Republican women and the Lilly Ledbetter Act

Republican women Senators broke with their party to help pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, but Republican women in the House didn’t.

Ledbetter had sued her employer when she discovered that she was making far less than her male collegues, but (in a 5-4 decision) the Supreme Court decided that she hadn't discovered it quickly enough:

Although Ledbetter did the same job as her colleagues, and had more seniority than some of them, they were all being paid considerably more than she was. Ledbetter sued, under the Civil Rights Act, and proved that her lower pay was the result of discrimination early in her career, the effects of which had never been remedied. But victory was short-lived; the verdict was overturned on appeal, and then the Supreme Court ruled against her. The Court did not deny that Ledbetter had been discriminated against. However, according to the Civil Rights Act, Ledbetter’s lawsuit had to be filed within a hundred and eighty days, and the Court ruled that the clock started ticking with the first act of discrimination, almost two decades before Ledbetter found out what was going on.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act overturns that decision, clarifying that the clock starts ticking with the most recent discriminatory paycheck. Last year, Republicans successfully filibustered the bill and George Bush had threatened to veto it if it got to his desk. Yesterday's bill passed the Senate 61-36, enough to stop another threatened filibuster. Without the support of Republicans Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) it would have fallen short.

Arlen Specter (R-PA) was the only Republican man in the Senate who joined them.

But before you conclude that Republican women and Republican men are hopelessly divided on this issue, realize that only 3 House Republicans supported the bill; Ed Whitfield (KY), Don Young (AK) and Christopher Smith (NJ) - all men.

John Kyl: just kidding about the nuclear option

Wait! You mean all that talk about the need for an "up or down vote" was just a bunch of partisan B.S.?

November 2008

“He believes in justices that have empathy,” said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

That didn't take long.

It seems like just yesterday Senator Kyl was wringing his hands over the thought that Democrats were destroying 214 years of "wise, carefully thought out" Senate tradition.

April 18, 2005

KWAME HOLMAN: But Sen. Kyl says the advise and consent role should include an up-or-down vote as well and changing the Senate rules may be the only way to guarantee it.

SEN. JON KYL: There may well come a Supreme Court vacancy soon. I just don't think the people of the country are going to stand by and let a minority dictate whether or not we're even going take a vote on a nominee.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: My strategy is to use every ounce of my energy to try to confirm President Bush's judges without going to the so-called "constitutional" or "nuclear option."

KWAME HOLMAN: But Sen. Kyl says Democrats may give Republicans no choice.

SEN. JON KYL: Our Democratic colleagues have to make a decision. Will they continue their filibuster or not? If they do, and they're not willing to discuss any kind of a compromise, then I don't see any alternative but to reestablish the tradition of the majority vote.

April 25, 2005

SEN. JOHN KYL: This is strictly about whether or not a minority of senators is going to prevent the president from being able to name and get confirmed judges that he chooses after he's been elected by the American people. And it's never been the case until the last two years that a minority could dictate to the majority what they could do.

...

SEN. JOHN KYL: Well, I'll tell you what is shutting down the judiciary is not filling vacancies. We have according to the commission on the courts several emergency judicial emergencies, situations in which we need to put judges in to vacant positions. They're not -- we're not being able to act on them. It really is true that justice delayed is justice denied. So we need to give these judges an up or down vote. That's all we're asking for, and if some of my colleagues think that they're too conservative or in some other way unqualified then vote against them.

May 19, 2005

SEN. JOHN KYL: The reality is that the Senate is now engaged in an historic effort to protect constitutional prerogatives and the proper checks and balances between the branches of government. Republicans seek to right a wrong that has undermined 214 years of tradition – wise, carefully thought-out tradition. The fact that the Senate rules theoretically allowed the filibuster of judicial nominations but were never used to that end is an important indicator of what is right, and why the precedent of allowing up-or-down votes is so well established. It is that precedent that has been attacked and which we seek to restore.

Fortunately, the Senate is not powerless to prevent a minority from running roughshod over its traditions. It has the power – and the obligation – to govern itself. As I will demonstrate today, that power to govern itself easily extends to that device that has come to be known as the “constitutional option.”

Feingold as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee?

