Does anyone know why the hell Voinovich was weeping yesterday in the well of the Senate? All I saw were the brief clips. What happened? What is the background?
*** Update ***
Weird, the cloture vote did not pass, so there will be no vote on Bolton. Frist voted against. What gives?
*** Update ***
Now Frist is claiming the Dems are filibustering- but he voted against- did I get his vote wrong or misinterpret it? Now Reid seems to agree it IS a filibuster.
I am, as always, clueless.
John
Well, I think it’s more Frist than Reid. Frist has been a horrible Senate Majority Leader, and it just goes to show what happens when you inbred your leadership with people who are loyal to you versus people that can actually do the job.
Everyman
Roberts Rules of Procedure, sir. In order to move for reconsideration, he had to vote in that fashion, a basic parliamentary move. He has now moved for that reconsideration, to help to make the point that this is, in spite of all of the denials from the Donkeys, a filibuster.
Watch for a recess appointment of Bolton by Bush, just as soon as the Senate turns out the lights.
The Disenfrachised Voter
It is a filibuster in a sense, but it is a justified filibuster. The Dem’s asked for certain documents and the White House replied with “NO”. They didn’t even give the old National security excuse, they plainly said No, we aren’t giving you them. What arrogance!
This “filibuster” can easily be ended if the White House just hands over the relevant documents, which even Frist has asked them to do. So why isn’t the White House complying, methinks they have something to hide.
BumperStickerist
Everyman would be correct – Frist voted ‘no’ as a parlimentary procedure/strategery
Karol
I don’t know the answers to the rest of your questions but Voinovich broke down when he was asking the Senate to vote against Bolton.
Kimmitt
Which, if you are a Democrat to the right of Leon Trotsky, should scare the hell out of you.
Red scares are *so* ’80s.
Demimondian
Under the Senate’s rules, someone on the losing side of a vote can’t move for reconsideration. That’s intended to prevent someone from gumming up business by losing a vote and then moving to reconsider.
Instead, of course, it leads to idiocies like today’s, where Frist voted “no” so that he could immediately move for reconsideration.
CaseyL
Yes, the Democrats would like to delay a final vote on Bolton while people mull over the mountain of evidence that the man has repeatedly undermined US foreign policy, is a perjurer, and has the personnel management skills of a rabid squirrel.
(RW fantasies that Bolton will “clean up” the UN are laughable. This is a man whose single trumpeted foreign policy success – getting 60 nations to sign the NPT – turns out not to be his doing after all; and whose role in other foreign policy successes turns out to have been that he was excluded from them. )
No, the Democrats did not vote against cloture just for the sake of delaying a final vote. The WH *has* withheld information that is pertinent to the issue, and that the SFRC and Intelligence Committee are both entitled to see and cleared to see.
The point Biden raised is well-taken: Is the Senate a co-equal branch of government? Or is it a rubber-stamp for the Executive?
To which, I add: If the only purpose of the minority Party is to sit down and shut up, then why bother having minority Party Senators at all? If the purpose of the Senate is to do the President’s will and give the President whatever he wants, why bother having a Senate at all?
bg
I kind of imagine Boxer to the slight left of the mainstream Democratic Party. As if from 1-10, 10 being ultraliberal and 1 being ultraconservative, Boxer would rate an 8. That’s pretty liberal, but she’s to the right of Chomsky.
Birkel
Remember when, just last week, the Dems were saying Frist’s vote against cloture was a filibuster? Somehow this one isn’t, or something.
And remember when Frist was saying it wasn’t a filibuster before? But now he’s arguing the Dems action is a filibuster.
A round of hypocrisy for everybody!! I’m buying!!
AlanDownunder
The senate is not being held up on Bolton because of a Dem request for information from the executive – the request came from the GOP chair of a senate committee.
neil
No need, Birkel, it’s an open bar…