house

The shame of the Senate

In their own words -

Sing it boys! Ah 1, 2, 9, 5, 3, 6, -

". . . he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Judges of the supreme Court . . ." United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings." - United States Constitution, Article I, Section 5

"This Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past," - US Senator Robert Byrd

"Again and again in recent years, the filibuster has been the shame of the Senate and the last resort of special interest groups. Too often, it has enabled a small minority of the Senate to prevent a strong majority from working its will and serving the public interest. . . . Under our fundamental constitutional scheme, the rights of the minority are protected by a series of specific provisions, none of which has any relevance to the general rules by which the House and Senate perform their legislative functions. " - US Senator Ted Kennedy

"(T)he Constitution is straightforward about the few instances in which more than a majority of the Congress must vote:  A veto override, a treaty, and a finding of guilt in an impeachment proceeding.  Every other action by the Congress is taken by majority vote. … Democracy means majority rule, not minority gridlock.” - Former US Senator Tom Daschle

"If a senator has a problem with particular nominees, he or she should vote against them. But a nominee should not be held up interminably by a handful of senators." - US Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“I find it simply baffling that a Senator would vote against even voting on a judicial nomination. . . .   Lift your holds, and let the Senate vote on every nomination.” “As Chief Justice Rehnquist has recognized: ‘The Senate is surely under no obligation to confirm any particular nominee, but after the necessary time for inquiry it should vote him up or vote him down.’  An up-or-down vote, that is all we ask . . .” - Former US Senator Tom Daschle

Our story so far -

Republicans held up Clinton judicial nominees in committee. Upping the ante, Democrats under Little Senator Tom, created unprecedented "permanent filibusters" to block appointment of appellate judges - those who will be on top of the lists of Supreme Court candidates.

Current Democrat leader Harry Reid is continuing the shutdown of appellate appointments. Consequently Senate Republicans are considering a ruling from the Senate President (Vice President Cheney) that the filibuster is being used to prevent the Senate from fulfilling its constitutional duty to advise and consent in the Presidential appointment of judges and should be ruled out of order. Democrats have labeled this the "nuclear option"

Reid has threatened to shut down the Senate if the filibuster is taken out of the judicial nomination process.

Who's your nuclear option daddy now?

Ah semantics. You might call changing the Senate rules to allow all members to vote on judicial nominees a "nuclear option". I'd call it doing the work of the people.

Reid has said Republicans will "rue the day" they remove the filibuster from the judicial nomination process. Don't you love that? I can't help but grin when someone predicts another will "rue the day". Arguably the ruing will be done by Senator Reid should he shut down the Senate. Newt Gingrich learned the American people aren't fond of shutting government down. But, go ahead Harry, give it a whirl.

The filibuster has an interesting history. Huey Long filibustered bills he thought favored the rich over the poor. The record for the longest individual speech goes to South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Robert Byrd gave a fourteen hour speech in 1964 to block that Civil Rights Act. The filibuster was used against LBJ Supreme Court nominee Abe Fortas but, unlike the present cases, LBJ had neither the support needed to end cloture (67 votes at that time) nor the 51 votes needed to consent to Fortas' nomination. The filibuster probably has resulted in more mischief than good.

But, before we make what is a serious change, we need to be careful to identify the benefits of such change to give it due consideration. The winners in the case of a suspension of the filibuster for judicial nominees would be:

• The institution of democracy as the Senate would be forced to once again advise and consent in judicial nominees.
• States rights in the event the majority advise and consent in judges who would under the Roe v. Wade legislation that unconstitutionally stripped states of their right to regulate abortion.
• Some hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are killed each year by abortionists knives and chemicals in the likely event many states would outlaw or severely restrict abortion.

The losers would be the Democrat party and the pro-abortion lobby.

I don't suggest, like Senators Kennedy and Byrd above, that we abolish the filibuster altogether. However I do agree with former Senator Daschle, and Senator Feinstein that we need an up or down vote on judicial nominees. If Senator Reid is to continue his abuse of the filibuster rule to block the Senate from performing its duty then the Senate should dispense with that particular use of the rule.

