WASHINGTON (AP) -- In a defeat for President Bush, rebellious House Republicans on Saturday derailed legislation to overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies along lines recommended by the Sept. 11 commission.
[. . .]
``The commander in chief in the middle of a war says he needs this bill to protect the American people,'' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who led Democratic negotiators.
``Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and the blame for this failure is theirs alone,'' said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
[. . .]
I guess Joe Lieberman finally realizes which party he belongs to. The defeat of this bill was engineered by Rummy and his ilk over at DOD, and the new crowd at Langley, both of whom don't want to suborn their intelligence operations to a central authority. While there are some parts of the legislation that I don't like, we need some sort of reform. The Repubs had months to work on the language of the bill, why the objections as it's about to go to the floor for a vote? Did something change suddenly? You can't tell me it's just because of the provision to give driver licenses to illegal immigrants.
Speaking of shady deals yesterday, the Lame Ducks finally got the appropriations bill finished and the Repubs were hard at work:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - Congress approved a $388 billion spending measure and left town on Saturday without completing a reorganization of the nation's intelligence agencies as a postelection session drew to a ragged close.
[. . .]
Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said he discovered a provision that would allow leaders of the House and Senate spending panels to designate people who would be given access to tax returns.
"Are we really going to pass legislation here that says an Appropriations Committee staffer can look at the individual tax returns of any American?" Mr. Conrad asked.
Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that the provision had been added erroneously and that it would not become law even though the bill had already been passed by the House.
"It is absolutely a mistake, and I apologize to the Senate," Mr. Stevens said.
[. . .]
Yeah right, a mistake, that's it. Dickhead.
[. . .]
"Have you read this bill well enough to have confidence you know what is in it?" Representative Brian Baird, Democrat of Washington, asked his colleagues on the House floor.
House Democrats raised objections to language that would expand the rights of health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and abortion-related services. The Democratic minority leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, called it an "extraordinary sneak attack on women's rights and a disgraceful display of ideology over health."
But its Republican authors said the action was warranted to prevent government agencies from forcing health care providers who oppose abortion to perform the procedure or counsel women seeking abortions.
[. . .]
The Repubs never quit. They try and attach some sort of 'anti-legislation' on everything and try to slide it through under the radar. And while we're speaking of Ted Stevens:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - Toward the bottom of the 16-inch stack of paper called the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2005 is a list of grants for communities in Alaska: $950,000 for a recreation center and $150,000 for a botanical garden in Anchorage, $300,000 for a senior center in Fairbanks, $1 million for housing upgrades in the Kenai Peninsula, $900,000 for an aquarium in Ketchikan, $525,000 for a quarry upgrade in Nome and many more.
No one on the outside knows for sure how grants for special projects like these - called earmarks in the Congressional lexicon and pork barrel by critics - got into the $388 billion spending bill that cleared Congress on Saturday. But it is a safe bet that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, in his final year as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was responsible for most of these. [my emphasis]
[. . .]
This is the same guy who 'mistakenly' added the provision in the appropriations bill that would allow the opening of people's tax returns. Think all this pork for his home state was a mistake too? Neither do I.
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