Ogged is just sad because his skin is enemy-combatant-colored.
(I called.)
Well, I did that, and then I realized I'm being an idiot for not e-mailing everyone I know and requesting they do the same, just because I usually don't like to bother people about things like this. So I e-mailed a bunch of people, and if it bothers them, fuck it.
Is there any reason for me not to be calling other people's Senators?
I called Reid, and his staffer didn't ask if I was a constituent, so I didn't say I wasn't. I think the conventional wisdom is that calls from non-constituents don't count, but they can't hurt, surely.
Mine didn't, but I don't mind lying I guess.
Clinton and Schumer both wanted name and zip code.
To drift off for a bit, why don't politician's web donation forms have a field for "Why are you donating?" I'd like a place for "Thank you for X", "If you do Y there's more where this came from", etc.
One office asked for my zip, one didn't. Call all you want.
Do Anderson's and Emerson's posts on the other thread mean that the moment has passed and the vote has been called?
Mal-apportionment of the Senate justifies lying, as long as you're opposed to said mal-apportionment as a general matter. In case anyone was worried about it.
The other day Cornyn asked me for my zip code (I don't have a Texas number, FWIW). But I'm also thinking it's not worth trying to work him. Stupid Tim and his federalism.
I'd call mine, but lordy, I'm not even sure Dole and Burr are human beings.
To drift off for a bit, why don't politician's web donation forms have a field for "Why are you donating?" I'd like a place for "Thank you for X", "If you do Y there's more where this came from", etc.
Well, if you want to leave a nice bribery trail, that would be perfect.
Answer to 7 while on hold for senator Menendez' office: Because it would, you know, kind of suck if you gave a thousand, and wrote in "In return for your good work on Senate Bill XXX," especially if Senate Bill XXX gave you a government contract worth a few million.
(got through, made my pitch. Menendez is allegedly still undecided on the fillibuster).
I'd call mine, but lordy, I'm not even sure Dole and Burr are human beings.
Weird. That's exactly how I phrased it to a co-worker yesterday. But I called anyway.
13, 14:
It wouldn't be a required field obviously.
Sorry, sam, didn't mean to leave the tap running like that.
Yeah, I suppose it could set off the bribery radar. Irritating, though -- if you're giving money in big enough amounts, you get the face time to say stuff like that. Peons like me only get the chance to say it in writing.
Chuck Schumer sure has tasteful hold music; Clinton's office just has a busy signal, or at least so far.
Just called Obama too. Used my mom's zip, and I'm sure she's for a filibuster, and she votes.
I've called and emailed Bush and Kerry, both of whom say they are working on amendments to put the bill in compliance with Geneva Conventions. The guys on the phone don't know exactly what that means.
Hmm, I seem not to understand 17 at all.
I thought there weren't going to be any more amendments?
Is it better to leave a message or talk to a staff member? I figure a staff member is better, but on some I can only get a dial tone.
Ok, just got Durbin too. He's one guy who actually might filibuster (I like to think). Call away, people!
The joke being, I had tapped your line and heard that phrase and used it myself. Check standpipe's joke-explaining blog, where at some point he'll post an explanation and then note it's technically off-topic since 17 was too lame to count as a real joke.
21 -- ia Bush a senator from Massachussetts?
DailyKos commenters are reporting that Reid's office says there aren't the votes for a filibuster. Probably this means we need to focus on Landrieu, Nelson, Lieberman, Salazar...
Calling can't hurt but I believe it's over.
Unless you're willing to lie about your zip code, don't call Senators that aren't yours. The lines are jammed, and it's better if the constituents get through.
As far as I can tell, it's all over. You can search "habeus corpus" on Google News, but it's not a featured story. Most of the country will not know that anything happened.
it's not a featured story
Not if you spell it incorrectly, it isn't.
Jim Henley's Unqualified Offerings is a gloomfest too.
Man, I'm awful on the phone. But I got the message across.
I found habeus corpus with the misspelling. But on the front page it was not a headline story. The vote is there now, but the issue isn't. Headline: "Congress heads toward approval of new rules on terror suspects".
Voinovich's staffer didn't ask my zip code.
36 - And that, more than anything else, I think is why the Dems caved. Civics in action. Thanks, free and adversarial press!
