Well, there’s a slight problem (via Atrios) with the Terri Schiavo “law” that the President signed this morning. The slight problem is this pesky bit from the Constitution :

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Which is especially relevant given this news :

In the weekend scramble, U.S. House of Representatives members who had scattered for a two-week Easter recess were called back to Washington and 261 of the House’s 435 members gave the measure well over the two-thirds majority required.

Only three members of the 100-member U.S. senate, however, were present to approve the measure by a voice vote.

No quorum when the law was “passed” means the law isn’t constitutional. Period.

Needless to say, this one shouldn’t be hard case for Federal Judge James Whittemore to decide. Despite all the public handwringing by the self-righteous Republicans who cut their vacations short, the federal courts still don’t have any jurisdiction in this matter. The federal judges should refuse to hear the case further and strike down this dangerous little law before it becomes an unwieldy precedent.

UPDATE : Okay, it looks like the joke might actually be on all of us. Here’s what the senate’s homepage says about quorums :

The Constitution requires a majority of Senators (51) for a quorum. Often, fewer Senators are actually present on the floor, but the senate presumes that a quorum is present unless the contrary is shown by a roll call vote or quorum call.

So, the senate is free to break the rules until someone points out that the rules are being broken??

Dahlia Lithwick has a devastating takedown of the Congressional cretins who stepped into the Terri Schiavo case :

This morning’s decision by Congress and President Bush?to authorize new federal legislation that will obliterate years of state court litigation, and justify re-inserting a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo, based on new and illusory federal constitutional claims?is not about law. It is congressional activism, plain and simple; legislative overreaching and hubris taken to absurd extremes.

Let’s be clear: The piece of legislation passed late last night, the so-called “Palm Sunday Compromise,” has nothing whatever to do with the rule of law. The rule of law in this country holds that this is a federalist system?in which private domestic matters are litigated in state, not federal courts. The rule of law has long provided that such domestic decisions are generally made by competent spouses, as opposed to parents, elected officials, popular referendum, or the demands of Randall Terry. The rule of law also requires a fundamental separation of powers?in which legislatures do not override final, binding court decisions solely because the outcome is not the one they like. The rule of law requires comity between state and federal courts?wherein each respects and upholds the jurisdiction and authority of the other. The rule of law requires that we look skeptically at legislation aimed at mucking around with just one life to the exclusion of any and all similarly situated individuals.
[. . .]
Members of Congress have apparently also had super-analytical powers conferred upon them, as well. senate Majority Leader, and heart surgeon, Bill Frist felt confident last week?after reviewing an hour of videotape?in offering a medical diagnosis of Schiavo’s condition, blithely second-guessing the court-appointed neurologists who evaluated her for days and weeks. His colleagues are similarly self-appointed neurological experts. Years of painstaking litigation, assessment, and evaluation by state courts are dismissed by Tom DeLay as the activist doings of a “little judge sitting in a state district court in Florida.” Only the most extraordinary levels of congressional hubris could allow a group of elected citizens to substitute their personal medical, legal, and ethical judgments for those of the doctors, judges, and guardians who have been intimately involved with this heartbreakingly sad case for years.
[. . .]
This is not a slippery-slope case, where it’s a short hop from “executing” those in persistent vegetative conditions to killing anyone with a disability. This is a case in which an established right-to-refuse-treatment claim, litigated for years up and down through the appeals courts, is being thwarted by parents with no custodial claim to their child. By stepping in merely to sow doubt as to whom Terri Schiavo’s proper custodian might be, rather than creating some new constitutional right to a “culture of life,” Congress has simply called the existing legal regime into doubt without establishing a new one. This new law offers no clarity about what the new federal claims might be. It just forum-shops for a more tractable judge.

There is no legal basis for the extra-constitutional grandstanding that marked the first abbreviated vacation of George Bush’s entire Presidency (that includes both wars, 9/11, intelligence reform, etc.). This was just an easy way to exploit a dying woman in order to score some cheap political points with the religious people who keep giving them money.