W.W.J.S.L.

Me, I figure an itinerant preacher^TM roaming the Middle East 2,000 years ago would smell worse than most Deadwood denizens of 130 years ago.

But maybe that's just me.

The fine God^TM-fearin' folks at His Essence^TM are counting on Jesus'^TM odor to induce the faithful to render unto them God^TM-fearin' folks some of that coin of the realm we all lust after. They're sellin' the Scent 'o Jesus^TM. And believers are buyin' it up. 210 stores in 27 states will sell you the Scent 'o Jesus^TM. I hope the Easter Bunny^TM brings me the Scent o' Jesus^TM in my Easter^TM basket.

Hey! Maybe they can put the Scent o' Jesus^TM in one a them car air fresheners that hang from your rear-view mirror. It could be a cutout of Touchdown Jesus^TM like what they have at Notre Dame^TM. Wouldn't that be something?

Scent o' Jesus

(Sung to the tune of "Plastic Jesus" with apologies to Cool Hand Luke.)

I don't care if it rains or freezes

long as I got my Scent o' Jesus^TM

stinkin' up the inside of my car.

Comes in colors pink and pleasant.

Glows in the dark 'cause it's iridescent.

I take it with me whenever I go far.

Oh, give me my Lady Madonna^TM

dressed in rhinestones and sitting on a

pedestal of abalone shell.

Drivin' ninety but I'm not wary

long as I got my Virgin Mary^TM

assurin' me that I will never go to hell^TM.

Ze plane Boss, ze plane!

Mayor Mike has answered the clarion call and he let those airplane logs gooooooooo.

Now the hard work falls to Judy Olson to sort through the records and figure out if the Mayor is using the plane well. 2,800 logs. Yikes.

Judy, what do you make of these?

"Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl. . . "

No, maybe not.

Hey, I've got it! They can have the kid who wrote the code for the Herseth Hack figure out how to work with all that data. Yeah. He's probably available.

Did she or didn't she?

Only her hairdresser disaffected, Halo T-shirt wearing, Mountain Dew-swigging computer geek knows for sure.

Great story coming out of AVT on a scheme Steffi is said to have orchestrated to hack Little Senator Tom's database and relabel Thune/Herseth supporters as Daschle/Herseth supporters. Get it? Little Senator Tom would have left those Thune/Herseth folks alone on election day just like he did with the people his campaign identified as Abdnor/(Lars) Herseth voters in 1986. But, per AVT, Steffi's crew "masked" Thune/Herseth voters as Daschle/Herseth voters. So, on election day, Little Senator Tom's gang was unwittingly working hard to get Thune/Herseth voters to the polls.

Muwaahahahahaha! It's diabolical!

Postscript 03/21/05

More from AVT here.

So far Herseth and the lefty bloggers offer no rebuttal and the MSM are silent.

I'm betting the MSM picks this up. What fun!

More Postscript 03/21/05

Finally a defense of Steffi. Clean Cut Kid prattles on with a bunch of boilerplate nonsense about motive, Jesus, and anonymity but then, finally, makes a valid point. He notes, reasonably it seems to me, that the Daschle lists were managed and checked and massaged and fretted over on an almost constant basis. Thus, he argues, a shift of a significant amount of data would have triggered alarms and someone would have noticed and corrected records that had been shifted from Thune/Herseth to Daschle/Herseth. Then he spastically goes off on another anti-Republican, anti-anonymous blogger rant.

These ideologues just don't get it. No one is moved by "The left is always this." Or "The right is always that." And, as to anonymous bloggers, it's a non-issue. I don't know who Clean Cut Kid is. He's anonymous to me. I'm not interested in who he is. His posts speak for themselves. Despite my ignorance of CCK's identity, I'm liking an argument he makes on the merit of his argument. That's how it's supposed to work.

