I'm Aftraid It's Going to Get Uglier
House GOP Defends Patriot Act PowersPartisan Rancor High as Plan to Soften Anti-Terror Law Is Defeated
By Dan Morgan and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A01
House Republicans, under strong pressure from the White House, narrowly defeated an effort yesterday to water down the Bush administration's signature law to combat domestic terrorism.
By a 210 to 210 tie vote that GOP leaders prolonged for 23 tumultuous minutes while they corralled dissident members, the House rejected a proposed change to the USA Patriot Act that would have barred the Justice Department from searching bookstore and library records. White House officials, citing the nearly three-year-old law's importance as an anti-terrorism tool, warned that an attempt to weaken it would be vetoed.
But the victory came only after GOP tactics infuriated Democrats and a number of Republicans. The vote, scheduled to last 15 minutes, dragged on for 38 minutes despite outraged shouts and a unified chant of "shame, shame, shame" from Democrats across the aisle.
The showdown was the latest in a series of bipartisan challenges this week on the House floor to administration positions on trade sanctions against Cuba, budget cuts in a major loan program of the Small Business Administration, and funding for programs promoting democracy abroad. Last month, the House approved a natural resources bill that slashed many of the Bush administration's initiatives in land conservation and the environment.
Last week, Senate negotiators, defying the White House, insisted on pushing for a six-year transportation bill costing $318 billion -- $62 billion above the administration ceiling.
With President Bush's approval rating slipping as a result of setbacks in the Iraq war, lawmakers in both parties appear emboldened to defy the White House and the House GOP leadership.
"The Republican leadership is out of control," said Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.). "Today's vote on the Freedom to Read Protection Act is just the latest example of a growing trend towards abusive, closed-fist partisanship on the part of Republican House leadership."
Rep. C.L. Butch Otter (R-Idaho), a conservative and an advocate of the defeated provision, told reporters after the vote: "You win some, and some get stolen."
At one point the electronic tally board above the visitors' gallery showed the proposal passing, 219 to 201. But as the Republican whip organization went to work to get defectors to switch, the number of those voting for passage dropped steadily.
The final count recorded 18 Republicans joining 191 Democrats and Rep. Bernard Sanders (Vt.), the House's lone Independent and the chief author of the amendment to limit some powers of the Patriot Act. Sanders called the proceedings "an outrage" and "an insult to democracy."
The House has voted in the past to block portions of the Patriot Act, but Congress has never managed to alter any part of it. The law was quickly passed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It gave the government strong powers and leeway to conduct investigations and detain suspects.
Supporters of the Sanders proposal argued that fighting terrorism did not justify encroachments on basic liberties that are implicit in the broad authority the act gives to law enforcement agencies charged with hunting terrorists.
Addressing the House before the vote, Sanders said: "All of us want to support the law enforcement officials going after terrorists, but we can defeat terrorism without allowing the government to get a secret order from a secret court without any showing of any evidence that the person whose reading records are sought is engaged in any kind of illegal conduct."
His amendment had the support of groups that include the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association and the PEN American Center, representing writers.
Supporters of the Patriot Act say authorities need to track potential al Qaeda members who communicate using Internet facilities in public libraries.
Under the current law, authorities need a special court order to require libraries and other venues to provide records on the sale or borrowing of books and on Internet sites used.
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that drafted the underlying spending legislation before the House yesterday, said, "I believe the Patriot Act has helped" safeguard the safety of Americans.
Other Republicans said there were few examples of the act being used to invade the privacy of library users.
Yesterday's battle was over an amendment to a $39.8 billion bill financing the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for next year, which passed 397 to 18. The Senate has not taken up its version of the spending measure.
The floor fight was reminiscent of November's vote on a Medicare prescription drug program, when GOP House leaders kept the vote going for nearly three hours while they persuaded reluctant members to support passage of the bill.
<------------------------------------->
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Trampling Democracy To Protect It?
In a dramatic scene on the floor of the U.S. House yesterday, the White House and Republican leadership rigged a key vote on a bill that would have reformed the Patriot Act by requiring "law enforcement to go to a regular court instead of a secret court to get permission to demand library and Internet access records of people it is investigating."
