Captain Ed characterizes the silliness that took place in the Senate yesterday as a Senatorial Slapfight. It is hard to disagree:
The partisan fight over Karl Rove exploded onto the Senate floor yesterday, with Democrats trying to strip him of his security clearance and Republicans retaliating by trying to strip the chamber’s two top Democrats of theirs.
The moves, which came as amendments to a spending bill, both failed, but not before each side blamed the other for “juvenile” behavior and for poisoning a well of good feelings they said had existed in the past few weeks.
As Captain Ed notes, “At least 20 Republicans had the good sense to oppose the latter measure. The Democrats’ amendment failed on a strictly partisan vote. The competing measures not only make the entire chamber look like a gaggle of childish and petulant fools..” The rest of his analysis is more pointedly anti-Democrat, and you can read on your own.
Ed, however, does miss one thing about the Republican measure, if David Sirota is to be believed:
The amendment is clearly targeted at Senator Dick Durbin’s (D) controversial comments about Guantanamo Bay, in which he cited FBI files. But what’s funny is that, according to one top Democrat’s office, the amendment also strips Orin Hatch of his security clearance because he has in the past referenced judicial nominees’ FBI files.
In fact, every Senator who participated in an Armed Services Committee hearing on Gitmo yesterday might lose their clearance because the FBI agents comments were discussed. Those Republicans who participated in that hearing were Sens. John Warner (R-VA), John McCain (R-AZ), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and John Cornyn (R-TX). Will they vote to strip themselves of their own security clearance.
Sirota then goes on to provide the same sort of pointed analysis that Ed provided, but in his version, it is the Republicans who are ‘juvenile.’
I can offer you a no more telling portrait of the current state of politics in DC than these two versions of the same event.
Tim F
So, read both amendments and decide for yourself.
Stormy70
Shocker – Partisan politics in the Senate! This was amusing on several levels.
Jon
Warning: Major ass kissing ahead!
The value of this blog and why I love it is demonstrated in this post. We can go to Ed’s site and get the basic story, with some pointless, unproductive, misleading democrat bashing thrown in, or we can go to David’s site to get the story with some pointless, unproductive, misleading republican bashing thrown in. OR we can come here, get the story with commentary that’s objective and more or less non-partisan. Damn it’s refreshing to go somewhere were both sides are called out equally, especially these days.
Obviously there are times when the truth is more objective and one side or the other needs their feet held to the fire, but it’s refreshing when commentators recognize when both parties are being douche bags and calls them on it.
Non-Fat Latte Liberal
Ahh, how fun it must be, being a child and frollicking through the senate. I wonder if we should institute nap time in the senate. Sounds liek the senators are getting a little cranky.
Maybe there should be a bipartisan stupidity category?
Steve
I think the appropriate legal analysis is that Rove is rubber and Durbin is glue, or possibly the other way around.
Still, this is testament to the powerlessness of the Democrats in the minority. If this were a Clinton scandal, I’m pretty sure the Republican majority would be doing a lot more to make hay out of it than simply trying to take away someone’s security clearance.
Jeff Medcalf
And I wasn’t watching C-SPAN! And I didn’t have any popcorn ready!
A shameful day for me, I assure you.
neil
The Democratic measure seems a bit like bad politics. After all, when this is all over and done with, if the Dems have nothing worse to smear the Reps with other than “they voted against a bill to deny security clearance to moles!” then they’ll have nothing anyway.
But the Republican counterproposal was almost stupefyingly worse. It would have banned security clearance to anyone who is quoted by America’s enemies. I mean, talk about giving Al-Qaeda the car keys, sheesh… imagine it had actually been passed and Bin Laden released a tape of himself reading the Congressional Record.
Actually, that would be pretty funny.
Defense Guy
This reminds me of the Lewis Black bit where the Republicans are the party of bad ideas and the Democrats are the party of no ideas. Republicans stand up and state ‘I have a really bad idea!’ and the Democrats stand up and say ‘I can make it worse!’. Classic, and oh so accurate.
Steve
The Democratic measure isn’t “bad” politics, it’s just not a terribly effective stunt. I mean, if you asked all the Senators, in a political vacuum, “should we revoke the security clearance of people who reveal classified information?” you’d get a lot of yes answers. It’s only because of the obvious political context that this was shot down in a party-line vote.
And to any objective observer, the Republicans didn’t vote no because they believe in security leaks; they voted no because they don’t like political stunts. So politically, it’s a nullity, but it certainly isn’t “bad” politics in the sense that it hurts the Democrats.
By that standard, the Republican proposal probably doesn’t hurt anyone either, but it’s so laughably dumb. “Let’s make terrorists the final arbiter of who gets a security clearance in this country!” If you asked Senators, in a political vacuum, whether they support the Republican proposal, you wouldn’t get a single yes vote.
Kimmitt
If you say so.