Republicans vote against mother’s day

House republicans have been using delaying and obstructionist tactics against the Democratic majority for sometime now; however, the republicans’ vote against mother’s day as a delaying tactic is inane. As Dana Milbank suggests, What’s next for republicans, a vote against puppies and kittens?

From the Washington Post:

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother’s Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, “Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day,” when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

“Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote,” he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt’s request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers. [Emphasis added.]

[…]

Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: “Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother’s Day.”

By voting against it?

Re: Foley | Murtha: Leadership… Must Resign Immediately

It’s important for any "opposition party" to be flexible, current, relevant, visible and vocal — as is often remarked, "90% of success is just showing up." Over the long term, yes, "It’s About Iraq, Stupid." However, at the moment, the Republican Predatorgate scandal (aka., Mark Foley preying on teenage boys) throws in sharp contrast the differences between Democrats and the scandal ridden Republicans. That’s why it’s important that our nascent Liberal Noise Machine continue hammering the Republican Predatorgate scandal; because it’s one more nail, of many, in the coffin of corrupt Republicans.

This is an important moment. We’ve heard a lot about the potential electoral repercussions of Predatorgate against Republicans. In fact, our own in-house Republican, MC71, provides some anecdotal evidence illustrating the impact of this scandal on his party — when asked when it was that he lost faith on Republicans, he wrote:

There are moments. Moments that nobody will ever forget when they realized that the whole thing cannot be supported any longer.

There were three for me (and I believe many Republicans share these)

1. By far the largest was Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina was the largest government failure in modern history. This party wants to move 12 million people who want be in America out of the country. It couldn’t evacuate the thousands who did not want to be in New Orleans.

2. The nomination of Harriet Miers. Conservatives put Bush in office to nominate intelligent Conservative judges. Bush put some buddies in a hat and chose Harriet. It was a complete disrespect to the people who elected him, and many woke up then. (Once again, I state this not as an endorsement of any philosophy, but as a means to understand a situation).

3. This week, when Mark Foley resigned. There are scandals and then there is this. I’m almost frustrated that Democrats are not paying more attention to this. Nobody can support this in our government.

(Emphasis added.)

This is why it’s important that our Liberal Noise Machine continue hammering the Republican Predatorgate scandal: because this has gotten the attention of people that would not otherwise be listening.

And this is where Rep. Murtha comes in. MC71, if you’re reading this, here’s one Democratic Representative that is listening to you, and he agrees: nobody should tolerate the Republican leadership’s cover up of Predatorgate, period.

Over at The Huffington Post Rep. Murtha posted the following:

Like many of you, I’ve been watching the disturbing news reports about the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Congressman Mark Foley. It’s horrifying enough if these interactions occurred, but if allegations of a cover up by the Republican Leadership are true, it’s unconscionable. Their first obligation should have been to protect these young people who come to Congress to work hard and learn the legislative process.

[...]

There is absolutely no excuse for allowing something like this to go on, especially if they had even a hint of a problem months ago. If there was any sign of wrongdoing, a red flag should have gone up, and a thorough investigation should have begun immediately.

It is imperative that we hold people accountable for failing these young people. They are children who have been entrusted to the care of Congress. If the Congressional Leadership had knowledge of these disgusting and appalling emails and did nothing to stop it and to protect all of these kids, they must resign immediately.

I’m glad that Rep. Murtha has stepped forward to call for the immediate resignation of anyone that covered up the preying on of teenage boys by Republican Mark Foley; and I sincerely hope that more Congresspersons of conscious, whether Democrat or Republican, will come forward to do the same. Enough is enough.

So it Begins: Republicans Aim after Democrats

Well, it looks like the political landscape is about to be littered with bodies — in spite of what the news headlines read like. Just yesterday House Republicans reversed themselves by repealing changes they had made to the House Ethics Committee, which Republicans adopted to protect their Majority Leader — Tom DeLay (NY Times - April 28, 2005 ):

House Overturns New Ethics Rule as Republican Leadership Yields
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, April 27 - In a rare retreat, the Republican-led House on Wednesday overturned contentious rule changes made to the House ethics process, with Republicans saying they surrendered to the Democrats to try to restore a way to enforce proper conduct in the House.

[...]

One of the most immediate effects of the House’s reverting to the old rules will be the opening of an investigation into persistent questions about Mr. DeLay’s overseas travel and his relationships with prominent lobbyists. His fund-raising operations are under investigation by a grand jury in Texas, and some of the lobbyists’ roles have come under increasing scrutiny by federal investigators in recent months. While Mr. DeLay has not been named as a target of those investigations, the attention paid to his troubles has proven disruptive in the House.

[...]

The vote marked another pivot in a politically charged ethics tug-of-war expected to persist in the House. Lawmakers of both parties said they expected the resolution of the standoff to lead to calls for ethics inquiries into not only Mr. DeLay but also other members, including Democratic leaders.

As the NY Times article explains, the immediate effect will be to start the investigation into Tom DeLay’s alleged corruption violations, which “Tom DeLay’s House of Scandals” does a good job of cataloguing. The key point, however, is listed in the third paragraph above. So, while on its face Republicans’ reversal on the Ethics Committee changes may seem like a retreat, it in fact is the opening of a new front: Republicans are about to go after Democrats in the House.

The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress exclusively, has a lot more background information on the tit-for-tat ploy that Republicans are about to engage in:

Republican lawmakers who met yesterday to discuss a proposal by Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to reverse changes to House ethics rules said it is inevitable that their colleagues will file complaints against Democrats once the ethics panel is again operational.

