Three days vs 10 hours

September 28, 2006

Paul Kiel raises a point that’s been bothering me all day.

Over the last two days, the Senate has been considering a bill that, just about everyone can agree, is of singular importance.

The Senate has allotted itself ten hours of debate to consider the bill and five amendments offered for it.

Compare that to the three days of debate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) provided in June, to consider the Marriage Protection Amendment (and even after that, the amendment failed). At the time, Democrats complained that Frist was eating up precious floor time with a political stunt.

Of course it was a stunt. GOP leaders knew in advance they didn’t have the votes, but they scheduled three days of debate anyway, because they needed to drag it out as long as possible to satisfy the extremist base.

In one sense, the debate over the detainee bill might as well be cancelled — proponents of this bill aren’t going to be swayed by evidence or reason — but on principle alone, what does it say about a Senate that devotes three days to an anti-gay bill that they know can’t pass, but 10 hours to a measure to discard habeas, undercut due process, and embrace torture?

Kiel added, by the way, Rick Santorum argued, back when the anti-gay amendment was under consideration, that the three days of scheduled debate had nothing to do with exploiting homophobia for partisan gain.

“If it was purely politics, Santorum said, “let me assure you we’d be debating this in September.”

Good point, Rick. When the GOP majority really wants to abuse the process and manipulate Senate debate for purely political reasons, they wait until September, when more voters are likely to notice.

Remind me, what are they debating today?

I’m sort of like Paris Hilton in that I’m just not that smart, but even I can see the portentousness of this bill. I can see that it is a classic tipping point in a nation going to hell in a handbasket. It’s classic dystopia stuff. Why isn’t this getting the press, the political, the legal outrage that it should be getting?

  • By way of comparison, here’s Tony Snow on the time required to prepare the Iraq NIE:

    “This is — you don’t pull an all-nighter. It’s not like a college term paper that you slap together,” White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters today, trying to brush off nagging questions about why it’s taking so damn long for the administration to assemble an intelligence report on the situation in Iraq.”

    Apparently abandoning our constitutional principles only takes the Congress a few weeks to write the bill and ten hours to debate it.

  • Apparently abandoning our constitutional principles only takes the Congress a few weeks to write the bill and ten hours to debate it.

    Comment by pacato

    Good point. I don’t think Congress had much to do with writing that bill though. That was an Executive branch concoction. I can see why they’re rubber-stamping it. I wouldn’t touch the filthy thing either.

  • Because, really, if the dems waived the cloture vote or their ability to try and fillibuster this thing, then I will not send the contribution to the DSCC that I was going to send this week. If this isn’t worth a fillibuster I do not know what is.

  • What happened to that rule where one guy can whisper in the Speaker’s ear and block a bill from coming to vote? Even with their lack of courage I hope the Democrats win and start raking these guys over the coals.

  • Can someone with more legal education explain for me how this doesn’t violate the constitution in article 1 section 9 “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” How can we retroactively legalize Bush’s torture?

  • Time’s always more precious in the last days before an election debate.

    Frankly, I’d like to compare the Senator/Floor Hours of this debate to the Senator/Floor Hours of the Marriage Protection Act. If for the three days of the June debate there were ever more than four Senators in the Chamber (acting speaker, majority floor manager, minority floor manager and debater) I’d be greatly surprised. I’d hope for the ten hours on the Detainee bill we’d at least get some people listening.

    There should be a rule that when they have someone speaking, there is a tally of the number of Senators or Representatives in the chamber listening.

  • I get the feeling that the battle for this country is lost – I mean, for progressives, it looks like game over. Think about how many “democrats” voted for this piece of crap bill. It’s truly disgusting.

    With all the stuff going on, it’s still not even clear that Republican’s will be removed as the majority power, but even if they are, what’s to say whoever replaces them is going to do any better at restoring this country to what it used to stand for? If we got this far down the road, with Democrats assisting in the Constitution’s destruction, how much further do we go before all is lost? I keep getting the feeling we are already past that point, especially with bills like this passing so easily.

    Truly a dark day for this country.

  • Once again the damn dumb doomed Democrats seem determined to fail. The Republicans murmur “Bend over”, and Reid and the boys humbly beg to know “How far?” What a sick excuse for a democracy.