The substantive part of CCK's post makes sense. According to AVT, Herseth was worried about losing a lot of Thune/Herseth votes so we're talking about enough records to be noticed. What CCK doesn't address is a scenario where records were shifted gradually, thus not triggering list generator's suspicions.

It's an open case and I'm digging the intrigue.

Dat's why he's da Mayor!

He's this week's Hometown Hero! Let's give a big saaaa-lute! to Mayor Mike.

Not content to simply refill every state government job that was eliminated by Governor Janklow (Question: Did you notice a fall-off in state services when Janklow reduced the number of state employees? Me either. Are you noticing an improvement in state services now that Mayor Mike is increasing the number of state employees? Neither am I. Weird huh?) our Mayor Mike has put on his shop steward's hat. He's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more!

Mayor Mike wants his constituents, er, I mean state employees, to get 3% raises. The legislature wants them to get 2.25%.

The average inflation rate over the last five years is 2.55%. The average salary increase for state employees over the last five years is 2.80%. Salary increases over the past five years have averaged 9.8% greater than inflation. That doesn't include the 2.0% to 2.5% that's budgeted each year to increase salaries for state employees who are below mid-point in the salary range for their job.

What that means is, if you're a state employee and you've been in the same job for the past five years, your earnings have increased ahead of inflation. If you earned $25,000 in 1999 you are now earning $28,700. $25,000 worth of stuff in 1999 now costs $28,352. Is that a huge variance? No? Should it be a big variance? I don't think so.

Remember, the example above is for a person doing exactly the same job they were doing in 1999. It doesn't factor in raises for promotions. It doesn't factor in additional increases that person would receive if their salary was below midpoint.

2005 inflation is projected at 3.4%. Consequently, if the 2.25% increase the legislature wants holds, then that 1999 $25,000 salary will be worth $29,346 and that $25,000 worth of goods will cost $29,316. Sounds right to me.

My point with that tedious bit of analysis is that South Dakota state employees have been treated somewhat better than fair the past five years. Their pay, in 1999 dolars, has increased relative to the work they are performing slightly more than the cost of living. The legislature's proposed cost of living raise will bring state employee pay and cost of living into balance. That sounds like good government - employees are fairly treated, the taxpayer's money is carefully spent.

But that's not Mayor Mike's view - oh no sir! On public radio the other day Mayor Mike was heard to exclaim about the proposed 2.25% increase: "I thought it was a terrible message to send to state employees. I thought it was a terrible message to send to other public employees across South Dakota. I really disagree with what they did."

What? What's so terrible? What is terrible about that message? What is disagreeable about what the legislature did?

State employees don't seem out of sorts about the 2.25% number. Ed Jacobson, the interim director of the South Dakota State Employees Organization, said state employees wanted 3.0%, but appreciate the 2.25% and understand the challenge for the legislature.

According to an AP story in the Rapid City Journal Rounds said "The Legislature could have sent a message to employers about good wages." Well sure they could. But we didn't send our representatives to Pierre to send messages or to create wage inflation, we sent them to govern. (Of course we didn't elect a Governor to be the Mayor of Pierre either. Guess you can't have everything.)

Ironically Mayor Mike is doing pretty much the same thing Steffi was called out on here. On the one hand he whines about the state's "structural deficit" but, on the other hand, he wants to surrender fiscal discipline in favor of sending messages. It doesn't work.

Remember what physics teaches us - you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Even if you're the Mayor of Pierre.

Credit

In today's Argus Dave Kranz picks up the Herseth highway funding story and adds a new perspective. He notes that what Herseth got in special project funding is more than twice what the two (Republican) representatives of nearby geographically large, single district states got for their constituents. Sounds like fair and balanced reporting to me.

Kranz' story also notes that Steffi's press guy combed through Congressional web sites and came up with 144 members who have listed the federal dollar amounts for projects in their districts. That's a lot of work and the resulting comparison is a hell of a lot more rational and puts Steffi in a much better light than her own dumb-assed rant that "I'm better than an empty chair!"

I don't know if blog pressure makes for better reporting but, in this case, it might have resulted in more savvy congressional staff work.

