get a clear, non-hysterical explanation of what Murtha proposed. The MSM is just recycling rightie talking points and declaring the plan “botched” and the Dems “divided”; the usual narrative, in other words.

The Senate’s Turn

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Let’s do a little live blogging — I’m waiting for the Senate Iraq War resolution vote and listening to Senators of both parties, all of whom seem a bit ragged today. The Republican point of view seems to be —

1. A nonbinding resolution will have no effect. However,

2. This same resolution will defund the war, leave our soldiers stranded and helpless in the Middle East, and enable an Islamofascist takeover of the United States.

They seem to be having some sort of procedural squabble. The Republicans are whining that they aren’t being allowed a “fair debate.” Please …

Harry Reid is speaking now; he is accusing Senate Republicans of trying to stop a vote on a nonbinding resolution that might embarrass President Bush. Party loyalty is asking too much, Reid says.

A week ago the Senate Dems were complaining that Republican maneuvering had stopped a debate. Margaret Talev, Renee Schoof and Steven Thomma write for McClatchy Newspapers (February 9):

Having banked on the promise that Democrats would force a change of course in Iraq if they won control of Congress, some of the people who helped the Democrats get there are growing impatient.

They’re frustrated that Democrats sank so much energy into a nonbinding resolution then dropped the bipartisan plan of Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., like a hot potato when Republican leaders who support President Bush maneuvered them into a corner.

All the finagling has gotten in the way of a formal debate or vote in the Senate on Bush’s plans for Iraq. …

… Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said her constituents thought Republicans were trying to protect Bush “from the embarrassment of a public way of saying `you’re wrong’ in a bipartisan fashion.”

But she’s frustrated by a Senate rule that lets the minority party put the majority in a corner because 60 of the 100 members must agree to force a debate or a vote. …

Many Republicans say the Warner-Levin resolution is pointless and that without the force of law it could demoralize the troops. They say the president’s troop increase in Iraq should be given a chance.

So they said they’d block consideration of the resolution unless Democrats also debated a resolution by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that would support the troops and take no position on a troop increase.

Democrats saw a trap: If they backed Gregg’s resolution, then didn’t get 60 votes on Warner-Levin, the only formal statement out of the Senate would voice no opposition to the troop increase. If they rejected Gregg’s, opponents would run ads accusing them of hurting the troops.

Their decision: Hold off on a formal debate. Senators who are critical of Iraq policy have been waiting a long time for a debate, though, which they couldn’t get when Republicans were in charge.

That was last week. Now they’re having a roll call vote on whether to close debate on the resolution so they can go forward to the vote.

Lieberman voted with the Republicans against cloture. Susan Collins voted with the Democrats for cloture.

Chuck Hagel voted yes, also.

This isn’t the resolution vote, remember. They’re just voting on whether to close the debate.

A bobblehead on CNN is saying that there don’t appear to be enough “yes” votes to close debate.

A talking head on MSNBC says that the Dems will probably fall four votes short. Forty-nine Dems (probably) will vote yes for cloture (Lieberman voted no; Tim Johnson is still in the hospital).

Yes, they are four votes short; 56 votes yes; 34 votes no. They needed sixty. Reid is saying a majority in the Senate just voted against the surge, although of course that’s not official. Ten Republicans didn’t bother to show up. Seven Republicans voted for cloture. I’ll try to find a list and post it later.

Update: What Oliver Willis says.

Feet to Fire

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Margaret Talev, Renee Schoof and Steven Thomma write for McClatchy Newspapers:

In Washington, Democrats are blaming Republicans for the Senate’s failure so far to vote on a resolution opposing a troop increase in Iraq.

But in the heartland, some voters say such excuses no longer are good enough.

Having banked on the promise that Democrats would force a change of course in Iraq if they won control of Congress, some of the people who helped the Democrats get there are growing impatient.

They’re frustrated that Democrats sank so much energy into a nonbinding resolution then dropped the bipartisan plan of Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Carl Levin, D-Mich., like a hot potato when Republican leaders who support President Bush maneuvered them into a corner.

All the finagling has gotten in the way of a formal debate or vote in the Senate on Bush’s plans for Iraq.

Sometime last week Senator John Tester was on Hardball last week saying that if the Dems couldn’t get a majority for a nonbinding resolution, something more forceful would be even more unlikely. And that makes sense, but …

National polling shows that a majority of Americans support a resolution opposing the troop increase. National independent polling organizations haven’t assessed reaction to the stalled Senate debate.