The Hill worries about the possibility that Russ Feingold could become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

That leaves Feingold, an unapologetic champion of civil liberties and a staunch opponent of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, next in line. Feingold opposed the war from the start and was the first senator to call for a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable.

You'd think the results of the last two elections would make that a no-brainer. But not everyone agrees:

Democrats could bypass the Wisconsin senator and choose a more centrist member, such as Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.), who initially supported the war and could be more open to compromise.

Yes. Why would anyone want a chairman who's an unapologetic defender of civil liberties and opposed an unpopular war, when we could have a man who reached across the aisle to vote for the biggest foreign policy blunder of the last 40 years?

I suppose in a bipartisan paradise Joe Lieberman would keep his committee chairmanship despite attacking the Democratic majority, and Russ Feingold would be expelled from the caucus for not playing nice with Republicans.

"We're going to take over these bad loans"

Now if that that isn't a winning campaign slogan, I don't know what is.

"We're going to take over these bad loans," McCain said. "And we're going to have the taxpayer help you out. But when the time comes and the economy recovers, then anything that's gained back is going to go to the taxpayers first.

It'd be great if, as a U.S. Senator, he made sure that was actually written in the legislation. I hear he has until Friday.

Of course there is a way to be confident that taxpayers will get paid back if the government bailout works. Instead of buying toxic debt, buy a stake in the corporations themselves.

[T]he financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.

I don't suppose anyone on Capitol Hill reads the New York Times.

"Banking lobbyists cheered"

Flashback to April, when Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) attempted to add an amendment to the housing bill which would have protected homeowners facing foreclosure.

The 58-36 vote to table the amendment allowed senators to move on to less contentious amendments to the housing measure forged Wednesday by Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

Durbin’s amendment would allow judges to revise the terms of mortgages on primary residences. It is opposed by the banking lobby and most Republicans. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for example, said earlier Thursday that he would have insisted on a 60-vote threshold for the amendment’s adoption. That all but doomed the bill’s chances in a Senate split 51-49.

...

But banking lobbyists cheered the tabling vote.

"This has been at the very top of our members' priority list,” [Francis] Creighton [of the Mortgage Bankers Association] said, adding that the change would have been a "terrible thing for the housing market, our customers and, yes, our members."

Francis Creighton, quoted above, has recently been promoted to Chief Lobbyist for the Mortgage Bankers Association, so I guess the industry's collapse hasn't been bad for everyone.

Joe Biden voted with Dick Durbin to keep the amendment.

Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Clinton were all absent on the campaign trail.

And P.S. to Democrats in the Senate. You don't get to complain about Mitch McConnell filibustering your bills until you can get at least 51 votes to back the legislation

Image originally uploaded by bbcworldservice's photostream under a Creative Commons license.

Chris Dodd: man of the hour

The 4th amendment. Image originally uploaded by wemeantdemocracy.

At least one of the Democrats running for president remembers that he already has a platform to fight back against President Bush's power grab.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) -- a presidential candidate who returned from Iowa Sunday night to fight the measure -- quickly claimed victory after the bill's withdrawal, and he again vowed to "utilize all the tools available" to block passage once Reid calls it up in January.

Reid, unfortunately, has done all he could to undermine his fellow Democrat and Dodd got little support from his colleagues. Only 10 Senators joined him in voting against moving the FISA bill forward. 35 of his fellow Democrats voted against him (those who think we simply need more Democrats in the Senate should keep that in mind).

Dodd took a significant risk against long odds in what has been one of the few victories against George Bush's assault on the rule of law.

Dodd has been an outspoken opponent of any measure that would offer retroactive immunity to telecom companies that participated with the Bush Administration in violating the civil liberties of millions of American. He announced in October he would put a hold on any bill that included retroactive immunity language. Although his hold was disregarded, he has remained a strong opponent to the bill. Dodd was prepared to offer an amendment that would strip the retroactive immunity provision of the bill and announced he would filibuster the bill if his amendment failed.

I consider it very strange that none of the other Democratic Senators running for president have taken advantage of their positions to prove their ability to lead on controversial issues. Bush's claims of presidential power cannot be defeated by the next president from within the White House. If Congress continues to capitulate to his whims, they no longer are a co-equal branch of government.