By the way, if any of this shit ever happens to me, please pull the plug. Once my body’s cold, let the organ harvesters, medical students, etc. take whatever they want. Cremate anything that’s left over, toss it in the ocean, and go buy yourselves a drink with whatever you found in my wallet. But…..

If I get into the situation as the result of medical malpractice, corporate negligence, or some other dastardly (and preventable) means, keep me alive long enough to turn my situation into a media circus. Since it seems to be the only way cases like this get any attention, make sure to send every videotape or photograph that you may have of me to every news outlet you can find. Use the resulting orgy of coverage to get some attention to the horrible nexus of insurance interests, pharmaceutical companies, and bribed political interests that ensures that millions of Americans (unlike their peers in Japan, Canada, Britain, etc.) without healthcare of any sort. If you find it necessary to split into two opposing camps to pontificate endlessly about “What Greg would have wanted”, please try to keep religion out of it, okay?

Forgive me if I make any mistakes in my reaction to this post by Mark R. Levin. After all, I’m doing this as a hobby, but he get paid to write crap like this :

The right to live, or more specifically, the right not to be killed, is a fundamental right. And it’s a right recognized in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence.¹ So ingrained in our society is the notion of life, that the 8th Amendment prohibits “cruel and usual punishment” (even short of death)² and the 14th Amendment prohibits states from depriving any person of life without due process of law.³ This has nothing to do with federalism, unless you ignore the 8th and 14th Amendments. (Unlike the Left, that contorts the 14th Amendment, I’m recognizing its literal meaning.)

What really offends the Left is Congress asserting its constitutional power over a court, and not in service to the liberal agenda. Article III specifically empowers Congress to determine the jurisdiction of the federal courts, which is all it did today.⁴ It authorized a federal court to determine whether Terri Schiavo’s due process rights and the right not be subject to cruel and unusual punishment were properly protected by a state court.⁵ In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided on its own that abortion was a federal question, not to be left to the states, without any constitutional basis whatsoever.⁶ It preempted every state court and legislature (and Congress, for that matter). And the Left celebrates this decision.

Don’t you love it when professional pundits quickly spout off a bunch of constitutional references? If the shoe was on the other foot, would there be any doubt that this same post would have been about the evil Congress trying to destroy the concept of states rights?

^{1 : If you’re still living under the quaint illusion that the Declaration of Independence (specifically the “all men are created equal” part) has any legal basis whatsoever, go to your local library and have them find you a good book about the abolitionist movement.
2 : It would make sense to quote the 8th Amendment if Terri Schiavo were facing execution and not euthanasia. Where was all this 8th Amendment love when Abu Ghraib was all over the news?
3 : The 14th amendment states “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”, but the State isn’t directly making any decisions in this matter. They’re just deciding who is allowed to make the decisions, the husband or the parents.
4 : Is that really all it did? How routine is it for the Congress to come back from a recess to pass a law relating to the jurisdiction of the federal courts in regards to a single case?
5 : Terri Schiavo’s due process rights?! Is Mark Levin smoking crack? Mrs. Schiavo isn’t a plaintiff or defendant in any of this mess. She’s just caught in the middle. What Congress did was pass a law that allows the parents to appeal in a federal court.
6 : Nobody who writes about politics for a living should be able to get away with this “without any constitutional basis whatsoever” horseshit. The constitutional basis for Roe vs. Wade was the Supreme Court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut which determined that there is a constitutional “right of privacy”.}

Stealing from Digby :

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient’s family’s wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother’s wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo’s care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo’s because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don’t read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is “stepping in to save Terry Schiavo” mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

Like I said before, people are dying of preventable causes every goddamn day. Where’s the self-righteous outrage over that??? The way politicians are jumping on this bandwagon is fucking sickening.