It’s only about a month into the 110th Congress, and the appropriations bills – where Democrats have the real power to attach strings to military spending if they can muster the will and support – are weeks away from consideration. Still, there’s mounting pressure on Democrats from their base across the country.

At least 22 state legislatures are considering resolutions urging Congress to stop the deployment of more U.S. troops to Iraq, said David Sirota, the Montana-based co-chairman of the Progressive States Network.

Harr Reid says the Senate Dems will “redouble their efforts” when the Senate reconvenes after a recess at the end of this month. Sometime in March, in other words.

The House Dems are vowing to fight harder.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the House couldn’t let members go home Feb. 17 for a weeklong recess empty-handed. So the House plans to begin a three-day debate Tuesday and vote on its own resolution opposing the troop buildup.

The Senate Dems seem to think they were outmanevered by the Republicans.

Many Republicans say the Warner-Levin resolution is pointless and that without the force of law it could demoralize the troops. They say the president’s troop increase in Iraq should be given a chance.

So they said they’d block consideration of the resolution unless Democrats also debated a resolution by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., that would support the troops and take no position on a troop increase.

Democrats saw a trap: If they backed Gregg’s resolution, then didn’t get 60 votes on Warner-Levin, the only formal statement out of the Senate would voice no opposition to the troop increase. If they rejected Gregg’s, opponents would run ads accusing them of hurting the troops.

Their decision: Hold off on a formal debate.

But ya know what, folks? With the war as unpopular as it is, and Bush as unpopular as he is, what the hell are the Dems afraid of? This just plain makes no sense.

I think they should make an announcement that they tried to compromise with the Republicans, but the Republicans are ducking the issue of Iraq, so they should go back to Senator Feingold’s resolution and vote on that, and let the GOP be damned if they don’t allow it to pass.

It’s time to hold Dem feet to fire. Call, write, fax, email every Dem on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (remember to be nice to Russ Feingold). Call, write, fax, email Harry Reid and your own senators, whoever they are, if they’re Dems. Tell ’em to crank it up and fight.

Insurance Industry v. Katrina

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More than a year past the devastating hurricane season of 2005, the U.S. insurance industry is getting nervous. Class-action lawsuits and rebellious state legislatures are bad enough, but now some U.S. senators of both parties are threatening to revoke the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which exempts insurance companies from federal antitrust laws.

Yesterday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told bloggers on a conference call that “The insurance industry is the enemy.”

The problem is that the insurance industry is the enemy of most everything we do today. They have an anti-trust exemption from the Depression era that was supposed to last only a few years [the McCarran-Ferguson Act] but is still with us today. This exemption allows the industry to do harmful things to the country. They are fixing prices, which would ordinarily be a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but there is nothing we can do.

McCarran-Ferguson is under fire from a prominent Republican Senator also. When State Farm rejected a claim for the loss of a $400,000 home in Mississippi, the company wasn’t considering the political connections of the owner, Trent Lott. Lott, who is the Senate Minority Whip, announced last week he wants to revoke McCarran-Ferguson as well. Maria Reico writes for the Mississippi Sun-Herald (January 25, 2007):

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., intends to introduce legislation shortly to remove insurers’ antitrust immunity, along with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. In the House, Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, is working with Rep. Pete DeFazio, D-Ore., on a similar bill.

“I don’t know what this means for me personally,” Taylor, a litigant in the suit, said in an interview. “Given my experience with State Farm, I’ll believe it when a certified check is deposited in my checking account.”

Taylor said his campaign to eliminate the insurance industry’s antitrust immunity, push for all-perils insurance and secure federal oversight of the state-regulated industry will continue. “I can assure you that effort does not go away. They have hurt too many of my friends.”

Taylor said he was motivated by what he believes is the insurance industry’s ability to fix rates and settle claims. “I’m convinced the big guys did call each other and say ‘don’t pay claims.’ It’s perfectly legal to do so.”

Lott spokesman Lee Youngblood said, “We expect to have hearings early this year.” Lott, who is also a litigant against State Farm, “was surprised to learn they were exempt and he would like to see them subject to laws like everybody else.”

The legislation would repeal the exemption in the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 and bring the property/casualty insurance industry under federal oversight of the Federal Trade Commission.

