Blog Feeds
05-03 08:50 AM
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) must be rolling in his grave. The conservative Republican senator from Arizona ran for President in 1964 on a platform condemning "Big Government". As a kid, I read Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative" and came away with a strong conviction that America was founded on the principle of individual freedom, and that no matter what the perceived threat was, internal or external, American citizens should beware of "trusting the government" rather than upholding our rights as individuals. Today, the citizens of the State of Arizona are justifiably upset about the violence caused by Mexican drug cartels...
More... (http://blogs.ilw.com/carlshusterman/2010/04/big-government-comes-to-arizona.html)
More... (http://blogs.ilw.com/carlshusterman/2010/04/big-government-comes-to-arizona.html)
wallpaper Members of the Kennedy family
dano
12-23 01:18 PM
Hi everybody,
I was wondering if somebody could help me with a journal/professional association website that my job ad (senior web developer) could be posted.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Also I had a question about the employment.
When one graduates from University is he/she eligible to still work for the University while waiting for the OPT?
i.e. graduation date (dec 22) - opt start date (january 17th)
I was wondering if somebody could help me with a journal/professional association website that my job ad (senior web developer) could be posted.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Also I had a question about the employment.
When one graduates from University is he/she eligible to still work for the University while waiting for the OPT?
i.e. graduation date (dec 22) - opt start date (january 17th)
Macaca
11-11 08:15 AM
Extreme Politics (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Brinkley-t.html) By ALAN BRINKLEY | New York Times, November 11, 2007
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.
Few people would dispute that the politics of Washington are as polarized today as they have been in decades. The question Ronald Brownstein poses in this provocative book is whether what he calls “extreme partisanship” is simply a result of the tactics of recent party leaders, or whether it is an enduring product of a systemic change in the structure and behavior of the political world. Brownstein, formerly the chief political correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and now the political director of the Atlantic Media Company, gives considerable credence to both explanations. But the most important part of “The Second Civil War” — and the most debatable — is his claim that the current political climate is the logical, perhaps even inevitable, result of a structural change that stretched over a generation.
A half-century ago, Brownstein says, the two parties looked very different from how they appear today. The Democratic Party was a motley combination of the conservative white South; workers in the industrial North as well as African-Americans and other minorities; and cosmopolitan liberals in the major cities of the East and West Coasts. Republicans dominated the suburbs, the business world, the farm belt and traditional elites. But the constituencies of both parties were sufficiently diverse, both demographically and ideologically, to mute the differences between them. There were enough liberals in the Republican Party, and enough conservatives among the Democrats, to require continual negotiation and compromise and to permit either party to help shape policy and to be competitive in most elections. Brownstein calls this “the Age of Bargaining,” and while he concedes that this era helped prevent bold decisions (like confronting racial discrimination), he clearly prefers it to the fractious world that followed.
The turbulent politics of the 1960s and ’70s introduced newly ideological perspectives to the two major parties and inaugurated what Brownstein calls “the great sorting out” — a movement of politicians and voters into two ideological camps, one dominated by an intensified conservatism and the other by an aggressive liberalism. By the end of the 1970s, he argues, the Republican Party was no longer a broad coalition but a party dominated by its most conservative voices; the Democratic Party had become a more consistently liberal force, and had similarly banished many of its dissenting voices. Some scholars and critics of American politics in the 1950s had called for exactly such a change, insisting that clear ideological differences would give voters a real choice and thus a greater role in the democratic process. But to Brownstein, the “sorting out” was a catastrophe that led directly to the meanspirited, take-no-prisoners partisanship of today.