Tom DeLay is having a press conference right now to announce that the House and senate are working overtime to pass a bill to “save Terri Schiavo’s life” (nevermind the fact that they’re about 10-15 years late). Considering the fact that some of the millions of Americans living in poverty die of preventable diseases every fucking day, I find myself once again depressed and disgusted that the only time the Congress is able to do something with any degree of haste is when it’s on the cover of People Magazine.

On Monday I caught a report on Lou Dobbs’ show that at first intrigued me :

DOBBS: As we’ve reported, Home Depot is facing rising anger over company policies that appear, to some, to condone massive illegal immigration into this country. Critics blast Home Depot for its ties with groups that support open borders and drivers’ licenses for illegal aliens, and Home Depot’s sponsorship of day laborer sites. This weekend some critics held a protest at a Home Depot in southern California.

Needless to say, I should have known better than to think a story that involves illegal immigration would intelligently discuss the problem without degenerating into angry, semi-racist ranting :

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Illegal alien alert! Illegal alien alert!

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Several dozen protesters gathered outside the Home Depot in Rancho Cucamonga, California, this weekend. They’re angry about the hardware chain’s ties to illegal aliens and tried to persuade customers to shop elsewhere.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, hey, ho, ho, do your shopping down at Lowe’s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, hey, ho, ho, do your shopping down at Lowe’s.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hey, hey, ho, ho, do your shopping down at Lowe’s.¹

WIAN: Last month Hope Depot announced a Spanish hiring initiative that will rely on groups such as the National Council of La Raza, which advocates drivers’ licenses, amnesty and discounted college tuition for illegal aliens.

BARBARA COE, PROTESTER: Home Depot has aided and abetted illegal aliens for quite some time. And we are hoping that by educating them, that they will no longer come here, that they will no longer support a company who betrays Americans.

WIAN: Home Depot also has paid for day laborer facilities at or near some of its stores.

JOSEPH TURNER, SOS.ORG: Studies have shown that day laborers are overwhelmingly illegal, and so we’re out here to basically stand up against that. We’re tired of this nonsense.

Blah, blah, blah….it’s the same “brown people are taking our jobs” crap that you’ve heard a million times. What I find so frustrating is that illegally employing “undocumented workers” is a serious problem that deserves to be addressed in a more sane manner than this. Since I’ve already said most of what I’ve got to say on this subject last year, I’m gonna be lazy and quote my response to the President’s pander to Latino voters immigration plan :

What I’m afraid of is that this is a sneaky attempt to legalize a whole segment of the labor market that should be illegal. When conservatives harp about illegal workers, they always act is if it’s the workers who are the bad guys here, when the real bad guys are employers who have been working around the system of worker protections that have been getting put in place for the last hundred years. These workers are making below minimum wage, aren’t getting benefits or overtime pay, work in hazardous environments, aren’t allowed to form a union, etc. Is this what Bush wants to legalize?

Y’see it’s a simple supply/demand thing here. The only reason there are so many illegal workers over here is because there’s a tremendous demand for their services. Bush said as much when he announced the policy :

Allowing undocumented workers, who make up an unknown percentage of the approximately 8 million illegal immigrants now in the United States, to work legally here would benefit all Americans, Bush argued. He said it would make the nation’s borders more secure by allowing officials to focus more on the real threats to the country and would meet U.S. employers’ dire need for workers willing to take the low-wage, low-skill jobs unwanted by many Americans.

Of course, the reason these jobs are unwanted is because it’s nearly impossible to make a living off a low-wage job.

I’m convinced that if businesses were forced to adhere to the labor laws that are already on the books, this wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, we’ve got a domino-effect where one employer breaks the law (ie. Wal-Mart) and is able to undercut the competition so much that the business community makes the argument that the need to break the law in order to stay competitive. This is the “dire need” that Bush is referring to.

Maybe we really are living in Bizarro World. Where else would a government respond to rampant law-breaking by loosening the laws instead of enforcing them?

To take things back to Home Depot, if they are involved in setting up illegal “day worker” programs, then they should be targeted for criticism. Granted, on a one-on-one basis paying some poor guy to help build a fence may seem as trivial as paying the neighbor kid to mow your lawn, when a giant corporation has gotten involved, there’s no reason at all why they shouldn’t be paying taxes, following OSHA rules, ensuring that the workers make a minimum wage, etc.