Leahy, who has sponsored repeal legislation in other sessions of Congress, “is going to introduce it soon,” said Senate Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. The panel will hold a hearing, she said.

Last week State Farm announced a mass settlement with more than 600 Mississippi homeowners who sued the company for refusing to pay damages from Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The company also made an agreement with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to reopen and pay other disputed claims.

However, today a U.S. District Judge slashed the jury’s award of $2.5 million in punitive damages down to $1 million. Michael Kunzelman of the Associated Press reports,

U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. in Gulfport, Miss., reduced the award to $1 million even though the judge said State Farm acted in a “grossly negligent way” by denying the claim filed by policyholders Norman and Genevieve Broussard, whose Biloxi home was destroyed by the August 2005 storm.

Louisiana has been facing another insurance crisis. After it became clear that the state’s largest commercial insurer was planning to drop all commercial property coverage in the New Orleans, Lafayette and Lake Charles areas, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco took action. She and state Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon intervened. The two Louisiana officials briefed St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc. on levee improvements and coastal restoration efforts, and Travelers modified its plans.

But this week high-level executives of the insurance industry invited the Louisiana governor to California for an intervention of their own. Governor Blanco addressed the quarterly board meeting of the Property and Casualty Insurers Association of America, asking them to come to Louisiana to write policies. And the insurers are interested in working with Louisiana.

Why the change of attitude? Rebecca Mowbray wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune (January 29, 2007),

In a special legislative session on insurance this month in the nation’s most hurricane-prone state, newly elected Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and the Republican-controlled legislature did a 180-degree turn away from the pro-business efforts to help the insurance industry that have dominated since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. They approved a spate of consumer-oriented reforms that one Florida newspaper described as “Ralph Nader-esque.”

Insurers say Florida destroyed its insurance market by rolling back rate increases for the state’s insurer of last resort and increasing the obligations of the state-run catastrophe reinsurance pool without adequate financing, essentially putting the state in competition with the private market. Insurers say the state’s credit rating is now in jeopardy, and that the experiment will have dire consequences and ultimately will prove anticonsumer.

The insurance industry didn’t see it coming, and rattled insurers want to make sure the revolt doesn’t spread to other states.

Hence, a sudden interest in the insurance needs of Louisiana.

Dweebs in Space

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WSJ Opinion Journal:

To understand why the Founders put war powers in the hands of the Presidency, look no further than the current spectacle in Congress on Iraq. What we are witnessing is a Federalist Papers illustration of criticism and micromanagement without responsibility.

The Founders gave war powers to Congress, dweeb. Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 11-14; see Findlaw. And if you want a Federalist Paper, try #69, by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton made it clear that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, was to have much less war power than that of a British king. The declaring of war and the raising and regulating of armies and navies are powers given to Congress.

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first General and admiral of the Confederacy; while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.

The dweeb at WSJ continues. He both upbraids the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the non-binding resolution it passed yesterday and taunts Congress that if it really believed the Iraq War is so bad it should do something more drastic, like cut off funds.

By passing “non-binding resolutions,” they can assail Mr. Bush and put all of the burden of success or failure on his shoulders.

I ‘spect that was the idea. It’s Bush’s War, dweeb. I’m hoping that if Congress can pass one non-binding resolution it will go on to something bolder.

Minority Leader John Boehner is even asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi to create another special Congressional committee to look over the general’s shoulder. It’s a shame Ulysses S. Grant isn’t around to tell them where to put their special committee.

I believe the point of the committees is to look over Bush’s shoulders, not the generals’, and I ‘spect General Grant would have been OK with that. Right now I don’t have time to look up what precedents there might have been during the Civil War and what Grant thought about them.

Anyway, the dweeb continues,

In addition to being feckless, all of this is unconstitutional. As Commander-in-Chief, the President has the sole Constitutional authority to manage the war effort. Congress has two explicit war powers: It has the power to declare war, which in the case of Iraq it essentially did with its resolution of 2003. It also has the power to appropriate funds.

But Bush obtained that resolution on false pretenses, which as far as I’m concerned renders it null and void. The Iraq War we got was the result of a bait-and-switch. And while the President has the authority to manage the war effort, he does so with a military raised and managed by authority of Congress, and he goes to war only by the authority of Congress. To claim that a President can trick Congress into one war resolution and then treat that resolution as a carte blanch to make war as he pleases for the rest of his administration is stretching things a tad.

Update: Glenn Greenwald has more.