Crocodile Tears for Congress
Congress' lamenting the heat and their need for a vacation leaves me cold.
"It's hot, it's humid, people are tired and ready to go home," says Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) as he sucks on a cigarette at the Cantina Marina event. "Most of America wants us to go home. It's like this every summer."
But it's not every summer that lawmakers take to cots in the Senate to dramatize an all-night debate over the Iraq war. Nor is it every summer that angry Republicans march off the House floor in the wee hours to protest a parliamentary maneuver by Democrats.
It's hot everywhere. In the past ten days I've been in Denver, Omaha and Chicago. I'm tired of 95 degree humid weather too, but I didn't let it affect my work.
The Democrats caved on FISA and who knows what else -- we'll probably have to wait until the fine print of the passed bills with last minute amendments becomes available to see what they really did.
Why? Because Bush said he'd exercise his unitary power to deny them a recess and force them to cancel or rebook vacation plans?
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Here's some whining by Lanny Davis:
I've been in Washington for 37 years, and the only time I've seen more partisan vitriol was during the post-'98 impeachment," says lawyer Lanny Davis. "This includes Watergate. Everyone I talk to wants to get out of town and take a shower because we're all feeling depressed and dirty."
Davis, soon headed to a dude ranch in Wyoming with his family, says the language has definitely changed.
They wouldn't have felt dirty if they stood up to Bush and the Republicans. They feel dirty because they sold us out and they know it.
One of the joys of Yearly Kos is the knowledge that we are Democrats, doing what we can to see them take back the White House and keep Congress in 2008. After the Senate and then the House pulled their last minute votes to gut FISA, enabling them to get out of town, I don't much feel like celebrating Democrats now.
The justification that the new FISA-gutting bill will sunset in 6 months is bunk. The Patriot Act had sunset provisions too. Congress voted to extend most of them.
Remember the Feeny Amendment, that raised already draconian sentences that got tacked onto the Amber Alert bill a few years ago? The Dems voted for that too. They were afraid not to pass the Amber Alert bill. Sen. Edward Kennedy promised to lead an effort to repeal it. It didn't get repealed.
Once we give the Government power, it rarely gives it back. Shame on the Democrats for putting their desire to go on vacation above the best interests of those who elected them.
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