27. Oops. I mean Kennedy of course. Millionaire's sons all look alike to me.
As far as amendments go, I only know what the. fellow on the phone told me. The Dems are currently trying to attach some amendments. I asked if they will do more than restore habeas corpus and he didn't know
called by two in-state senators first, and then a handful of leading Democrats.
Told 'em: "I really appreciated your speech in opposition to the Omnibus Torture & Tyranny Act, but that speech don't mean nothing unless you filibuster this bill. Kill it any way you can, but kill it dead."
Jesus. What a low point in our history.
'by' s/b 'my'
I wish I were called by senators. I'm not.
I used Ogged's language at 'bama's, Durbin's was busy. Had a sense I was recorded as a hashmark, which is fine
Fucking christ
I know. Ever since the Da Vinci Code, Jesus has been pulling all kinds of ass.
46: Yeah, great day to launch with my trivia. Just got a hashmark at Durbin's.
Man, I think we're going to need some trivia tomorrow. Ogged had better come up with something wrongheaded to say about sex soon or I'm not going to answer for the consequences.
I wanted to say to that EDguy, commenting on GFE, "Honestly, we'll talk about it, just not now."
ogged's post heartens me, after an afternoon of dealing with angry emails from classmates, all seven hundred of whom I emailed asking them to make phone calls. Some did. Glad to see y'all are calling too.
Okay, weird legal question. This grotesquerie retroactively legalizes prisoner maltreatment back to 9/11. Say we get both houses of Congress back and repeal the bill. (It could happen.) Is it then a violation of the ex post facto clause to prosecute people for detainee abuse in the period between 9/11 and today?
If we're punishing them for conduct that was illegal when committed, I don't think it should matter that it was later legalized and then re-criminalized. But I'm not sure.
Me neither. Anybody remember which Sir Walter Scott novel it is where who's the hunted outlaw and who the government agent chasing him changes back twice? Is it Old Mortality? Feels kind of like that.
I think you're thinking too far ahead. Try me again when there are Democrats in charge of something.
If we're punishing them for conduct that was illegal when committed, I don't think it should matter that it was later legalized and then re-criminalized.
I think you're absolutely correct. But it's an interesting legal argument.
51- I'm going with no, not a violation, for the reason you've articulated. There may or may not be precedent to this effect, but I honestly can't even imagine a different result. How would you even go about writing a brief arguing that this was a violation?
(It would of course be a violation to prosecute someone for acts comitted between today and repeal, but I know you knew that.)
My legal sense too, but I'm kicking furiously and can't find the bottom.
The Democrats agreed not to filibuster in exchange for a consideration of an amendment that would introduce right of habeas corpus into the detainee bill. That amendment failed today.
I certainly don't know the answer, but I do know some stuff about the legality principle. There's no reason not to prosecute from the perspective of blameworthiness of the potential defendant, and it also doesn't look like there'd be a problem with prosecutorial discretion in a straight forward repeal.
give me one good reason for honoring that agreement.
Why did they have to give up something for the amendment to be considered? I don't understand.
57: Yeah, the agreement was mentioned in the Times this morning. Oddly, though, Senators' offices called after the failure of the habeas amendment didn't say that a filibuster was off the table. Possibly it was all along, but the calling can't have done any harm.
Reid was on the radio earlier today saying he was whipping votes for a filibuster and came up two short.
Look at this as a teaching moment. Most people have no idea what "star chamber", "habeas corpus", "bill of attainder" or "ex post facto law" mean. Now, when we teach about our history and the founding fathers, we will be able to use contemporary examples (and not from foreign countries either.)
That's why I want to smack the Dems -- they took the filibuster off the table for the consideration of the amendment but, according to articles I've read, the GOP said in advance that they weren't going to approve any amendments because it would delay the bill and keep the president from signing it before Congress recessed for elections. So they did it fully knowing they were taking the filibuster off the table for an amendment that had no chance of passing.
what are the odds that a senator will just break ranks and fillibuster? it would be a good way to obtain national attention, albeit at a cost. Or if, say, you're Kennedy, it's not going to hurt you that much.
65: You can't. There's a cloture vote, 61 Senators vote for cloture, and they tell you to sit down. Without forty senators, you can't filibuster.
Reid has made deals and broken them before. There's no real enforcement mechanism here.
ah, I see. maybe should have taken that legislation class.