Fans of inscrutability take note: Was Mark Johnston's "not true" a rebuttal of the idea that the state has its own private DC lobbyist or a rebuttal to the notion that the state's private lobbyist is making an end run around Steffi? Hmmmmmm.

Postscript: 03/20/05

Turn's out Johnston's "not true" was a rebuttal to the notion that the state's private lobbyist is making an end run around Steffi. As AVT has subsequently noted, South Dakota does employ a private lobbyist.

Let my airplane logs goooooo . . .

Gotta hand it to the South Dakota Dems. They have a very good point in their demand that Mayor Mike release his our airplane logs. He said back on February 4th that he'd release the logs but since then - nothing.

C'mon Paul Robeson, sing it!!

Go down Judy
Way down in SD land
Tell old Mayor Michael Rounds to
Let those airplane logs go!

 

Senate OKs Drilling In ANWR

Party at my place Saturday. We'll be grillin' caribou and prairie dog. Plus, we have a spotted owl pate that is to die for!

It'll be fun - we can celebrate Bobby Blake's acquittal.

BYOB (And smokes!)

Well of course he's a lobbyist

I just stumbled across a couple of blogs that suggest former Little Senator Tom isn't a lobbyist. Of course he's a lobbyist. He's every bit as much a lobbyist as Thune was.

By law they can't actually lobby for one year after they are done as legislators. They can't pick up the phone or go into a member's office and lobby.

So, for the first year, they help people develop strategy. They help people connect the dots ie. "You need Senator Leghorn on board to kill this bill that would treat you like the lying, thieving rascals you are. Your friend Mr. Wafflebottum is one of the Senator's dearest friends and most generous contributors. You need to have your friend Mr. Wafflebottum explain to Senator Leghorn why this is such a bad bill and why he needs to oppose it." That's what Bob Forehead did between his House stint and his Senate stint. That's what former Little Senator Tom will do.

Then, once the year is out, Little Lobbyist Tom can lobby just like all the other K Street dudes.

The only surprising thing about all of this is that Little Senator Tom said he wouldn't lobby last fall. Usually he's smarter than to close a door prematurely.

Oh NOW she wants to be in the debate

From the "Insert foot (a) into mouth (b)" department -

Our girl Steffi, who recently chose to go on a European junket rather than stay in DC and fight to get South Dakota its share of highway special project dollars, was quoted as follows today in a press release from the Democratic Rural Working Group regarding a budget report they've issued: "Far too often, rural America gets left out of the big debates in Washington - and it’s happening right now with the budget we’re considering this week."

She goes on to whine about how the pork flow to South Dakota would be somewhat curtailed in a Bush budget. Her complaint above might have some validity if she'd bother to go to the big debates to which she is invited rather than operate her press release mill from Europe.

The report is demagoguery at its finest. Just as Steffi refuses to participate in one budget debate as a prelude to whining about her exclusion from another budget debate, the Democratic Rural Working Group gripes about the Republican budget creating trillions of dollars in new deficits as a prelude to their litany of whines about budget cuts to rural programs. Yikes! Am I the only one confused by this self-contradictory reasoning?

Here's a physics lesson for the Democratic Rural Working Group - you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Now, if I was a Congressperson and I was concerned about reducing rising deficits without hurting the family farmer I'd do what Jerry Munson suggested in a letter in today's Rapid City Journal. I'd jump on board Senate Bill 385 which would limit  commodity payments and benefits to $250,000 per year, per farm.

Our own Grouchy Old Senator Tim is on-board as a co-sponsor. Steffi and Bob Forehead should hop aboard as well.

Despite the bill's apparent lack of harm to true family farmers, federal legislators may get some grief over the bill's presumed effect of lowering land values for all if it lowers the earning potential for corporate farmers. Still, it appears to be an idea worth pursuing.

I certainly agree with the Democratic Rural Working Group that we need to cut deficits. But, if we're serious about that we need to look at cutting our pork. SB 385 could be a good start.