There is considerable truth in this story. But the transformation of American politics that he describes was the product of more extensive forces than he allows and has been, at least so far, less profound than he claims. Brownstein correctly cites the Democrats’ embrace of the civil rights movement as a catalyst for partisan change — moving the white South solidly into the Republican Party and shifting it farther to the right, while pushing the Democrats farther to the left. But he offers few other explanations for “the great sorting out” beyond the preferences and behavior of party leaders. A more persuasive explanation would have to include other large social changes: the enormous shift of population into the Sun Belt over the last several decades; the new immigration and the dramatic increase it created in ethnic minorities within the electorate; the escalation of economic inequality, beginning in the 1970s, which raised the expectations of the wealthy and the anxiety of lower-middle-class and working-class people (an anxiety conservatives used to gain support for lowering taxes and attacking government); the end of the cold war and the emergence of a much less stable international system; and perhaps most of all, the movement of much of the political center out of the party system altogether and into the largest single category of voters — independents. Voters may not have changed their ideology very much. Most evidence suggests that a majority of Americans remain relatively moderate and pragmatic. But many have lost interest, and confidence, in the political system and the government, leaving the most fervent party loyalists with greatly increased influence on the choice of candidates and policies.
Brownstein skillfully and convincingly recounts the process by which the conservative movement gained control of the Republican Party and its Congressional delegation. He is especially deft at identifying the institutional and procedural tools that the most conservative wing of the party used after 2000 both to vanquish Republican moderates and to limit the ability of the Democratic minority to participate meaningfully in the legislative process. He is less successful (and somewhat halfhearted) in making the case for a comparable ideological homogeneity among the Democrats, as becomes clear in the book’s opening passage. Brownstein appropriately cites the former House Republican leader Tom DeLay’s farewell speech in 2006 as a sign of his party’s recent strategy. DeLay ridiculed those who complained about “bitter, divisive partisan rancor.” Partisanship, he stated, “is not a symptom of democracy’s weakness but of its health and its strength.”
But making the same argument about a similar dogmatism and zealotry among Democrats is a considerable stretch. To make this case, Brownstein cites not an elected official (let alone a Congressional leader), but the readers of the Daily Kos, a popular left-wing/libertarian Web site that promotes what Brownstein calls “a scorched-earth opposition to the G.O.P.” According to him, “DeLay and the Democratic Internet activists ... each sought to reconfigure their political party to the same specifications — as a warrior party that would commit to opposing the other side with every conceivable means at its disposal.” The Kos is a significant force, and some leading Democrats have attended its yearly conventions. But few party leaders share the most extreme views of Kos supporters, and even fewer embrace their “passionate partisanship.” Many Democrats might wish that their party leaders would emulate the aggressively partisan style of the Republican right. But it would be hard to argue that they have come even remotely close to the ideological purity of their conservative counterparts. More often, they have seemed cowed and timorous in the face of Republican discipline, and have over time themselves moved increasingly rightward; their recapture of Congress has so far appeared to have emboldened them only modestly.
There is no definitive answer to the question of whether the current level of polarization is the inevitable result of long-term systemic changes, or whether it is a transitory product of a particular political moment. But much of this so-called age of extreme partisanship has looked very much like Brownstein’s “Age of Bargaining.” Ronald Reagan, the great hero of the right and a much more effective spokesman for its views than President Bush, certainly oversaw a significant shift in the ideology and policy of the Republican Party. But through much of his presidency, both he and the Congressional Republicans displayed considerable pragmatism, engaged in negotiation with their opponents and accepted many compromises. Bill Clinton, bedeviled though he was by partisan fury, was a master of compromise and negotiation — and of co-opting and transforming the views of his adversaries. Only under George W. Bush — through a combination of his control of both houses of Congress, his own inflexibility and the post-9/11 climate — did extreme partisanship manage to dominate the agenda. Given the apparent failure of this project, it seems unlikely that a new president, whether Democrat or Republican, will be able to recreate the dispiriting political world of the last seven years.
Division of the U.S. Didn’t Occur Overnight (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/books/13kaku.html) By MICHIKO KAKUTANI | New York Times, November 13, 2007
THE SECOND CIVIL WAR How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America By Ronald Brownstein, The Penguin Press. $27.95
Alan Brinkley is the Allan Nevins professor of history and the provost at Columbia University.
Few people would dispute that the politics of Washington are as polarized today as they have been in decades. The question Ronald Brownstein poses in this provocative book is whether what he calls “extreme partisanship” is simply a result of the tactics of recent party leaders, or whether it is an enduring product of a systemic change in the structure and behavior of the political world. Brownstein, formerly the chief political correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and now the political director of the Atlantic Media Company, gives considerable credence to both explanations. But the most important part of “The Second Civil War” — and the most debatable — is his claim that the current political climate is the logical, perhaps even inevitable, result of a structural change that stretched over a generation.