64: We're on too many threads with this. On the other thread, someone said that Reid was on the radio saying that a filibuster wasn't off the table. He was trying to collect votes, and came up two short. In which case the Democrats as a whole don't make me sick, but seven of them do.
69: I'm an idiot -- I was talking about neil, at 62, in this thread.
68: Used to be you could do it by yourself, I'm pretty sure: cloture's new. I don't actually know when the rules changed, but in 'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington', Jimmy Stewart was allowed to filibuster for as long as he could stand up.
or I probably should have paid attention in high school civics, where I'm sure this was covered. Gah. I feel ignorant and powerless.
If someone wants to call for cloture during a filibustering speaker's control of the floor, a petition must be signed and read (interrupting the speaker), and then a day later the vote on cloture occurs. That's time one could use to whip votes.
I mean, practically it may come down to what LB wrote, but it is still possible to delay...
boy, who knew what a great thing deadlock was?
It sucks, doesn't it? I know much more than most, and immeasurably less than I think a good citizen should. The way bills move through Congress mystifies me.
I heard Senator Mark Dayton on the radio this morning. A caller questioned him about a filibuster and Dayton said it was not possible. Something about a provision after the agreement. He sounded dejected.
it does suck. back in the good old days, when nothing seemed to be getting done in congress, such things as the cloture rule did not interest me. I was a teenager, so excuses.
I've got to think there's a way to filibuster this thing. If it means Harry Reid going back on his word to a bunch of republican senators, come on, how much is that worth?
I really think that the Democrats should have tried and failed. As it is, they voted against the bill and can be smeared for that, but they didn't fight it as hard as they could so they don't get any credit for guts or sincerity or effort with general public. In fact they didn't even succeed in putting the issue in the public eye. And they sure demoralised a lot of their biggest supporters.
As I remember, in his rise to power Gingrich staged a LOT of votes he knew he'd lose. He used the Democratic victories as a weapon against them. The Democrats seem incapable of that kind of thing.
There's the possibility of pulling the Senate into closed session.
He used the Democratic victories as a weapon against them. The Democrats seem incapable of that kind of thing.
There's still time to use this Republican victory against them. "Your representative voted in favor of a bill that would allow President Bush to single-handedly order the arrest and torture of any American citizen, without the courts involved. Does that sound like America to you?"
I called, I told my mother to call, I even beseeched my sister, the only living Democrat in East Cobb County, GA, to call. [East Cobb County is so redder-than-thou that it regards arch-conservative Republicans in other states as "pinkos".]
I received a lovely e-mail from Dianne Feinstein saying essentially 'Thank you for contacting me about something really important, which I'm going to ignore completely because I don't want to be locked up and detained indefinitely by our new military dictatorship'. Or something like that; it was so vaguely stated as to be open to almost any interpretation.
If those Diebold voting machines are so vulnerable to hacking, I wodner why some clever hackers haven't hacked them to register minus votes for Republican candidates? And Joe Lieberman? Not that I'm advocating election phraud. I'm just wondering. Y'know, theorising about things, like that silly evolution stuff.
Got right through to Wyden's office. Trying not to read anything into not having to wait.
Yeah, when I called earlier today, I got right through to both Obama and Durbin's offices without any wait. Sigh.
re: 71
Cloture dates back to WWI era in the Senate. It was initially 2/3 and dropped down to 60%. By the time of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, there was a rule in place although I don't know if it was down to 60%.
This is very discouraging for me. I really want to know who the non-fillibuster Dems were. Does 4 votes short mean that Reid was counting 64 votes for cloture? That would mean 8 turncoat Dems, wouldn't it?
This bundle of issues is the great moral issue of our time since the civil rights era of the fifties and sixties, and there is no question in my mind that these people are making a decision about which side of the arc of history they want to be on.
My wife and I emailed essentially everyone we know to call. It's astonishing how many people had no idea this was even happening. I think most of 'em called.
We've probably lost a couple of sort-of friends because of what we said to them after what they said to us about just how a-OK they were with torture. I consider that a plus.
At times like this I am always reminded of Fafblog's post from the morning after the 2004 elections.
So, does anyone know what's going on now? It's 6:30 in Washington. Are they having dinner, or what?
You can watch them on C-SPAN2. Frist is talking.
All 4 amendments were defeated. Nothing left now but the voting, unless somebody does something exciting.
Anyone want to call in a bomb threat?