The reform, sponsored by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and broadly supported by 332 local governments, at one point was winning 219-201, and when the official voting time ran out "appeared to have been approved by a 213-206 vote." But even as House members screamed "Shame!," Republican leaders abused their power by indefinitely extending voting time, using the extra time to force nine of their colleagues to switch their votes and defeat the bill on a tie vote 210-210. Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID), a top sponsor of the bill who voted for it, said "You win some, and some get stolen."
See the video of Rep. Sanders' admonishing House leaders after they rigged the process and subverted democracy. And see how lawmakers who supported yesterday's legislation are today attempting to shut down the House in protest.
IGNORING THE PROTEST OF DICK CHENEY: In rigging the vote, House leaders ignored the timeless protest of Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1987, then-Rep. Dick Cheney (R-WY) criticized the practice of holding open votes to overturn bills, calling the maneuver "the most heavy-handed, arrogant abuse of power in the 10 years I've been here.''
VOTING DOWN A BILL THEY CO-SPONSORED: Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), both co-sponsors of Sanders's underlying legislation, refused in the waning moments to support the bill. Lofgren, who voted "present," argued the Sanders bill was too broad. What she refused to acknowledge, however, is that House rules precluded him from offering more limited legislation, and that his measure would have likely been modified in House-Senate negotiations to ultimately become the very bill she co-sponsored in the first place. But because she and Wamp cast the deciding votes against the measure, there will be no Patriot Act reform at all.
SPREADING A MYTH TO DEFEAT A BILL: The Bush administration, which threatened to veto the measure if passed, resorted to outright misinformation to confuse wavering Members of Congress. Just before the vote, the Justice Department sent a letter to House members saying that at least twice in recent months "a member of a terrorist group closely affiliated with al Qaeda used Internet services provided by a public library."
What they failed to say was that the Sanders legislation would not have precluded law enforcement from obtaining those library records – it would have merely forced them to obtain a warrant from a judge (which, if the threat was as critical as they said, should not have been difficult). Rep. Wamp, the co-sponsor who voted against his own legislation, cited the Justice Department letter as the reason he switched his vote.
CLAIMING PATRIOT ACT OPPONENTS DON'T CARE ABOUT 9/11 DEATHS: During the floor debate on the bill, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) had the nerve to argue that those supporting the bipartisan legislation were disregarding those killed on September 11. Referring to those in his district who died, Shays said, "I have 70 constituents who lost their rights on September 11; and to hear this debate, I am not sure [you] seem to care about that." Incredibly, Shays made his comments just moments after an impassioned speech in support of the bill by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents the Manhattan district encompassing Ground Zero. Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), who also represents New York City and supported the bill, immediately stood up after Shays and said "to have a New Yorker hear that we somehow do not care for the victims of September 11 is really the cheapest kind of blow... I knew people that died there. I was friends with people who died there...[But] in the process of caring for the victims of September 11, no one said we were supposed to throw away the Constitution."
A PATTERN OF INTIMIDATION: Republicans have abused their power and extended votes before in order to get their way. As the NYT reports, when the controversial Medicare bill appeared headed for defeat last year, Republican leaders "held the vote open for three hours to get colleagues to switch their votes." Currently, the House ethics committee is looking into accusations that one lawmaker, Mr. Smith (who also switched his vote on the Patriot Act measure yesterday), was offered a bribe on the House floor for his vote.
Rep. Sanders' noted just how obscene yesterday's behavior was saying, "I find it ironic that, on an amendment designed to protect American democracy and our constitutional rights, the Republican leadership in the House had to rig the vote and subvert the democratic process in order to prevail." Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said the tactics "have turned [Congress] into a laughingstock," while other lawmakers "suggested wryly that the United Nations needs to send in election observers to monitor the House."
Note: I probably need to stop reading about NeoCon Republican's or I'm going to be forced into more direct action against them. A majority of my extended family are solid Republican's, and I only have problems with two close relatives who have not a single problem with anything the NeoCon's have done or proposed.
Whatever has brought us to such a vicious religious and political divide is obscene, and should be resisted. Brute force, character assasinations, innuendo, dishonesty, lying, corruption, graft, inhumane treatment, deprivation of basic legal rights under international law, and outright hatred of others by citizens of any country are injurious to the human condition. It just hurts that much more when those engaged in such activities can call themselvers Americans. Absolute, blind faith combined with contempt for the other in either politics or religion is the ultimate social disease!
posted by Richard at
Friday, July 09, 2004
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