Nice timing Pinnochio

Arlen Specter (right) has a chance encounter with Karl Rove on his way to the Senate. Image originally uploaded by nanotron.

12/05/07: Arlen Specter is furious at Harry Reid for calling him a puppet of George Bush

Specter, R-Pa., cried foul and declared that Reid had not only violated Senate Rule XIX, which prohibits the questioning of a senator’s integrity, but was just flat wrong.

12/06/07: Arlen Specter acts to protect Karl Rove from a Congressional subpoena

A Senate Judiciary Committee vote on contempt resolutions against Karl Rove and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten were postponed following an objection by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

h/t ThinkProgress

Please stop helping

The bad idea that just refuses to die continues to gain support among the Washington elite, most recently in an article by ambassador Peter Galbraith, applauding Joe Biden's plan to divide Iraq into 3 parts.

In a surge of realism, the Senate has voted 75-23 to acknowledge that Iraq has broken up and cannot be put back together. The measure, co-sponsored by Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, supports a plan for Iraq to become a loose confederation of three regions -- a Kurdish area in the north, a Shiite region in the south and a Sunni enclave in the center -- with the national government in Baghdad having few powers other than to manage the equitable distribution of oil revenues.

This is all a very nice attempt to fix Iraq, presented by many of the same people who got us into this mess in the first place. All despite the stated desires of a majority of Iraqis to keep the country united, not to mention our own claim to have handed over sovereignty more than 3 years ago.

Having originally ignored the warnings that a preemptive war might descend into chaos, our Senators now feel quite proud that they've learned the difference between the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds. Surely, the best solution is to separate each party and let them control their respective regions.

That is until you take a closer look at the map above and realize that the parties aren't as easy to separate as you might have hoped. The areas where the groups are mixed have names like Mosul, Arbil, Kirkuk, Sulayminiyah, Samara, Ramadi, and of course Baghdad. In other words, the places most of the people actually live.

Galbraith assures us that Iraq is unlikely to follow the Bosnian descent into ethnic cleansing and shrugs off the idea that the Turks might actually be serious about invading. But if you don't think the militias will do battle to seize control of the major cities then you haven't been paying attention.

Russ Feingold joined 22 Republicans opposing Biden's measure.
Barack Obama and John McCain were the only Senators not voting

Legitimacy

Scott Lemieux at Tapped makes a common error while calling for the Senate to reject Michael Mukasey's nomination for Attorney General:

It's true that the Senate vote is virtually all about symbolism at this point -- someone has to serve in the office, and nobody Bush appoints is going to be good -- but in this case the symbolism matters.

Confirming a nominee is about much more than just filling an open position. Confirmation implies legitimacy. This reverberates throughout the entire Justice department. The lawyers he hires, the interpretation of the law he pursues even the cases he prosecutes are affected by his standing with the people.

There's nothing symbolic about demanding that a nominee believe in the rule of law and emphatically renounce torture. Alberto Gonzales would never have been confirmed in the first place if the Senate had demanded those simple standards. Instead, 6 Democrats voted along with 54 Republicans to give him a Congressional seal of approval.

Gonzales was able to run roughshod over Justice because he was confirmed by a Senate that knew he condoned torture and believed in a unitary executive. He was forced out when he lost the faith of those same Senators

A recess appointee would never have had the clout to act so egregiously.

Precedents matter in this country. Regardless of whether George Bush ever nominates a qualified AG, future presidents should be on notice that they can't simply nominate anybody to the highest offices in government.

Why is the cost of the Iraq war rising year after year?

Because politicians pretend that wars are free.

“Just as I have opposed the war from the outset, I am opposed to a draft and I am opposed to a war surtax,” Pelosi said in a statement issued this afternoon.

Funny thing, though, you've actually been sending war budgets up for a vote.

To date we've spent nearly half a trillion dollars on the Iraq war alone. The dirty little secret is that we haven't actually paid for it yet. Those bills are going to come due whether you call it a war surtax or not.