A half-century ago, Brownstein says, the two parties looked very different from how they appear today. The Democratic Party was a motley combination of the conservative white South; workers in the industrial North as well as African-Americans and other minorities; and cosmopolitan liberals in the major cities of the East and West Coasts. Republicans dominated the suburbs, the business world, the farm belt and traditional elites. But the constituencies of both parties were sufficiently diverse, both demographically and ideologically, to mute the differences between them. There were enough liberals in the Republican Party, and enough conservatives among the Democrats, to require continual negotiation and compromise and to permit either party to help shape policy and to be competitive in most elections. Brownstein calls this “the Age of Bargaining,” and while he concedes that this era helped prevent bold decisions (like confronting racial discrimination), he clearly prefers it to the fractious world that followed.
The turbulent politics of the 1960s and ’70s introduced newly ideological perspectives to the two major parties and inaugurated what Brownstein calls “the great sorting out” — a movement of politicians and voters into two ideological camps, one dominated by an intensified conservatism and the other by an aggressive liberalism. By the end of the 1970s, he argues, the Republican Party was no longer a broad coalition but a party dominated by its most conservative voices; the Democratic Party had become a more consistently liberal force, and had similarly banished many of its dissenting voices. Some scholars and critics of American politics in the 1950s had called for exactly such a change, insisting that clear ideological differences would give voters a real choice and thus a greater role in the democratic process. But to Brownstein, the “sorting out” was a catastrophe that led directly to the meanspirited, take-no-prisoners partisanship of today.
There is considerable truth in this story. But the transformation of American politics that he describes was the product of more extensive forces than he allows and has been, at least so far, less profound than he claims. Brownstein correctly cites the Democrats’ embrace of the civil rights movement as a catalyst for partisan change — moving the white South solidly into the Republican Party and shifting it farther to the right, while pushing the Democrats farther to the left. But he offers few other explanations for “the great sorting out” beyond the preferences and behavior of party leaders. A more persuasive explanation would have to include other large social changes: the enormous shift of population into the Sun Belt over the last several decades; the new immigration and the dramatic increase it created in ethnic minorities within the electorate; the escalation of economic inequality, beginning in the 1970s, which raised the expectations of the wealthy and the anxiety of lower-middle-class and working-class people (an anxiety conservatives used to gain support for lowering taxes and attacking government); the end of the cold war and the emergence of a much less stable international system; and perhaps most of all, the movement of much of the political center out of the party system altogether and into the largest single category of voters — independents. Voters may not have changed their ideology very much. Most evidence suggests that a majority of Americans remain relatively moderate and pragmatic. But many have lost interest, and confidence, in the political system and the government, leaving the most fervent party loyalists with greatly increased influence on the choice of candidates and policies.
Brownstein skillfully and convincingly recounts the process by which the conservative movement gained control of the Republican Party and its Congressional delegation. He is especially deft at identifying the institutional and procedural tools that the most conservative wing of the party used after 2000 both to vanquish Republican moderates and to limit the ability of the Democratic minority to participate meaningfully in the legislative process. He is less successful (and somewhat halfhearted) in making the case for a comparable ideological homogeneity among the Democrats, as becomes clear in the book’s opening passage. Brownstein appropriately cites the former House Republican leader Tom DeLay’s farewell speech in 2006 as a sign of his party’s recent strategy. DeLay ridiculed those who complained about “bitter, divisive partisan rancor.” Partisanship, he stated, “is not a symptom of democracy’s weakness but of its health and its strength.”