    They say they don’t want to be thought of as cowards (for voting against using torture in a “time of war”). How much more cowardly can they get than to toss out a principle as old as the country itself (habeas corpus) in the hopes no one will notice and just re-elect them for old times’ sake?

    Every one of them deserves expulsion as soon as possible. “But they’re all we’ve got.” That’s no better than nothing at all. We’re already a dictatorship, and anyone who doesn’t see that is blinder than I am (which is saying something).

    It really is an historical moment .. witnessing the American Götterdammerung. It’s a shame Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, FDR and all the others went through so much, just to see us wind up under the thumb of the Bush Crime Family. Guess we should have listened to Prescott Bush in the first place and saved ourselves all the trouble.

  • This is a massive blow to the credibility of the USA and the congress itself. It seems this congress will go down in history, hand in hand with the POTUS as the worst in history. 10 hours of debate will set them back well beyond 10 years of reparations.

  • Is there no cloture vote on this bill? Did the dems agree to limit debate to 10 hours?

    I read something earlier this week that Democratic leaders agreed to limit Senate debate, but damn if I can find it again.

    Let’s just say that if Democrats chose not to consent to this abomination then the debate would be much longer … or *gasp* it would be filibustered. As it is, I’m finding their complaints about not “rushing” to pass this bill a little bit hollow.

    I’m finding it hard to understand why I should reward them with my vote when they’ve now proven they can’t get the most fundamental issues right.

  • Gorobei – a bill of attainder and ex post facto laws work in reverse. The first is an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime, and punishing them, without benefit of a trial. Nobody’s being declared guilty of anything here, although it may ultimately work to the same end since other rights are being denied (search/seizure, to confront witnesses, to a fair trial, etc.).

    Ex post facto is making something criminal after it’s already been done and, again, they don’t appear to be criminalizing anything. If anything, they’re trying to retroactively de-criminalize Bushco’s conduct.

    Please don’t mistake this explanation for condoning the legislation or the conduct it seeks to allow. I have literally been red-faced with anger this whole week.

  • As my great grand-uncle, who worked all his life for Harry Truman once told me:

    “The only ‘good Republicans’ are pushing up daisies.”

    After today, I just want them all fucking DEAD!

  • Didn’t I read somewhere that Bush got up in his fucking pyjamas to try and save Terri freaking Schiavo?? But this is so unimportant, ho hum, it’s only defining the American character for at least a generation.

    Well, vacation hotspots in the United States are likely pleased with the decision; Americans won’t dare vacation anywhere outside the country.

  • An old (ca 45yrs) joke, I heard in my early teens in Poland:

    “An international conference of journalists is taking place in Moscow, in its fanciest hotel. On the morning of the second day, one of the journalists, a Russian, is found, stark naked, lying dead in the street outside the hotel. The police investigating the death find out which hotel room he’d been staying in and interview his roommate who, by some administrative mistake, happened to be an American.

    Police: Can you tell us what happened?
    American: Well, after the lectures, he and I had a couple of drinks, then decided to go to our room and go to bed.

    I took off my coat, trousers and tie and hung them on a hanger in the closet, as is the custom in my country. He took off his coat, trousers and tie, dropped the coat and tie on the chair and put the trousers under the matress, as is the custom in your country.

    I then took off my shirt and underwear, and put them in the dirty laundry sack, as its the custom in my country. He took of his and dropped them on the floor, as is the custom in your country.

    He then jumped into bed stark naked, as is the custom in your country, while I went to the bathroom (down the hall), took a shower, put on my pajamas — as is the custom in my country — and went to bed also.

    About 3 AM, there was a loud knock on the door and we both woke up. I went to open the door — as is the custom in my country. But he, for some reason, just jumped out of the window.”

    At long last, it’s beginning to feel like I’m home again…

  • Chill Ed Stephan,
    It seems apparent that Democratic leadership agreed to limit debate in an attempt to get amendments in, since they didn’t think they had the votes for cloture. Noble defeats are all well and good but I prefer them doing their damndest on damage control.

    What would you have done? Filibustered, lost?

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