^{1 : In case there’s any doubt about the true object of the protesters’ wrath, I should probably point out that one of their signs said “BAN MEXICO AND HOME DEPOT”.}

In the last week or two, there have been big developments in the cases of Martha Stewart, Robert Blake, Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson, and Terri Schiavo. To put this in monster movie terms, this is CNN’s equivalent of those horror movies in which Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and Dracula all team up. Even hacks like Larry King are probably having a hard time keeping up with the parade of crap.

Maybe people interested in getting some real news on television could take advantage of this situation. Perhaps we could offer Michael Jackson a few dollars to read a list of corruption charges against Tom DeLay, propose a universal healthcare law and name it “Lacy and Connor’s Law”, or just fill Terri Schaivo’s feeding tube with the shitty food from a school lunchroom.

Feel free to add me to the ranks of those who love the tax proposal from the Center for American Progress. The plan has plenty of things for liberals to like including restoring progressivity to the tax code and closing many of the pesky loopholes that allow wealthy people to evade taxation….

UPDATE : Whoops, I completly screwed this one up. Within minutes of posting, I’ve had two different people write in to tell me that tax brackets don’t work at all like the way I’ve assumed. That pretty much makes this entire post moot. My apologies to the Center for American Progress. For those interested in reading my now-flawed analysis, I’ll include it for posterity in the extended text.

UPDATE 2 : To make matters worse, as a lark I did a chart comparing a gradually increasing tax rate with the correct tax revenues for CAP’s proposal. Needless to say, my formula would be a pretty shitty deal for almost everybody.
(more…)

The good news is that a new study is showing that Social Security crisis may be on the verge of saving itself. The bad news is that it’s because we’re slowly killing ourselves :

For the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in America may have shorter life expectancies than their parents, according to a new report, which contends that the rapid rise in childhood obesity, if left unchecked, could shorten life spans by as much as five years.

The report, to be published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, says the prevalence and severity of obesity is so great, especially in children, that the associated diseases and complications – Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, cancer – are likely to strike people at younger and younger ages.
. . .
The report says the average life expectancy of today’s adults, roughly 77 years, is at least four to nine months shorter than it would be if there were no obesity. That means that obesity is already shortening average life spans by a greater rate than accidents, homicides and suicides combined, the authors say.
. . .
“We’re in the quiet before the storm,” Dr. Ludwig said. “It’s like what happens if suddenly a massive number of young children started chain smoking. At first you wouldn’t see much public health impact.” He added, “But years later it would translate into emphysema, heart disease and cancer.”
. . .
The report comes at a time when the country is embroiled in a debate over Social Security. While the report’s authors say they started their research long before the current debate, they write that “the U.S. population may be inadvertently saving Social Security by becoming more obese” and dying sooner, but that “this ‘benefit’ will occur at the expense of the economy in the form of lost productivity before citizens reach retirement and large increases in Medicare costs associated with obesity and its complications.”

With the severity and urgency of this problem, you can understand why Congress has devoted itself to the greatest threat to our nation’s health….steroids in baseball. For their next crusade, Congress plans to haul Hulk Hogan, the Ultimate Warrior, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and Jake The Snake before a panel to investigate whether or not wrestling is “fixed”. Don’t worry, they’ll get to the obesity problem….eventually.

I’m not usually the sort of person who gets worked up about airport security. I’ve generally had a laid-back “better delayed than dead” attitude about the whole thing, but amid my seeming indifference to the occasional despotic tactics of the Transportation Security Administration comes the straw that breaks this camel’s back : inefficiency.

First of all, let’s just get this one out of the way : if you can acquire something after the security screening, the TSA has no business banning and/or confiscating it. This isn’t about avoiding inconveniences. It just doesn’t make any damn sense to throw away nail clippers (the most popular example, but hardly the only one) when you can re-buy the same thing five minutes later. The whole screening process is based upon the charade that airport terminals are secure (which might come as a surprise to the minimum wage earner who’s using sharp knives at the terminal’s sandwich shop).