Democrats had the opportunity to make the president decide between his two favorite causes: the Iraq war and "tax cuts so help me God". Instead we get Congresswoman Pelosi declaring that she doesn't believe in a war tax and Bush gets his funding without any obligation to actually pay for it.

So then annual war spending jumps from $50 billion to $75 billion to $85 billion to $100 billion to $130 billion to $160 billion, because everyone pretends the money isn't real.

As long as Congress keeps rubber stamping George Bush's war requests, they at least need to find a way to pay for it.

h/t John Cole

97 Senators vote to censure criticism of the military

in two amendments, one sponsored by Democrat Barbara Boxer, the other by Republican John Cornyn.

Russ Feingold was the only Senator voting against both amendments.

46 Republicans thought it was perfectly acceptable to attack veterans like Max Cleland and John Kerry, but outrageous to attack the credibility of General Petraeus.

22 Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman felt it was reprehensible to ever criticize members of the military.

Joe Biden and Maria Cantwell didn't vote on either measure.


(For comparison, only 5 Senators were willing to go on the record censuring the President for violating the law by spying on Americans without a warrant.)

The call of the moderate Republican

“I endorsed it,” Mr. Warner said of the Webb proposal. “I intend now to cast a vote against it.”

Webb's amendment would have required the military to grant soldiers as much time at home as they spent overseas. The vote to end debate garnered 56 votes in the Senate. A majority, but short of the 60 needed to overcome Mitch McConnell's filibuster.

40 Republicans and Independent Joe Lieberman voted against cloture.

Republicans Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, and John Sununu broke with their party.

Let's hope John Warner finds his lost self-respect in retirement.

Democratic majority suicide watch

In an absurdly titled article in the New York Times we learn that the Democrats are preparing to cave, yet again, before the fight even begins.

Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq

With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

This is the same group of Senate Democrats who voted 36-11 to rubber stamp George Bush's $120 billion emergency supplemental request last May.

16 of them later voted to legalize the secret NSA domestic spying program. The one that was judged an unconstitutional violation of the 4th amendment last August.

One wonders what more they could do in the name of compromise.

Democrats had been counting on more Republicans to make a clean break from the president after the summer recess, but the White House has managed, at least temporarily, to hold on to much of its support.

After explicitly telling the president that he merely needs to veto legislation to get his way, and showing the minority leader that he can pass his own bill by filibustering theirs; the Democrats thought the Republicans would now cooperate? This is the sort of political acumen that has led to a 20 point drop in their approval rating since January.

Some Democrats have concluded that their decision earlier this summer to thwart votes on alternatives left them open to criticism that they were being intransigent. Democrats had wanted to keep pressure on Republicans over the summer by denying them votes on Iraq. Now, with the recess over, Democratic leaders are more willing to allow alternatives to a hard withdrawal date to reach the floor to keep pressure on President Bush.

Mr. Levin and other Democrats said this week that they were reaching out to Republicans who had expressed reservations about Mr. Bush’s policy to generate momentum for a proposal by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, to begin to remove at least a limited number of troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

Harry Reid has demonstrated that he simply doesn't know how to lead the Senate. Instead of pushing a Democratic Iraq strategy, he begins negotiations by starting with Republican John Warner's. (Warner's plan is to ask nicely if the president would please send a few troops home for Christmas.)

Democrats won in 2006 because a majority of Americans had tired of an ineffectual rubber stamp Republican Congress and their support for the war plan of the most incompetent president in American history. Democrats were elected to change course, not whine. They cannot wait for Republican conversions. They have the power of the purse and the power to block the president's agenda, but they need to actually use it. If they smack their supporters again they can kiss the Senate goodbye in 2008.

Keep your eye on the ball, Harry. Three strikes and you're out.

Couldn't you just keep quiet for another 9-10 years?

Apparently the militias in Iraq weren't a real problem until the Democrats got elected.

While debate over a war's merits -- and whether to withdraw -- is a sign of a healthy democracy, Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces in a long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building campaign. Such debate can be detrimental to the battle for perceptions. Having linked its future to an antiwar stance, the Democratic Congress has in effect told Iraqis that they are best off joining militias, because the dissolution of Iraq is only going to accelerate.

This is the same Democratic Congress that rubber stamped George Bush's last request for just under $100 billion dollars.

