Sensenbrenner out of control — redux

June 13, 2005

The last we heard from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), he was rewriting amendments offered by Dems on his committee to make them appear to support sexual predators. Last week, Sensenbrenner drew the Dems’ ire again, this time for his behavior at a hearing on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

Sensenbrenner had initially promised a thorough review of the law before it receives a reauthorization vote this year, but, in a series of hearings, has resisted allowing testimony from those critical of the Patriot Act. Committee Dems, led by Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), used committee rules to force a hearing last week. Sensenbrenner gave them just two days to call witnesses and pull the hearing together. It went downhill from there.

[A]fter less than two hours of testimony on Friday morning, Sensenbrenner declared the hearing over. Several Democrats continued talking, however, and GOP staffers on the committee retaliated by turning off their microphones. When the Democrats still wouldn’t give up, the TV feed to C-SPAN was cut off, and then at least some of the lights in the hearing room were turned off.

James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, one of the witnesses at the hearing, said he was stunned by the display of partisan rancor.

“I have never seen anything like this happen,” said Zogby. Zogby claimed that “it was obvious that [Sensenbrenner] didn’t like any of the Democratic Members” on Judiciary, and clearly wasn’t pleased the hearing was taking place at all.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed Sensenbrenner for his handling of the hearing in a statement released Friday. She urged Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to make Sensenbrenner apologize to Democrats for his “shameful behavior” on Friday.

(Crooks & Liars, not surprisingly, has footage from Friday.)

I remember a time — it really wasn’t that long ago — when grown-ups led Congress and committee chairman wouldn’t walk out of a hearing room when witnesses criticized pending legislation, not to mention literally pulling the plug on their colleagues. Ah, the memories….

As many shameful things as the GOP leaders have done, this, I think, is most representativs of the leadership style being perpetrated. They care nothing for working and actually governing, only being as rancorously partisan as possible. Welcome to George Bush’s America. Paradise.

  • Getting an apology is about as likely as a snowstorm in Hell (and I don’t mean the nice little town in Michigan). It’s too “respectful” of an action – Sensenbrenner kicked the Dems, the witnesses, America and our Constitution in the gut; we need to kick him in his balls and his teeth — saying “sorry” is nothing to a bully except he still gets to say, “I beat the shit out of you and all I had to do was say sorry, nah-nan-nah-nan-nah.”

    Pelosi and the Dems ought, instead, to use the rules to call up a motion of censure against Sensenbrenner. I don’t know the gritty procedural details, but this rule is the same one the Dems were using (or threatening to use) when the Rethugs were refusing to reinstate the old Ethics Committee rules earlier this year. This Motion, or Petition, is one that cannot be shunted off to a Committee and disappeared by the Rethugs but instead has to be voted on; since the Rethugs have the votes, they can always vote it down BUT they go on record as supporting Sensenbrenner’s abominable behavior. AND, this same Motion can be made day after day, week after week, until the Rethugs cry “uncle” like they did with the Ethics rules.

    THIS is the action a real opposition party would take. It will keep shining a light of the thugery that the Rethugs are perpetrating on a snoozing America and a lazy/complicit media.

  • What can you expect from a party which illegally accessed computer files for two years, committing a federal crime, then blamed it on the Democrats when they were finally caught? (‘Oh, they didn’t properly configure the server, so it must be their fault we were reading their material…’ Somehow, I don’t think that defense has been successfully used anywhere else…).

  • Did anybody see any of this on the cable news channels over the weekend? I know it wasn’t mentioned on MSNBC. I guess they were too busy reporting rumors on the missing girl in Aruba and then reporting that the rumors should be ignored.

  • From the reports that I read, Democrats turned this into a trash Abu Garab and Gitmo session and didn’t use the time to truly tear into the Patriot act. Also, look at the witnesses they called, a bunch of international organisations to testify about the illegality of domestic legislation. And it was the 11th hearing on the subject (albeit the only one where the witness list wasn’t tipped to favor re-enactment of the law).

