The main event in Washington D.C. has started this month

Harry Reid has been reported today as telling the Conservative Democratic Senator Max Baucus (very powerful Finance Committee Chairman) to stop trying to compromise with the Republicans on the Health care public option and on the regressive tax on employer-supplied health benefits. This has surprised a lot of people who have a poor opinion of Harry Reid's spinal fortitude. If you are familiar with the way he stood up to Mob intimidation as a prosecutor, today's reported demand to Max Baucus shouldn't be a surprise. The real question ought to be "Why has he apparently let the conservatives and Republicans roll him all of this year." That's what is out of character. Here's my opinion.

Things have changed this month. Up until now this year the legislature has been involved in just keeping the government running, and the Republicans have been in the business of obstructing everything the Democrats attempt (which among other things is why so few of Obama's political appointees to fill plum book appointments have gotten votes and why Republican Senators keep putting holds on them.) But this is July. The health care bill is on the table for this month. The health care bill is the main event, unlike everything else that has come up before this month.

Obama, Reid and Pelosi between them have total responsibility to keep the government functioning in spite of the asinine and unified obstructionist actions and language of the Republicans as dominated by the talk show hosts. Obama has done a masterful job of playing the Republicans so that the only positions they could take to oppose him have been more self-destructive than effectively obstructionist on the large issues.

Between Pelosi and Reid, Pelosi has the easier job because of no filibuster. She still has to mollify the Blue Dogs who are almost as skittish as the Republicans because they fear the next primary. So Pelosi has compromised with both the Republicans and the Blue Dogs to a greater extent than any of us like at all.

Reid with only 59 Democrats until today as well as the filibuster which the Republicans are only mildly hesitant to use was in much worse situation than Pelosi. I'd bet he has been counting votes very closely and keeping the conservative Democratic Senators mollified.

But two things have just changed. Al Franken was sworn in today and the big initiative - health care - is in the balance. This is once in a lifetime, not just in a political career. I'm more and more convinced that the three top Democrats - Obama, Reid and Pelosi, have been gearing everything to powering the health care bill into enactment this year. That's the reason for the refusal to accept delays, and I think they have allowed some things to be enacted that they hate (I know I do) so as to not waste Presidential power on secondary issues. But now we are in the main bout. If I am right, then the gloves are going to come off.

We'll get only hints of the machinations because they aren't even inside the beltway. They are inside the Senate and House. and the Press mostly hasn't a clue, and the ones who have read Richard E. Neustadt's book "Presidential Power" will find that it runs counter to the permitted media narrative. But some reporter with inside connections on the Hill and the smarts to apply Neaustadt's teachings to the analysis has one Hell of a great book to write, much like Ted Sorenson's "Making of the President."

I won't guarantee this, of course, nor do I have original reporting to confirm it. But I've read Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, the first edition of which was published in 1960, and which JFK was reported to have read between the election and his inauguration. Neustadt essentially wrote the the President's power is limited, and it grows with each win that he is responsible for and is diminished by each loss. Obama has essentially kept his hands off of most of the things that come from Congress, so his loss has been minimal. On the positive side, the three of them have been setting things up specifically for health care, with the Budget powers to avoid a filibuster if necessary and the rapid schedule set so that the bill is dealt with when Obama's power as an incoming President with a solid majority is at its height. The fact that Reid has not stood for any delays in the schedule for completing health care is an indication of how the three are husbanding their resources.

I really think that the power the three have been husbanding all year is about to come unleashed. When it comes down to the crunch, the health care vote is going to be the first mandatory party-line vote this year. Up until now, the Democratic defectors have gotten a "gimme." Not this time. And for those who go with the Party voting for health care and find it damages their prospects for surviving their next Primary, the Party will provide the kinds of support needed to get a win in that primary. They did it for Lieberman, to the disgust of many of us. Is this why?

As I say, I won't guarantee this scenario, but I really think I see is coming together. If so, we are about to see it work out. I sure hope I am right.

Harry Reid is out of touch with reality

Harry Reid doesn't think Ted Stevens deserves to go to jail.