But making the same argument about a similar dogmatism and zealotry among Democrats is a considerable stretch. To make this case, Brownstein cites not an elected official (let alone a Congressional leader), but the readers of the Daily Kos, a popular left-wing/libertarian Web site that promotes what Brownstein calls “a scorched-earth opposition to the G.O.P.” According to him, “DeLay and the Democratic Internet activists ... each sought to reconfigure their political party to the same specifications — as a warrior party that would commit to opposing the other side with every conceivable means at its disposal.” The Kos is a significant force, and some leading Democrats have attended its yearly conventions. But few party leaders share the most extreme views of Kos supporters, and even fewer embrace their “passionate partisanship.” Many Democrats might wish that their party leaders would emulate the aggressively partisan style of the Republican right. But it would be hard to argue that they have come even remotely close to the ideological purity of their conservative counterparts. More often, they have seemed cowed and timorous in the face of Republican discipline, and have over time themselves moved increasingly rightward; their recapture of Congress has so far appeared to have emboldened them only modestly.
There is no definitive answer to the question of whether the current level of polarization is the inevitable result of long-term systemic changes, or whether it is a transitory product of a particular political moment. But much of this so-called age of extreme partisanship has looked very much like Brownstein’s “Age of Bargaining.” Ronald Reagan, the great hero of the right and a much more effective spokesman for its views than President Bush, certainly oversaw a significant shift in the ideology and policy of the Republican Party. But through much of his presidency, both he and the Congressional Republicans displayed considerable pragmatism, engaged in negotiation with their opponents and accepted many compromises. Bill Clinton, bedeviled though he was by partisan fury, was a master of compromise and negotiation — and of co-opting and transforming the views of his adversaries. Only under George W. Bush — through a combination of his control of both houses of Congress, his own inflexibility and the post-9/11 climate — did extreme partisanship manage to dominate the agenda. Given the apparent failure of this project, it seems unlikely that a new president, whether Democrat or Republican, will be able to recreate the dispiriting political world of the last seven years.
Division of the U.S. Didn’t Occur Overnight (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/books/13kaku.html) By MICHIKO KAKUTANI | New York Times, November 13, 2007
THE SECOND CIVIL WAR How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America By Ronald Brownstein, The Penguin Press. $27.95
2011 President
mhkumar
06-05 11:38 AM
Is my birth certificate needed to invite my parents on visitor visa? Isn't my SSC certificate showing date of birth and both parents name enough?
more...
$eeGrEeN
10-26 01:34 PM
105-year-old realizes dream of citizenship (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-naturalize26oct26,1,6009025.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california)
fide_champ
02-23 08:25 AM
Guys:
Do you know, how one could apply for a Visitor Visa without a Sponsorer in the US ?
What documents do they need to furnish ?
As I understand there are a lot of ppl who come to the US who do not have kids/relatives here, what do they have to show if they are just coming to the US for a Visit not work related ?
Thanks
Make sure that they show enough funds to survive and not become a liability.
Do you know, how one could apply for a Visitor Visa without a Sponsorer in the US ?
What documents do they need to furnish ?
As I understand there are a lot of ppl who come to the US who do not have kids/relatives here, what do they have to show if they are just coming to the US for a Visit not work related ?
Thanks
Make sure that they show enough funds to survive and not become a liability.
more...
cparbelle
06-15 11:59 PM
Hello!
My case:
H1B current until Jan 2010
Nationality: French
PERM approved last April
The lawyer is planning to file this week for i131-i765-i485 (target is wednesday)
Would it be ok for me to travel abroad next week, or are there some travel restrictions after we file the forms?
Do we need an official receipt from USCIS before I can leave the US, or before I came back from the US, or any other restrictions?
Would some of you know?
:)
Thanks!!
celine
My case:
H1B current until Jan 2010
Nationality: French
PERM approved last April
The lawyer is planning to file this week for i131-i765-i485 (target is wednesday)
Would it be ok for me to travel abroad next week, or are there some travel restrictions after we file the forms?
Do we need an official receipt from USCIS before I can leave the US, or before I came back from the US, or any other restrictions?
Would some of you know?
:)
Thanks!!
celine
2010 Kennedy family
salvador marley
05-01 09:26 PM
here is cool hand luke - the coolest film star ever
more...
krithi
02-07 07:45 AM
Did anyone fly American from Delhi to Chicago using AP, if so can you please share your experience?