    Reading this from the objective side, and I’m sorry for going against the tide here, but the Dems got a chance for their hearing and turned it into a bitch session. At least from several other reports I read, who knows, they could be tipped too.

    Where were the constitutional lawyers? Where was the sober offense? This doesn’t really look good for either side, and truthfully, a Democrat who agrees to a hearing that’s taken off subject (not that it was an important subject) should shut down the meeting.

  • Jeez, and Analytical Liberal, you read like a Freeper. All you need is a misplaced catchphrase in there to confirm it.

    Try one of these, just throw it in willy nilly, pick one word out of the phrase that kind of fits into what you’re trying to say, and pay no attention to what it actually means:

    Kool aid drinker, tin foil hat, Pyrrhic victory, Ivory Tower, White Wedding, Card-carrying ACLU member, fuck, you see where this is going. Really liked the part about kicking balls though!

  • Hey Alex,

    Three things to factor into your criticisms: one, Sensenbrenner called the Hearing for a Friday morning, when the Congress was not even in session — most experts believe that an officially called and convened congressional committee hearing had NEVER before occurred at a time when the Congress was not in session.

    Two, Sensenbrenner gave Conyers and the Dems two days — count ’em, two fucking days — to call their witnesses. Even a harsh but fair (you ARE fair, Alex, aren’t you?) critic would have to agree that two days is not a reasonable amount of time within which to gather all of the witnesses one might deem appropriate.

    Three, the House Judiciary Committee is the ONLY House Committee that has jurisdiction over the violation of civil liberties and human rights. In the ten prior Hearings called by Sensenbrenner on the Patriot Act, a grand total of ZERO witnesses asked for by the Dems were called, and ZERO by Rethugs on this issue. The only reason that THIS Hearing was called was because of Rule 11, that says if no Minority witnesses are called at prior hearings into a matter, the then the Majority MUST call a hearing just for Minority witnesses. Importantly, Sensenbrenner has refused to call ANY hearings on the Judiciary Committee’s primary area of jurisdiction: civil rights and human rights — he just will not do it, because that would open up the Pandora’s Box for the Rethugs in Congress and the White House to real scrutiny.

    And finally, NO FUCKING COMMITTEE IN CONGRESS — Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Finance, Appropriations, Judiciary, Intelligence — DO YOU HEAR ME, ALEX? — not a fucking one, has EVER called any investigation or oversight hearing into the Bush thugs and their hundreds and hundreds of outrages (including the theft/loss/corrupt mismanagement of almost Nine Billion Dollars by the Iraq Provisional Authority under Bremer, money that, had it been properly and swifty used to rebuild Iraq, would have seriously undercut any liklihood for the insurgency that is costing billions of U.S. dollars and endless American casualties).

    And you have the nerve to criticize the Dems for doing what they could to highlight the abuses with the little window of opportunity they could force under the rules? No fucking wonder we (the Progressives and the Dems) can’t get ahead, with minds like yours, Alex, so closed and/or resigned to losing.

  • whew, Analytical Liberal, that was some take down of Alex.

    Alex, care to ignore the insults and actually respond to the salient and legitimate points (of which there are many) that Analytical Liberal raises? I’ll summarize to make it easy for you:

    1) “Sensenbrenner called the Hearing for a Friday morning, when the Congress was not even in session…” (possibly the first time ever for a committee, and certainly very extraordinary if even not the only time)

    2) “Two, Sensenbrenner gave Conyers and the Dems two days…to call their witnesses.”

    3) “…the House Judiciary Committee is the ONLY House Committee that has jurisdiction over the violation of civil liberties and human rights. In the ten prior Hearings called by Sensenbrenner on the Patriot Act, a grand total of ZERO witnesses asked for by the Dems were called, and ZERO by Rethugs [SIC] on this issue.

    4) “Sensenbrenner has refused to call ANY hearings on the Judiciary Committee’s primary area of jurisdiction: civil rights and human rights…”

    (the other point raised, despite being both legitimate and excellent, is only tangential to the original post and thus has not been included in the above summary. Please refer to the original comment for it.)