Republicans said that not one of their colleagues has volunteered to file a complaint against a Democrat but that they have no doubt that will in fact happen.

Some GOP legislators are upset that they were forced to back down on the ethics rules, handing House Democrats a huge political victory. Others, including Hastert, believed that keeping the rules in place would have inflicted significant, long-term damage on House Republicans.

Clearly, Republicans are not interested in getting to the bottom of the corruption allegations under which Tom DeLay continues to exercise his leadership over House Republicans; instead, Republicans merely aim to muddy the waters by going after Democrats by fishing for any charge that’ll stick against any one of them.

As always, LiberalOasis provides some of the best commentary and analysis on the Republicans’ strategic retreat:

As you can see, scrapping the new ethics rules intended to block an investigation into Tom DeLay is not a retreat.

Just a change in strategy.

They’re tired of playing defense for DeLay.

So now they’re gearing up to play some offense.

[...]

While they can’t fully bump DeLay off the front pages, they can potentially muddy the waters, turning the narrative into an “everybody does it” kind of story.

Now, this is very much a high-risk strategy for the GOP.

A steady stream of “everybody does it” stories can create an anti-incumbent “Throw The Bums Out” dynamic, as the House Bank scandal did in 1992 (43 congresspeople were defeated, another 52 retired.)

While the GOP margin in the House has been fairly slim for several years, Dems have never been given much change to regain control, because incumbency re-elections rates have been so high.

A Throw The Bums Out dynamic, while possibly stinging some Dems, may well be the party’s best chance in 2006.

Read the entire post at LiberalOasis, there’s a lot of great insight and advice in the entry.

Fundamentalism at Home

Candidates of BOTH political parties often attend church gatherings and are sometimes invited to speak from the pulpit; however, when they do, candidates of BOTH parties do not use that opportunity to make a blatant political statement — that is, they don’t attack or advocate one policy position or another. Now, clearly, this is a subtle distinction, since it goes without say that if a candidate of a given party is up at a pulpit, then most congregants can reasonably assume that there’s some sort of tacit endorsement being made. However, as I posted earlier from this article, what some activist fundamentalist Republican legislators are proposing goes beyond merely giving the church the ability to make “tacit endorsements.” Instead, what these Republican legislators are seeking is to completely obliterate the Church/State divide that has served our nation so well for over 200 years — which is what’s made us the most successful pluralistic democracy on earth. More specifically, the proposed Republican legislation would permit the clergy to ACTIVELY endorse candidates, and to ACTIVELY engage in other common political activities.

Now, from our current vantage, it may seem alarmist to suggest that we’re in the brink of a Theocracy; however, as an example, let’s acknowledge, as many have already pointed out, that the only reason why the federal government intervened in Mrs. Shiavo’s tragedy is because Republican politicians deemed it necessary to satiate the demands from the religious fundamentalists base within their party. Again, it’s not just some lone voices in the woods that are opining this; Republican Representative Christopher Shays said as much:

“My party is demonstrating that they are for states’ rights unless they don’t like what states are doing,” said Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. “This couldn’t be a more classic case of a state responsibility.”

“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,” Shays said. “There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.”

Additionally, while we fight against Islamic terrorism, we’ve been engaged against fighting fundamentalism in Afghanistan and Iraq; and, too, our nation continually points at the perils of fundamentalism in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, it appears that while we fight abroad, some are perfectly happy and willing to institute our own brand of fundamentalism here are home. I, for one, cannot believe that the parallels are not being widely and publicly discussed. Finally, keep in mind that this is not about denying anybody their free speech right: the fact that our entire nation is enthralled by this tragic case is a clear example that no one’s free speech rights have been obstructed. Instead, the concern here is that adopting the fundamentalist tenets/values of one group puts in PERIL and UNDERMINES our pluralistic representative-democracy — basically, there’s a bunch of us living in our lovely country, with different religions, values, etc. and, if the arbiter between these groups (i.e., government) adopts one group’s fundamentalism over another’s, we run the risk of having a lot unhappy folks (running around questioning the legitimacy of the entire system). I’d hate to live in that type of society, and sincerely hope that we can avoid it.

“Party of Theocracy”

I’m a bit reluctant to proceed with this, as I know that a lot of people do not want to appear to be “confrontational” nor “insensitive to/dismissive of” the religious values that many of our fellow citizens hold. However, we — the American public — should now be extremely mindful of what’s taking place and, too, of the nature of the debate that a certain faction of — let’s be honest — the Republican party has foisted onto the national stage. Before going on, let me be clear about one point, reasonable American’s of virtually all political stripes agree on one thing: the Terri Shiavo tragedy is a PRIVATE FAMILY MATTER in which the federal government should’ve never interfered in — PERIOD.

Reasonable Americans need to be FULLY aware about the nature of the federal government’s actions — at the behest of a vociferous faction — in deciding to interfere in this private family matter. Moreover, we should not be timid nor reluctant in confronting those that would jeopardize our system of laws, plurality (religious, ethnic, etc.) and federalism. Now, this may sound merely as an academic concern; however, it is through a series of small, incremental actions that policies and our national direction can be changed — interference in the tragic Shiavo case is such an example.

Now, to demonstrate that my concern — and the concern of others — is shared across party lines, here’s what Republican Representative Christopher Shays has said on this matter:

“My party is demonstrating that they are for states’ rights unless they don’t like what states are doing,” said Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of five House Republicans who voted against the bill. “This couldn’t be a more classic case of a state responsibility.”

“This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,” Shays said. “There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.”