Thanks,
Krithi
Thanks,
Krithi
hair Dignitaries, President, Family
mannan74
08-27 06:33 PM
How often does USCIS release Lockbox Receipting Update, I was told it was every monday. Is this true?
Does anyone have latest update?
Thanks
Does anyone have latest update?
Thanks
more...
Cathy_P
February 9th, 2005, 05:56 PM
I like this, Freddy. There's always a warm feeling of life in an open air market. Where is this located?
hot Dignitaries, President, Family
Blog Feeds
01-14 08:20 AM
Cuban-born Emilio Estefan has been one of the most well-known residents of my home town of Miami since my childhood. He was a member of the famous band The Miami Sound Machine and in the years since he has become a highly successful Latin music producer in South Florida's music community. Estefan has been nominated for 28 Grammys over the years and won 14 times. He's also the husband of fellow band member Gloria Estefan. And he is the producer of well-known Latin music stars Marc Antony, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin. And if life as a musician and producer...
More... (http://blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/2010/01/immigrant-of-the-day-emilio-estefan-musicianproducer.html)
More... (http://blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/2010/01/immigrant-of-the-day-emilio-estefan-musicianproducer.html)
more...
house Members of the Kennedy family
Macaca
07-22 05:33 PM
For Real Drama, Senate Should Engage In a True Filibuster (http://www.rollcall.com/issues/53_8/ornstein/19415-1.html) By Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, July 18, 2007
For many Senators, this week will take them back to their college years - they'll pull an all-nighter, but this time with no final exam to follow.
To dramatize Republican obstructionism, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to hold a mini-version of a real, old-time filibuster. In the old days, i.e., the 1950s, a real filibuster meant the Senate would drop everything, bring the place to a screeching halt, haul cots into the corridors and go around the clock with debate until one side would crack - either the intense minority or the frustrated majority. The former would be under pressure from a public that took notice of the obstructionism thanks to the drama of the repeated round-the-clock sessions.
It is a reflection of our times that the most the Senate can stand of such drama is 24 hours, maybe stretched to 48. But it also is a reflection of the dynamic of the Senate this year that Reid feels compelled to try this kind of extraordinary tactic.
This is a very different year, one on a record-shattering pace for cloture votes, one where the threat of filibuster has become routinized in a way we have not seen before. As Congressional Quarterly pointed out last week, we already have had 40 cloture votes in six-plus months; the record for a whole two-year Congress is 61.
For Reid, the past six months have been especially frustrating because the minority Republicans have adopted a tactic of refusing to negotiate time agreements on a wide range of legislation, something normally done in the Senate via unanimous consent, with the two parties setting a structure for debate and amendments. Of course, many of the breakdowns have been on votes related to the Iraq War, the subject of the all-night debate and the overwhelming focus of the 110th Congress. On Iraq, the Republican leaders long ago decided to try to block the Democrats at every turn to negate any edge the majority might have to seize the agenda, force the issue and put President Bush on the defensive.
But the obstructionist tactics have gone well beyond Iraq, to include things such as the 9/11 commission recommendations and the increase in the minimum wage, intelligence authorization, prescription drugs and many other issues.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his deputy, Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), have instead decided to create a very different standard in the Senate than we have seen before, with 60 votes now the norm for nearly all issues, instead of the exception. In our highly polarized environment, where finding the center is a desirable outcome, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But a closer examination of the way this process has worked so far suggests that more often than not, the goal of the Republican leaders is to kill legislation or delay it interminably, not find a middle and bipartisan ground.
If Bush were any stronger, and were genuinely determined to burnish his legacy by enacting legislation in areas such as health, education and the environment, we might see a different dynamic and different outcomes. But the president's embarrassing failure on immigration reform - securing only 12 of 49 Senators from his party for his top domestic priority - has pretty much put the kibosh on a presidentially led bipartisan approach to policy action.
Republican leaders have responded to any criticism of their tactics by accusing Reid and his deputy, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), of trying to squelch debate and kill off their amendments by filing premature cloture motions, designed to pre-empt the process and foreclose many amendments. There is some truth to this; early on, especially, Reid wanted to get the Senate jump-started and pushed sometimes prematurely to resolve issues.
