Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) seems like the kind of guy House Republicans would want as the next chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He’s conservative, plays ball with GOP leaders, has committee experience, the works.<\/p>\n
But it appears that Young won’t get the committee gavel — because he voted last week to curtail the FBI’s ability<\/a> to seize library and bookstore records without a warrant.<\/p>\n Young’s vote last week for an amendment offered by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has hurt his chances, according to a GOP leadership aide.<\/p>\n The amendment to the commerce-state-justice appropriations bill would prohibit the Justice Department from spending money to search libraries without a warrant. The library provision Sanders is seeking to change is part of the Patriot Act, which expires at the end of this year.<\/p>\n House leaders are wary of replacing Cox with a member who does not agree with them and Bush on aspects of the Patriot Act. Asked about Young’s vote last week, the House GOP leadership aide said, “It does not serve well for those thinking about the Homeland Security chairmanship to vote against initiatives designed to protect homeland security.”<\/p>\n Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who has notified House Republican leadership that he wants the post, suggested that he believes Young’s chances have been undermined by his vote on the Sanders bill.<\/p>\n “I can understand someone being against it, but it’s difficult to understand someone being against it and then being chairman of the Homeland Security Committee,” he said. “There’s an underlying inconsistency in being chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and being against a basic provision of the Patriot Act.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can appreciate the fact that congressional Republicans place an enormous value on party loyalty, but the set of standards they apply for these sought-after chairmanships is difficult to understand.<\/p>\n Consider the last several months. If you’re caught in a bribery scandal<\/a>, you keep your chairmanship; if you stand up for the veterans’ community<\/a>, you lose your chairmanship. If you’re caught in an influence-peddling scandal<\/a>, you keep your chairmanship; if you hold Tom DeLay responsible<\/a> for ethics violations, you lose your chairmanship.<\/p>\n Once again, these guys look less like a governing party and more like an organized crime family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) seems like the kind of guy House Republicans would want as the next chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He’s conservative, plays ball with GOP leaders, has committee experience, the works. But it appears that Young won’t get the committee gavel — because he voted last week to curtail the FBI’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}