"My personal feeling, you guys, I don't know what good that [would do]... He was a real war hero too, you know. He's been punished enough."

That's because Reid and Stevens belong(ed) to the Senate, making them two of the most powerful men in America.

In America the rich and powerful do not generally go to prison. But for those in the lower classes:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population. But it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.

The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China's extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)

And who passes the laws that imprison so many Americans for so many crimes not similarly punished anywhere else in the world? The powerful men in America, that's who. The same ones who don't themselves go to prison very often even when convicted of crimes others would spend long prison terms for.

Consider, for comparison, Martha Stewart.

(...)the homemaking diva was sentenced to five months in prison and two years' probation Friday for lying to investigators about her sale of ImClone Systems stock in late 2001.

Federal Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum also ordered Stewart to serve five months of home confinement after her release and fined the lifestyle expert $30,000.

The sentence was the minimum the judge could impose under federal sentencing guidelines. The fine, while relatively small given Stewart's wealth, was the maximum allowed under federal rules.

Hours later, Peter Bacanovic, Stewart's former broker at Merrill Lynch, also was sentenced to five months in prison and two years' probation; he was fined $4,000.

Martha Stewart was rich enough so that her prison sentence made the news, (most cases don't) but since she was not a powerful Senator, she couldn't avoid the minimum sentence mandated by law. That law was passed by the House, the Senate, and signed by the President.

Oh, and Martha is not a veteran, either. Maybe she could have avoided prison time had she been a "war hero." If, of course, she had a Senator to speak up for her.

I used to defend Harry Reid as a man doing the bet he could in a difficult situation, but this statement and his refusal to act against his fellow Senator Joe Lieberman after Joe worked so hard, lied so much and attacked the Democratic Party in order to elect John McCain as President shows me who Harry Reid has become.

Reid is simply not going to push to investigate the corruption and idiocies out of Wall Street which have led to the current and worsening Recession because the wealthy Wall Street bankers are his friends. He'll sweep the failure of Hank Paulson's handling of TARP as he has handed out free money to his only Wall Street friends. Paulson is rich and powerful. And Reid represents the Democratic Party Senate culture.

Now I realize that the power of the Senate has gone to Reid's head and he has gone "Washington native." He is now reduced to representing his fellow Senators instead of the American people. It's time for Harry Reid to go.

Reid to Lieberman - you won't keep the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Harry Reid has reportedly told Joe Lieberman that he will not be allowed to keep the Chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He can have another committee, but not that one.

Senator Lieberman has replied through aides that if he cannot keep that committee he will switch to join the Republican caucus. Unfortunately for Joe, Ryan Grim of Politico writes:

A Republican Senate aide said Friday morning that there was little McConnell could offer in terms of high-ranking committee slots, which is why Lieberman is resisting overtures from the Republican side.

Steve Benen wonders why Lieberman is so dead set that he has to keep the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, then offers a likely explanation.

This seems to be routinely overlooked, but take a moment to consider what the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs actually does: it's the committee principally responsible for oversight of the executive branch. It's an accountability committee, charged with investigating the conduct of the White House and the president's administration.

As chairman of this committee for the last two years, Lieberman decided not to pursue any accusations of wrongdoing against the Bush administration. Lieberman's House counterpart -- Rep. Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee -- was a vigilant watchdog, holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and launching multiple investigations. Lieberman preferred to let his committee do no real work at all. It was arguably the most pathetic display of this Congress.

And yet, now Lieberman acts as if keeping this chairmanship is the single most important part of his public life. Why would he be so desperate to keep the gavel of a committee he hasn't used? I'll let you in on a secret: he wants to start using the power of this committee against Obama.

Lieberman didn't want to hold Bush accountable, but he seems exceedingly anxious to keep the committee that would go after Obama with a vengeance, effectively becoming a Waxman-like figure -- holding hearings, issuing subpoenas, and launching investigations against the Democratic president.

That would fit with his recent attacks on Obama and his support for McCain.

My advice to the Senate Democrats - It's good riddance to bad rubbish. No one can trust Joe Lieberman, and leaving him on a powerful committee is stupid.