I'm in class, so I can't watch. Are they still voting on amendments? Debating the bill as a whole? Are they going to vote soon?
they are reading the names of all the senators in alphabetical order
They're doing "L" now.
Now it's M!
Who the fuck was the Democrat who voted against the habeas corpus restoring amendment. I'm guessing that it was Salazar. Whoever it was needs to go down, but won't.
The Democrats seem incapable of that kind of thing.
Right. "Politics," that thing is called.
I called a senator's office and committed my support for the filibuster. They explained that the torture bill wasn't up for a vote in Canada. Phew.
Now they're voting on the Mexican border fence.
Next they vote on blowing up the moon.
Am I just a fool to hope that Reid has some sort of parliamentary jujitsu prepared for the next hour? Some little-known equivalent of "aha, but you didn't circle the tree before you tagged it and ran so the point doesn't count!" up his sleeve?
Somewhat related query:
Don't any of these precious senators have actual careers that they can return to if they get booted from office? I know it must be embarrassing for an incumbant to lose, and all that, but c'mon, aren't any of them willing to stand up on principle and return quietly to the family farm like that Roman dude whoever he was if the electorate punts? Mr. Lieberman, you got a law degree; wouldn't you like an opportunity to practice law? And so forth.
Cincinnatus.
And no, because "absolute power" is delicious.
My (optimistic) take on this rollover is that the Dems genuinely believe passing this bill is a loss for Republicans in November. And that even though they've been noticably quiet over the last few days, they're going to start hammering away loudly and repeatedly about the "torture bill" and the "party of torture" and on and on. And that they have calculated correctly that once people wake up and realize what's in this thing that they're going to be really unhappy with the party that passed it. And that this was a strategic decision -- that filibustering the bill now to (try and) prevent its passage would have allowed the Rep's to paint them as weak on terror, untrustworthy with national security, etc.
In other words I'm hoping that they've (correctly) decided that quietly voting against the bill and then spending the next few weeks railing against a the torture bill passed by republicans will be more politically effective than defeating the bill now and being painted as doves.
I think I'm being wildly, wildly optimistic, though. Especially as several key facts don't mesh well with the above narrative. But one can dream.
Ex-Congrescritters normal go into graft and influence-peddling and do very well for themselves.
I think that entrenched representatives tend to think of themselves as jobholders with bureaucratic responsibilities and forget about their representative function entirely.
99: I suspect if you're a standing-on-principle-though-the-sky-should-fall kind of person you get winnowed out of the system long before you get to be a senator.
Brock, seriously, quit trying. I'll cheer up later if something worse happens, but there's no way to wish this away. It was just a disaster.
Ok, I've got an idea for a measure we can roll into our other campaign finance reform packages: we forbid losing incumbants physical access to Washington DC (unless they're subpoenaed, BUT we pay for vocational training or provide perhaps a miniscule amount of seed capital for their new small business venture.
And Brock--you're wildly optimistic, as am I.
I'm really sorry, Brock, but it is just not a possibility that the Dems are working quiety and cleverly in concert with each other.
JM's idea sounds like the biggest boon ever devised for the economy of Arlington, Virginia.
Nah, I'd make it a 200-mile radius or something.
JM, it's "incumbent". Like "recumbent".
This 'exile them rom Washington DC + radius of X miles' seems unnecessarily complex.
I envisage some sort of Soylent Green process for the recycling of ex-politicians.
Oh, you mean like your mom, w-lfs-n? That'll make it easier to remember, thanks!
Omnibus Torture & Tyranny Act passes Senate; reconciled version to be on Bush's desk tomorrow.
A republic, but you lost it.
This is a very sad day for America. I'm almost as devastated as after the 2004 election.
I'll have to get hopeful, tomorrow, and figure out a plan to fight back. Josh Marshall is good at spine-stiffening speeches; maybe he'll know what to say.
108: Philadelphia then. My point is that influence-peddling doesn't require physical proximity (though it helps).
If anyone isn't yet aware: it passed the Senate.
I'm going to have some whiskey now.
I don't have anything sane to say today.
B-Wo's mom is a bicycle?
Arlington , Virginia just happens to have some office space opening up in Crystal City. We were wondering how we'd recover from Base Realignment. Ta-da! The new K street.
it's a fucking shame I don't drink anymore, I'll tell you that right now.