You might've thought that the threat of sectarian death squads was a bigger motivator for potential recruits.

Honestly, if this is the thinking of a man who bills himself as "a co-author of the military's counterinsurgency field manual" I'm not surprised that our efforts in Iraq are going so badly. We aren't failing in because people are debating it. We're failing because the people running it think it can be won with the best propaganda strategy.


h/t Matt Yglesias

Warner calls for pullout by winter (of 2039)

John Warner is getting a lot of credit in the press for his "sharp and clear message" suggesting that it would be nice if the president pulled a few troops from Iraq by Christmas.

In a misleadingly titled article ("Warner Calls for Pullouts by Winter") the Washington Post quotes exactly what the senior Republican moderate considers a significant change in course.

"I can think of no clearer form of that than if the president were to announce on the 15th that, in consultation with our senior military commanders, he's decided to initiate the first step in a withdrawal of armed forces," Warner said. "I say to the president respectfully, 'Pick whatever number you wish.' . . . Say, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year. That's the first step."

5000 troops brought home by Christmas. At that rate, we'll be out of Iraq in 32 years.

But only if the president really thinks we should do that, of course.

Senate Democrats cave to Bush, again

Unable to hold fast against a president now mired in the high 20's, the Democrats are rapidly proving that the November victory didn't include a backbone transplant. Having caved completely to Bush on the Iraq war supplemental, they've now caved completely to his demands for domestic spying:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

Anyone who believed that September was going to be a magic drop dead date for the president's war strategy should take a lesson from this. Congress believes it is subservient to George Bush. He will continue to treat them with utter contempt until they give him a reason to take them seriously.

Prepare to see Congress's approval numbers drop dramatically again, as voters who elected Democrats to serve as a check on this president, realize that the rubber stamp Congress just changed leadership.



Update - the political consequences are summarized best here:

The Democrats have seriously alienated a significant portion of their base and they will not replace those voters with the Fox News viewers they sought to appease. It's not easy to win an argument (if it's possible at all) against people who claim there's no difference between the parties. Right now, the results are the same as they were seven months ago.

John McCain votes against ethics reform

Sacrificing the last shreds of his dignity, John McCain joined 13 other Senate Republicans voting against ethics reform today. Despite missing a record number of votes this year, he cut short a campaign stop to make his voice heard against this one.

Enactment of the bill would mark the most sweeping ethics reforms since the Watergate era, requiring lawmakers for the first time to disclose fundraising by lobbyists, tightening rules on gift-giving to staff and lawmakers, forcing lobbyists to disclose their contacts, clamping down on members’ junkets and requiring lawmakers to disclose when they seek earmarked funds for projects in their home states.

Despite having failed to advance Congressional ethics reform during the years his own party was in control, McCain thought this bill was too timid.

But a bloc of conservative Republicans said the plan does not go far enough in shining a light on earmarks, the source of recent corruption scandals on the Hill. They slammed their Republican colleagues for backing the earmark disclosure requirements, which they said would allow members to hide their pet projects by exploiting loopholes in the legislation.

He lent his reputation as a reformer to the same Republican leaders who presided over the biggest pork-barrel spending in history.

This unfortunately isn't the first time McCain has gone soft on transparency in politics.

After all, we might want to censure Hillary someday

In another example of the absurd logic of our Republican political leaders: James Sensenbrenner worries that, if we don't give George Bush a blank check today, we'll be forced to give every president a blank check in the future.

“I think the White House is going to win in court,” asserted Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the former chairman of the panel. “If we do bring the case to court and lose, then that is going to be viewed as a blank check by the current president and the future presidents to snub the Congress” in its oversight responsibilities.”

Absurdity alert: filibuster edition

Just now on CNN: Republican leader Mitch McConnell complaining that Harry Reid tabled the bill that the Republicans filibustered.

Just asking

Does anybody else wish that, instead of inviting groups of sycophants and ego strokers to talk about his legacy, George Bush would have instead called in a group of Senators and foreign policy experts to brain storm a solution to the disaster in Iraq?

And that instead of keeping quiet and "waiting until September" to start debating the country's priorities, we were having a vigorous debate right now?