Besides, Hillary Clinton doesn't have a committee Chairmanship. She might like that one.

Bloggers win on retroactive telecom immunity!

Bloggers and Chris Dodd win a really big fight. Open Left has the story. Harry Reid has caved and is ready to protect the Rule of Law instead of the conservative Bush administration and the corporations who currently run and exploit America.

When Bush first took office in January 2001, eight months before 9/11, one of the first actions of his administration did in February was to go to the telephone companies and ask them to begin illegally wiretapping American citizens without warrants. This was criminal behavior on the part of both the Bush administration and of the telephone companies who acted as the new administration instructed them. Nothing in the FISA Act, which was the primary wiretapping law at the time, permitted that action. The phone companies who conducted the illegal telephone wiretaps can be sued for damages because they conducted those illegal wiretaps. Their lawyers knew that no law permitted their action.

The Bush administration pushed through the Protect America Act of 2007 that, among other things, provides immunity against lawsuits to phone companies who act illegally at the request of the government. What the Protect America Act did not do was make that immunity retroactive to relieve the phone companies from liability for their earlier clearly illegal actions.

For the last year the Bush administration has been demanding that Congress include retroactive immunity for the phone companies for their already conducted crimes. This is an issue of whether the government and the phone companies should be subject to the Rule of Law, but it is sufficiently technical to glaze over the eyes of most voters. Only policy wonks and bloggers recognize how totally Unamerican the actions by both the Bush administration and the telecoms were. Sen. Reid (Democratic Majority Leader) was ready to pass a renewal of the FISA Act that included a "retroactive immunity for telecoms" provision. Sen. Chris Dodd had placed a hold on the bill which prevented it from being considered by the Senate until that provision was removed. Harry Reid is known to have said that as soon as Sen. Dodd drops out of the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination he would quit grandstanding and the updated FISA bill with immunity for the telecoms would be passed.

Well, Sen. Dodd has dropped out of the race for the Presidential nomination, and apparently he was not grandstanding. Chris Bowers of Open Left quotes the Wall Street Journal:

We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.

This is a big win for America, for the Rule of Law, for Sen. Chris Dodd, and for Sen. Dodd's supporters in the Blogosphere.

This win is probably the most significant "flexing of the political muscles" by the blogosphere. It is another step forward as the blogosphere becomes a significant player in American politics. Since the blogosphere is the only institution in American politics which is NOT controlled by some form of small group of leaders. It is a place where anyone can throw out ideas, complaints and proposals and not be subject to arbitrary control by some gatekeeper. Instead with the blogosphere we get significant groups coming together around various issues, and now we see that those groups are beginning to show real muscle politically.

While this may be a new form of mass democracy, as the blogosphere begins to demonstrate political power, there will be currently existing institutions that try to get control of the blogosphere. So we need to watch both the growth of effective power in the blogosphere, and then we need to watch to see who pushes back.

Welcome to Terra Incognita. At least at the moment the direction of movement is correct.

Reid - 'Harmony' preferred to stopping Bush extremism

We recently watched Sen. Chris Dodd go toe-to-toe with the Majority Leader, Harry Reid, about stopping the passage of the FISA bill that contains full immunity for the telecoms that illegally supported Bush's attack on the privacy of American citizens. This illegal action was in February 2001, well before Bush even admitted that non-sate terrorists were a real threat to Americans.

Reid gave in to Chris Dodd's threat to filibuster the bill and pulled it, with the statement that he would bring it back in January. Reid's spokesman says that Reid will pass the bill in January - along with the immunity for the crooked telecoms. As Glenn Greenwald says, Reid thinks that Sen. Dodd was just grandstanding and that as soon as his Presidential bid dies in January, Dodd will stop disrupting the harmony of the Senate.

Here's Glenn's take on what Reid is doing:

In the Beltway world, anyone who aggressively objects to the Bush administration's extremism, and especially its lawbreaking, is always guilty of (at least) one of two sins: they are either fringe, unSerious, overly earnest losers, or -- as in the case with the accusations against Dodd here -- simply pretending to be bothered by such things in order to rouse the rabble and exploit them for cynical political gain. Anyone who disrupts Beltway harmony in order to hold the Bush administration accountable -- anyone who seems actually bothered by the rampant lawbreaking -- is thus easily dismissed as an annoying radical or a self-promoting fraud.