But the fact is that on many of the issues mentioned above, Reid has been quite willing to allow Republican amendments and quite willing to negotiate a deal with McConnell to move business along. That has not been enough. As Roll Call noted last week, on both the intelligence bill and the Medicare prescription drug measure, Republicans were fundamentally opposed to the underlying bills and wanted simply to kill them.
The problem actually goes beyond the sustained effort to raise the bar routinely to 60 votes. The fact is that obstructionist tactics have been applied successfully to many bills that have far more than 60 Senators supporting them. The most visible issue in this category has been the lobbying and ethics reform bill that passed the Senate early in the year by overwhelming margins.
Every time Reid has moved to appoint conferees to get to the final stages on the issue, a Republican Senator has objected. After months of dispute over who was really behind the blockage, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina emerged as the bte noire. But Republican leaders have been more than willing to carry DeMint's water to keep that bill from coming up.
The problem Reid faces on this issue is that to supersede the unanimous consent denial, he would have to go through three separate cloture fights, each one allowing substantial sustained debate, including 30 hours worth after cloture is invoked. In the meantime, a badly needed reform is blocked, and the minority can blame the majority for failing to fulfill its promise to reform the culture of corruption. It may work politically, but the institution and the country both suffer along the way.
Is this obstructionism? Yes, indeed - according to none other than Lott. The Minority Whip told Roll Call, "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. For [former Senate Minority Leader Tom] Daschle, it failed. For Reid it succeeded, and so far it's working for us." Lott's point was that a minority party can push as far as it wants until the public blames them for the problem, and so far that has not happened.
The war is a different issue from any other. McConnell's offer to Reid to set the bar at 60 for all amendments related to Iraq, thereby avoiding many of the time-consuming procedural hurdles, is actually a fair one - nothing is going to be done, realistically, to change policy on the war without a bipartisan, 60-vote-plus coalition. But other issues should not be routinely subject to a supermajority hurdle.
What can Reid do? An all-nighter might help a little. But the then-majority Republicans tried the faux-filibuster approach a couple of years ago when they wanted to stop minority Democrats from blocking Bush's judicial nominees, and it went nowhere. The real answer here is probably one Senate Democrats don't want to face: longer hours, fewer recesses and a couple of real filibusters - days and nights and maybe weeks of nonstop, round-the-clock debate, bringing back the cots and bringing the rest of the agenda to a halt to show the implications of the new tactics.
At the moment, I don't see enough battle-hardened veterans in the Senate willing to take on that pain.
For many Senators, this week will take them back to their college years - they'll pull an all-nighter, but this time with no final exam to follow.
To dramatize Republican obstructionism, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to hold a mini-version of a real, old-time filibuster. In the old days, i.e., the 1950s, a real filibuster meant the Senate would drop everything, bring the place to a screeching halt, haul cots into the corridors and go around the clock with debate until one side would crack - either the intense minority or the frustrated majority. The former would be under pressure from a public that took notice of the obstructionism thanks to the drama of the repeated round-the-clock sessions.
It is a reflection of our times that the most the Senate can stand of such drama is 24 hours, maybe stretched to 48. But it also is a reflection of the dynamic of the Senate this year that Reid feels compelled to try this kind of extraordinary tactic.
This is a very different year, one on a record-shattering pace for cloture votes, one where the threat of filibuster has become routinized in a way we have not seen before. As Congressional Quarterly pointed out last week, we already have had 40 cloture votes in six-plus months; the record for a whole two-year Congress is 61.
For Reid, the past six months have been especially frustrating because the minority Republicans have adopted a tactic of refusing to negotiate time agreements on a wide range of legislation, something normally done in the Senate via unanimous consent, with the two parties setting a structure for debate and amendments. Of course, many of the breakdowns have been on votes related to the Iraq War, the subject of the all-night debate and the overwhelming focus of the 110th Congress. On Iraq, the Republican leaders long ago decided to try to block the Democrats at every turn to negate any edge the majority might have to seize the agenda, force the issue and put President Bush on the defensive.
