Collegial Buddies in the Senate Pull a Fast One
Sometimes we are so busy looking at the forest we don’t see the trees. It is beginning to look like that is what happened last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee. After some contentious remarks and posturing during the preceding weeks and a very anti-climactic two days of hearings on the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General, http://www.firearmscoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=339&Itemid=1
Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) had requested that the vote be delayed by a week and that under the rules of the committee he was obliged to grant the delay. So rather than going to a vote of the committee on Wednesday, January 21 the vote was postponed to Wednesday, January 28. What wasn’t mentioned was the situation regarding the makeup of the committee.
With the wrangling over “found” votes and more votes than voters in Minnesota, the contentious appointment of Roland Burris to fill the seat vacated by Barack Obama, questions about the appointment in New York to replace Hillary Clinton, and a few other issues, the Senate leadership was slow about their bi-annual reorganization and committee assignments. Most of the new assignments were not made official until Wednesday evening, January 21.
That means that on Wednesday, when the vote was supposed to have taken place, the makeup of the Senate Judiciary Committee was still as it had been in the 110th Congress. With 10 Democrats and 9 Republicans – but wait – there’s more to that story. Among the 10 Democrats were Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy. Biden officially resigned from the Senate on January 15. Kennedy has been hospitalized since his collapse at an inauguration party on January 20. So on January 21 when the Judiciary Committee was scheduled to vote on whether to recommend confirmation of Eric Holder there were only 8 Democrats available to vote on the committee and 9 Republicans. That’s 8 “F” rated Democrats versus 9 “A” rated Republicans to decide whether an anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment political lackey should be the guardian of the Constitution and the nation’s top cop.
Rather than press the advantage, the “A” rated majority instead asked for a delay of a week during which one of their members was removed from the committee and three additional “F” rated Democrats were added.
Now I’m as fair-minded as the next guy and I understand that there are professional courtesies to be observed in a body such as the US Senate – though the Democrats have not extended much in the way of courtesy over the past couple of years – but if the Democrats wanted more time so they could stack the committee, they should have admitted that fact and requested the delay themselves rather than having the Republicans request the delay for them and pretend they were delaying to be tough.
I might be missing something – the rules and traditions of the Senate are a complex mess about which I am nowhere near an expert – but this looks to me like the good old boys maneuvering in an effort to keep the rubes back home – that’s you and me – from realizing that it’s all just a big game.
This should make it obvious to anyone who is aware, and unfortunately the vast majority of Americans are NOT, except for knowing who is on American Idol or television in general, that the Democratic and Republican parties in the United Sates Congress have the same treasonous tyrannical intentions and are merely putting on a dog-and-pony show for the public’s consumption.
Eric Holder was complicit in the murder of Jesse Trentadue in conjunction with the Oklahoma City bombing so Oklahomans would do well to object to this LOUDLY.
I think you mean Kenneth Trentadue (that wa murdered)but point well taken.
Jesse Trentadue is a personal hero of mine. I found the letter he wrote to Leahy about Eric Holder’s role in the cover up of his brothers murder. (see widget “My Shared Files” on right)
I have followed the story for years. Every person that still thinks we ought to trust the government should google “jesse trentadue” and see if that doesn’t garner them a more balanced perspective. here is a link to a very good overview of the story; http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-okc-to-abu-ghraib-kenneth.html
AxXiom
Speaking of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder:
Eric Holder is a racial-minority individual, and in his heart and mind he inevitably does not endorse hate crimes committed by George W. Bush.
George W. Bush committed hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism (indicated in my blog).
George W. Bush did in fact commit innumerable hate crimes.
And I do solemnly swear by Almighty God that George W. Bush committed other hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism which I am not at liberty to mention.
Many people know what Bush did.
And many people will know what Bush did—even to the end of the world.
Bush was absolute evil.
Bush is now like a fugitive from justice.
Bush is a psychological prisoner.
Bush has a lot to worry about.
Bush can technically be prosecuted for hate crimes at any time.
In any case, Bush will go down in history in infamy.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG
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I am not sure where I had read it before, but anyway, it is a linguistically excellent statement, and it goes kind of like this: “If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Oh wait—off the top of my head—I think the quotation came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.