    I look forward to your detailed response Alex.

  • Hey Alex,

    Are you really trying to piss me off? I didn’t say that Pelosi was wrong to ask for an apology. Two things will result if her rant ends there, though (which in the past it almost aways has): (1) there will be no apology; just ask Dick Cheney, who went on FNC and other cable shows and related how good he felt about telling Leahy — on the floor of the fucking Senate, no less — to go fuck himself. (2) It will show the bullies — and the American people — that you can beat up the Dems and get away because the Dems don’t stand up for themselves, and that they cannot be trusted to stand up for anyone else person. Said another way, you “knock a Dem down” and they stay down; they won’t fight back.

    Me, a Freeper? That’s a laugh, Alex. If you want to see one, go look in the mirror. I want a party to fight back with more than just empty words. Howard Dean has some balls, and yet Pelosi, Biden, Richardson, all the pretenders, do the Rethug dirty work by eating him alive IN PUBLIC. Why? Because they have, for too long, been a part of the go-along-to-get-along gang inside the Beltway, and have forgotten how to do some street fighting. The Dems are supposed to be an opposition party; maybe they need a Galloway transplant.

    Harry Reid gets it; Howard Dean gets it; Al Gore gets it (finally); Wes Clark gets it. When will Biden and the other pretenders get it? When will you get it, Alex?

  • Look, I get it. I’m on your side ultimately. But let’s keep the arguments on topic. No, it’s not appropriate to turn a congressional hearing into an off-topic bitch session. Yeah, you’re right, there should be more hearings on the subject and there should be ample witnesses for and against, but by ball-kicking the language and turning it into another bitch session then you fall into their trap and take the discussion somewhere else, not where it should be.

    Yeah, these guys are criminals. But that’s not what this hearing was about. Stay on topic. Yeah, some takedown, all over the place.

  • Alex is right. These meetings shouldn’t be led off-topic…

    During the two-hour hearing, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) accused Amnesty International of endangering U.S. soldiers because a top official of the group had called the prison at Guantanamo Bay a “gulag.” Sensenbrenner did not allow a group official who was testifying, Chip Pitts, chairman of Amnesty International USA, to respond until Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) raised a “point of decency.”

    IOKIYAR.

    Panel Chairman Leaves Hearing

  • I’ll just ask the straight question here: Was Sensenbrenner correct? Were they addressing the issues at hand; ie, the specific provisions that had been sunsetted and now up for debate? Or were the witnesses addressing general categories of abuse and whatnot, as Sensenbrenner stated?

    Not that anything should justify his behavior in this, but if he was right, I’m a bit disappointed. When my side is given an opprotunity to debate something specific, I want some specific debate; not vague whining about various issues. So was he right, and our guys weren’t being specific; or was he full of crap with that one, and just looking for an excuse to stop the debate? And if he was looking for an excuse, did we give him one?

    And I saw this same thing a few weeks back, watching Brad Delong and others talk about Privatization on CSPAN. Delong and the others were great, but some lady Congressman (who I can’t remember) just kept giving these vague statements about helping Working Americans and giving them the best retirement system, which could have just as easily come from a Republican, or even Bush himself. We had these really smart guys making relevant and specific points against privatization, and then the Democrat politician mucking it up with vagueness and feel-good rhetoric which could have been said by anybody. And *damn* if she couldn’t stop talking. I couldn’t disagree with anything she said, but nobody else could either, because she wasn’t really saying anything. And she was just taking away time from the actual experts.

    There’s a time for lofty rhetoric and there’s a time for specific complaints and ideas. We need politicians who are better about knowing the difference.

  • Alex and Biobrain have a strategic point. If you demand censure of Sensenbrenner, he will reply that he shut down the hearing because it was not addressing the 16 sections of PATRIOT being sunsetted. You have to be prepared to respond to that in an effective fashion.

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