The more egregious problem with airport security is the inconsistency of it all. Over the past week, I’ve found myself in three different airports. Here’s a brief summary of what I’d encountered :

Burbank - After checking in your luggage, travelers must take their checked luggage over to a giant x-ray machine wherein a Department of Homeland Security official inspects the bags and puts a little sticker on the tags of each one as a way of saying “Don’t worry, there aren’t any bombs here”. I’ve never seen this at any other airport. Does this usually happen behind the scenes?

Salt Lake City – This one is so bizarre that I’ve gotta show you a map of the airport concourse to explain it :



That little box with all the black dots in it is the collective waiting room and along the top of the diagram are the gates which are essentially a row of desks and doorways that lead into the same long, forked hallway. Being that this is the only place where they check your ID, can anyone see where the potential security risk here is? Even if the security screening is robust, is it really a good idea to leave people free to wander onto any airplane they want to?

Tulsa - For some reason, the wait at the security checkpoint was much, much longer here than anywhere else. As I approached the front of the line, I figured out why. The slowness of the line was due to the fact that the screeners “strongly recommend” to the point of firmly insisting that everyone remove their shoes and run them through the x-ray machine. Are shoes more explosive in Oklahoma than they are in Burbank? The slowdown was made worse by the fact that your ID was checked immediately before and immediately after the walk through the metal detector. Were the screeners afraid the three-foot journey may find someone replaced by a doppelganger that doesn’t have the proper paperwork?

So here’s a good job for the new Secretary of Homeland Security. Let’s streamline the screening process and make sure it’s consistent in every airport. Do we need to remove our shoes? Can we bring a swiss army knife? How many times do we really need our Id’s checked? I don’t really care what the answers to these questions are, I just want there to be answers. The sooner we can standardize the process, communicate these standards to the public, and get efficient use out of the personnel and equipment involved, the sooner we can avoid the endless questions, long lines, and gaping security holes that mark our current system.

Okay, I know I’ve already posted about this, but this whole George Bush : Paragon of Democracy™ thing drives me crazy. This meme has caught on so quickly, every story about the senate process in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, or Afghanistan has a reminder that the President “has made it a top second term goal to spread democracy”. At first this was just annoying, but the more I hear it, the more it really pisses me off.

The biggest reason why Bush becoming the patron saint of democracy bugs me so much is that it just isn’t true. I don’t mean this in the shrill liberal sense in that I’m implying that Bush is some sort of neo-fascist and that the only people who get it are the ones who agree with me. What I mean is that Bush is all talk when it comes to actually spreading freedom and promoting democracy. After January’s inaugural address, Administration officials were falling all over themselves to back away from the President’s rhetoric when pressed with the obvious followup questions like “Do you mean Saudi Arabia too?” The message was essentially “Don’t read too much into the speech, it just sounded cool.”

The bigger reason, however, is one that equally annoys me about liberals and conservatives : People who state the obvious as a way of implying that the other side disagrees with them. ¹ On the left, this manifests itself in the endless prattle about “peace” and “justice”. While I never doubt the sincerity of these political magpies, it always begs the question “What’s the point here?” The obvious implication is that anyone who isn’t on the right side of the issue at hand (and by “right” I mean “left”) is a bloodthirsty monster who wants to kill brown people. While I don’t question the fact that our halls of power are filled with immoral war profiteers who are indifferent to the suffering of others, the vast majority of those who support going to war do so because they think it’s for a greater good (whether to protect oppressed people, defend us from a gathering threat, etc.) Vague and ill-informed balderdash doesn’t do anything to raise the level of the debate, it just turns the ideological conflict into another pissing contest.