After all, it can't possibly be the case that Dodd actually believes in what he's doing and saying. He can't really care if telecoms are protected from the consequences of their years of deliberate, highly profitable lawbreaking. Clearly, Dodd's just doing all of this to prop up his flagging presidential campaign, just a cynical ploy for attention, not because he has any actual convictions that there is something wrong with granting such an extraordinary and corrupt gift to lawbreaking telecoms. No Serious person would ever actually get riled up about anything like that.

As much as the Bush administration's push for an authoritarian corporatized, globalized America made up of the wealthy and the poor with no effective middle class disgusts me (and violates the Constitution) the problem with the minority Republican Party is only one portion of the difficulty America faces.

The other part is that the Democratic leadership inside the beltway has gone native. "Harmony" is more important than the Constitution and the Rule of Law, and a lot more important than the needs of the average American for affordable and reliable health care.

When the Republicans get their ass whupped in November, the next problem to be resolved is for the Americans to retake the Democratic Party back from the out-of-touch beltway leadership. The idiots in Washington either need to go or get retrained, one or the other.

Reid can't trust Bush, so will hold Summer sessions to avoid recess appointments

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid has had it with President Bush's unacceptable recess appointments. According to U.S. News and World Report he will call the Senate back into session every ten days during the normal Summer recess so that Bush cannot appoint any more unacceptable individuals to jobs that last until the end of the Bush term.

Good for Harry!

Reid, Pelosi warned Bush to expect a real fight.

Bush met at the White House with Congressional leaders today about the supplemental funding bill for the war in Iraq. Greg Sargent has what he calls some "color" from the confrontation:

A source familiar with the meeting -- at which no compromise of any kind was reached, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly today that it had been "productive" -- shares a few interesting tidbits. First, the source says, Bush bristled and was taken aback when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the current situation to Vietnam; he also appeared irked by those who said the war couldn't be won.

Second, according to the source, Reid told Bush that he understood that the White House would come after Congressional Dems after the veto of the bill with everything they had; Reid vowed to respond every bit as aggressively.

"Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam," the source relates. "He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost."

"The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it," the source continued. "And he clearly didn't like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn't be won militarily."

More: "Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue."

It doesn't look like Reid and Pelosi are going to back down. Bush is a bully, and when meeting this kind of opposition, Bully's frequently do back down. However, Cheney is crazy and Rove will not accept any single decision that threatens Republican election possibilities in 2008, and I suspect that Rove would view a retreat by Bush as such a threat.

This is going to be interesting.

Reid: Rove must testify under oath.

Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, speaking to Al Hunt at Bloomberg. expects that White House officials will testify as a result of a compromise. Some will be permitted to testify in private without sworn testimony, but NOT Karl Rove. Karl Rove must be under oath.

``Certainly, Karl Rove, with his resume, would have to be under oath,'' Reid, 67, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air this weekend. ``He simply in my opinion, and I think the majority of the American people, is not trustworthy.''[Snip]

Reid stressed that he thinks a compromise is possible, and that not all officials need to give sworn statements. ``Well, I think that there could be some testimony taken in private'' and ``would be recorded,'' Reid said. ``We could do that.'' [Snip]

Reid in the interview said he didn't know if the White House is engaged in obstructing justice, though he said the matter is emerging as one of the Bush administration's most troubling ``scandals.''

``This is a scandal and the American people are interested in the truth, and that's always a little hard to come by, especially when you have Karl Rove involved in the scenario,'' Reid said.

Reid has repeatedly questioned Rove's integrity because he was embroiled in the recent federal investigation of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby was convicted March 6 of lying to investigators in the only criminal case sparked by the leak, and Rove made five grand jury appearances in the case.

I like Sen. Reid. We get a lot of honesty from him, openly expressed to the public. The comparison between Reid and the Bush Administration and the Republican Senators and Representatives is a real breathe of fresh air.