But the obstructionist tactics have gone well beyond Iraq, to include things such as the 9/11 commission recommendations and the increase in the minimum wage, intelligence authorization, prescription drugs and many other issues.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his deputy, Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.), have instead decided to create a very different standard in the Senate than we have seen before, with 60 votes now the norm for nearly all issues, instead of the exception. In our highly polarized environment, where finding the center is a desirable outcome, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But a closer examination of the way this process has worked so far suggests that more often than not, the goal of the Republican leaders is to kill legislation or delay it interminably, not find a middle and bipartisan ground.
If Bush were any stronger, and were genuinely determined to burnish his legacy by enacting legislation in areas such as health, education and the environment, we might see a different dynamic and different outcomes. But the president's embarrassing failure on immigration reform - securing only 12 of 49 Senators from his party for his top domestic priority - has pretty much put the kibosh on a presidentially led bipartisan approach to policy action.
Republican leaders have responded to any criticism of their tactics by accusing Reid and his deputy, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), of trying to squelch debate and kill off their amendments by filing premature cloture motions, designed to pre-empt the process and foreclose many amendments. There is some truth to this; early on, especially, Reid wanted to get the Senate jump-started and pushed sometimes prematurely to resolve issues.
But the fact is that on many of the issues mentioned above, Reid has been quite willing to allow Republican amendments and quite willing to negotiate a deal with McConnell to move business along. That has not been enough. As Roll Call noted last week, on both the intelligence bill and the Medicare prescription drug measure, Republicans were fundamentally opposed to the underlying bills and wanted simply to kill them.
The problem actually goes beyond the sustained effort to raise the bar routinely to 60 votes. The fact is that obstructionist tactics have been applied successfully to many bills that have far more than 60 Senators supporting them. The most visible issue in this category has been the lobbying and ethics reform bill that passed the Senate early in the year by overwhelming margins.
Every time Reid has moved to appoint conferees to get to the final stages on the issue, a Republican Senator has objected. After months of dispute over who was really behind the blockage, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina emerged as the bte noire. But Republican leaders have been more than willing to carry DeMint's water to keep that bill from coming up.
The problem Reid faces on this issue is that to supersede the unanimous consent denial, he would have to go through three separate cloture fights, each one allowing substantial sustained debate, including 30 hours worth after cloture is invoked. In the meantime, a badly needed reform is blocked, and the minority can blame the majority for failing to fulfill its promise to reform the culture of corruption. It may work politically, but the institution and the country both suffer along the way.
Is this obstructionism? Yes, indeed - according to none other than Lott. The Minority Whip told Roll Call, "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. For [former Senate Minority Leader Tom] Daschle, it failed. For Reid it succeeded, and so far it's working for us." Lott's point was that a minority party can push as far as it wants until the public blames them for the problem, and so far that has not happened.
The war is a different issue from any other. McConnell's offer to Reid to set the bar at 60 for all amendments related to Iraq, thereby avoiding many of the time-consuming procedural hurdles, is actually a fair one - nothing is going to be done, realistically, to change policy on the war without a bipartisan, 60-vote-plus coalition. But other issues should not be routinely subject to a supermajority hurdle.
What can Reid do? An all-nighter might help a little. But the then-majority Republicans tried the faux-filibuster approach a couple of years ago when they wanted to stop minority Democrats from blocking Bush's judicial nominees, and it went nowhere. The real answer here is probably one Senate Democrats don't want to face: longer hours, fewer recesses and a couple of real filibusters - days and nights and maybe weeks of nonstop, round-the-clock debate, bringing back the cots and bringing the rest of the agenda to a halt to show the implications of the new tactics.
At the moment, I don't see enough battle-hardened veterans in the Senate willing to take on that pain.
tattoo President Kennedy ordered
chanduv23
11-09 03:21 PM
Thanks for your support Ms. Reddy
We are hoping that all of us with realize that the time is NOW to act for ourselves and not wait for someone else to do it.
Really inspiring indeed.
We are hoping that all of us with realize that the time is NOW to act for ourselves and not wait for someone else to do it.
Really inspiring indeed.
more...
pictures Members of the Kennedy family
NikNikon
June 23rd, 2005, 04:09 PM
Looks good Joey. :)