The same is true of Bush’s recent talk about “freedom” and “democracy”. In becoming an ardent defender of the values we’ve already agreed upon, the President has punted a rhetorical ball that conservative commentators everywhere have picked up and run with. If I read one more article about how much “Democrats hate freedom” I’m gonna snap and punch Ann Coulter in the Adam’s apple.² When you state something as simple-minded as “I believe freedom is necessary in order to promote peace”, the only real response to this sort of statement is “As President, you better believe that. Now how do you intend to achieve this goal?” This was the senate response in January, which lead to the Administration backtracking, conservative demonizing, etc.

Since both sides already agree (in theory at least) that freedom, justice, peace, and democracy are all worthy goals, can we please end the practice of boosting the President for his strong stand on solid political ground? Bush has also spoken about the tragedy of child abduction, but we wouldn’t be so daft to pepper stories about Amber alerts with “As you know, the President has spoken out against the kidnapping and murdering of children”. Patting yourself on the back for being in favor of something fundamental isn’t bold leadership, it’s just lazy.

^{1 : This is a problem so rampant that it’s even garnered its own cliched response, “Big deal. You want a fuckin’ cookie?”.
2 : Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. Sorry for adding more fire to the “Liberals can’t argue without ad hominem attacks” controversy.}

One thing I learned on my vacation : Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an amazing album. Why am I the last person to get into this record? Was I annoyed by the hype? Was I turned off by the odd “alt-country” label? Or is it because I’ve always secretly (until now, I guess) mixed up Wilco and those guys who did that song “The Way”? I dunno, but if you’re one of the few people who haven’t checked this album out, it really is worth picking up.

I dunno how I ended up on Congresswoman Louise Slaughter’s mailing list, but I’m glad I did. I was just sent a copy of her new report “Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy” and, based on the executive summary, it’s pretty damning :

In the 108th Congress, House Republicans became the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history. When they took control of the House after the 1994 elections, Republicans vowed they would be different than previous Congresses. They promised they would manage the House in a way that fostered what they called ?deliberative democracy,? which they defined as ?the full and free airing of conflicting opinions through hearings, debates, and amendments for the purpose of developing and improving legislation deserving of the respect and support of the people.?

This report documents how, ten years after their ?revolution,? House Republicans have completely abandoned this standard of deliberative democracy they set for themselves. Furthermore, they have abandoned any other principle of procedural fairness or senate accountability. In the opinion of many non-partisan observers of Congress, the 108th Congress not only matched the worst abuses of earlier Congresses; it set a whole new benchmark.

This report examines in detail how, over the past two years, the Republican leadership ignored the House Rules and the basic standards of legislative fairness and regular order with an impunity that is unprecedented in the history of the House of Representatives. This report shows that:

Despite their vows to open up the rules process and restore deliberative democracy to the House chamber, House Republicans took unprecedented steps in the 108th Congress to make the House floor a ?democracy-free zone.? They used closed and highly restrictive rules to prevent Members from offering amendments that would have provoked real debate and forced Members to go on the record on real issues. The end result of this policy was that special interests, not U.S. Representatives, wrote the major bills in the 108th Congress. Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich recently suggested House Republicans ?should open up the rules more.?

House Republicans continued to squeeze out real debate on controversial issues in the House by devoting more and more floor time to suspension bills. In the 108th Congress, Republican leaders apparently decided that the House should spend two out of the three days of its already abbreviated legislative week on noncontroversial legislation, such as bills that name post offices and congratulate sports teams. At the same time, they allowed less time and fewer amendments and votes on the serious, substantive legislation the House considers.

Rules Committee Republicans intentionally used emergency meeting procedures and late-night meetings in the 108th Congress to discourage Members and the press from participating in the legislative process. These tactics not only discouraged Members from bringing amendments to the Committee and participating in the legislative process; they also appeared to be drive Republican Rules Members off the Committee.

House Republicans repeatedly embarrassed the House by granting blanket waivers to conference reports and rushing them through the House before Members could read them. The 108th Congress was repeatedly ridiculed for the special-interest provisions Republican leaders stuck into conference bills, such as the infamous ?Hooters? provision in the Energy bill and the provision allowing Congressional staffers to snoop on American citizens? tax returns.

We conclude this report with some modest recommendations to curtail the most egregious abuses we observed in the 108th Congress and restore a small measure of accountability and senate deliberation to a legislative body that is supposed to be a model of those two values. Those recommendations are:

Open up the process by allowing debate and votes on more serious amendments. The Republican leadership should heed the advice of former Speaker Newt Gingrich and ?open up the House Rules more.? They should allow, and even encourage, serious amendments that enjoy the support of a ?substantial number of Members? to come to the House floor for debate and up-or-down votes.

Allow more bills to be considered under open rules. In the 109th Congress, the Republican leadership should increase the percentage of bills it allows to be debated under an open rule process, and decrease the percentage of bills it jams through the House under closed rules.

Spend more time on major, substantive legislation and less time on suspension bills. Instead of using the suspension of the rules procedure to crowd out debate on major legislation, the Republican leadership in the 109th Congress should expand debate time and the consideration of amendments by restricting suspensions to Mondays and Tuesdays. The House should spend the majority of its time in session debating and voting on the major policy issues of our day, not naming post offices and congratulating sports teams.

Bring back regular order and reduce the number of late-night or earlymorning ?emergencies.? The House Rules Committee should only use the?emergency meeting? procedure in the small number of cases, before recesses or at the end of sessions, when the House moves legislation more quickly through the process than regular order allows. Regular order should be the rule, not the exception. Instead of meeting late at night or early in the morning, the Rules Committee should do its business during regular ?business? hours so that Members and the press can attend and participate in the House rule-making process.

Give Members three days to read conference reports. The Rules Committee and Republican leadership should end its practice of granting ?blanket waivers? to conference reports. The Committee should protect Members? rights to know the content of conference reports by waiving only those provisions that are absolutely necessary for the orderly consideration of the conference report. The three-day layover requirement should be waived only in the most exigent circumstances, and then only by a two-thirds vote of the House.

Not that I’m expecting this report to get much media attention, I’d still love to see this at least get a mention on the news tonight.

Silly liberals, don’t you get it?! George Bush said “America kicks ass” and it does. Therefore, all of you Saddam-loving, tofu-eating wimps owe Dubya a huge apology. Regardless of whether or not Bush has actually done anything well during the last four years, he “has been fundamentally right about some big things.” :

The other noted political scientist who has been vindicated in recent weeks is George W. Bush. Across New York, Los Angeles and Chicago?and probably Europe and Asia as well?people are nervously asking themselves a question: “Could he possibly have been right?” The short answer is yes. Whether or not Bush deserves credit for everything that is happening in the Middle East, he has been fundamentally right about some big things.

Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead he veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep dysfunctions caused by decades of repression and an almost total lack of political, economic and social modernization. The Arab world, in this analysis, was almost unique in that over the past three decades it had become increasingly unfree, even as the rest of the world was opening up. His solution, therefore, was to push for reform in these lands.

Put aside for a moment the fact that the President surrounds himself with people who say Islam is a “wicked” religion or that he developed this sophisticated (for him, anyways) view on the political and social reforms needed in the Arab world without knowing the difference between a Sunni and Shiite. Instead, let’s welcome the President into the fold.

For years now, various factions of the left have been making the argument that social and economic inequality are primary factors in what makes a dangerous ideology take root in a culture. While the response from the right was to blow smoke about how liberals don’t understand the reality of a “new kind of war”, issue straw men arguments that we can’t “negotiate with terrorists”, and insist that we must be tough and “show resolve”, the President apparently didn’t buy into all that macho bullshit. Now that positive developments are taking place next door to where the President started two wars, it’s nice to see that Mr. Bush has finally agreed with us all along. As as someone with a pretty thorough understanding of the forces of repression that buoy terrorist movements, the President can clearly see that there’s only one way for a country the size of the United States to support fledgling senate movements. With cluster bombs and depleted uranium.