Good afternoon, Progressive Electorate readers. This is your afternoon open thread to discuss all things Hill-related. Use this thread to praise or bash Congresscritters, share a juicy tip, ask questions, offer critiques and suggestions, or post manifestos.
As always, this is a cross post from Congress Matters. You can also catch it on Progressive Electorate.
My thoughts are across the fold:
Massachusetts Election
Update: The Coakley campaign is asking the Mass. Secretary of State to look into allegations of ballot tampering.
Attorney Mark Elias said the campaign received reports of ballots being given to voters pre-marked for Coakley's opponent Republican Scott Brown.
"We have received reports of five ballots -- spanning three jurisdictions," Elias said.
Elias said the voters caught the errors and brought the ballots to back to the poll workers.
Did you hear that there's special election in Massachusetts today? Well there is. The turnout seems to be incredible
Light snow has not discouraged heavy traffic at polling places. In Boston, nearly 82,000 people, or about 23 percent of registered voters, had cast ballots by 3 p.m., a pace that is well more than double that during the primary last month. Other cities and towns experienced similar waves of voters. Lines formed at a polling place in Somerville, and traffic backed up at Bates Elementary School in Wellesley, with cars spilling onto Elmwood Road. In two Quincy precincts at the Lodge of Elks, nearly 1,000 people -- or about 25 percent of voters -- cast ballots by 1 p.m.
~snip
In West Roxbury at St. George Orthodox Church, Phil DiCarlo cast his ballot for Democrat Martha Coakley but noted how quickly the Brown campaign gathered steam.
"It seems like people have short memories," DiCarlo said. "They forgot about the last eight years" under former president George Bush.
The Netroots have done there part by phonebanking from home and canvassing in Massachusetts and President Obama showed up to campaign for Martha Coakley over the weekend. Nekkid Scotty Brown's people have been out in force, too.
I think we all realize that this is important because Coakley would represent the 60th Senate vote for health care reform and whatever is on the agenda for 2010.
The results are not even in yet and the navel gazing has begun.
Anthony Weiner:
"I think you can make a pretty good argument that health care might be dead," Weiner said on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."
Weiner, one of the House’s more progressive members, said "it’s going to be very hard" to ask members of the House to vote for the Senate bill — what some believe would be a likely scenario if Democrats lose the Massachusetts Senate seat.
Barney Frank:
Said Frank: "If Scott Brown wins, it'll kill the health bill."
Regardless, the ball is in the House's court. Wonk Room details the four options if Brown wins.
House can pass the Senate bill
House passes the Senate bill and reconciliation package of changes
Both chambers pass conference package before Brown is seated
Pass reform through reconciliation
We might have a little insight via Twitter:
RT @wonkroom Hoyer: our intent is still to produce a conference report on #hcr, no plan for House to pass Senate bill.
However, earlier stories have him on record saying that the Senate bill is better than nothing.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday said passing the Senate healthcare bill would be "clearly better than nothing."
The second-ranking House Democrat said "moving ahead on healthcare is essential," regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s special election to fill the seat held for four decades by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, who had served in the Senate since shortly after the Constitution was ratified implies that the filibuster could destroy the country:
"As long as I have served, ... I've never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they've done. This is the first time every single solitary decision has required 60 senators," Biden said. "No democracy has survived needing a supermajority."
Majority rule vs. sweating out 60 votes? Sounds good to me.
Incidentally, I have been getting "on the ground" updates from Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent and his Twitter feed @daveweigel.
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FBI may have broken the law
Remember the Patriot Act? Remember when we are all told to relax because the FBI would never even consider illegally tapping the phone lines of Americans? Remember when the powers granted by the Patriot Act would only be used to find terrorists? Remember when we were just supposed to trust the phone companies not to be evil? Remember when being patriotic meant supporting every decision made by the Bush Administration?
Ah, the good old days.
It turns out the FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 call records.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
But it was an emergency, so I guess it's all okay.
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Education
It looks like education will be on the agenda in the coming months.
President Obama came to a Fairfax County elementary school Tuesday morning to announce that he will seek a $1.35 billion expansion of his signature Race to the Top initiative for improving public education, including provisions that will allow individual school systems to compete for the coveted federal grants.
Incidentally, that amount represents the spending of only a few days in Iraq.
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Debt Ceiling Vote
The Senate delayed a vote on raising the debt ceiling because the Republicans and Blue Dogs have picked now to finally be fiscally responsible.
Democrats already needed the vote of a Republican, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, to raise the ceiling to $12.4 trillion on Christmas Eve. This time, Democrats are hoping for a larger increase that will see the Treasury through this fall's congressional elections, so lawmakers don't have to confront the contentious matter again before facing voters.
A bloc of Senate moderates, however, is threatening to block a substantial increase unless Washington creates an independent budget commission to draft a plan to dig the nation out of debt. Leaders of that faction acknowledge that they do not have the votes to push a commission through the Senate as an amendment to the debt limit increase.
Now I'm not saying that we ought to be increasing the national debt willy-nilly. The point is that this used to be a routine procedure, but the GOP has decided to obstruct pretty much anything of relevance with their 40-41 seat "majority."
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National Manufacturing Policy
This statement by Sherrod Brown will be the next chance for the Tea Party faction to scream "socialism."
Second, this bill needs to make sure that it's got a manufacturing policy, so that we are moving forward in building wind turbines, solar panels, and other kinds of alternative energy manufacturing that this nation absolutely needs to do.
Because any time the gubmint gets involved, it's socialism and it will be bad. (Though the logic does not apply to Social Security, Medicare, or homeland security).
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Slowing Down the Senate
Mother Jones asks a depressing, but relevant question. Can the Senate Get Any Slower?
But this is worth another look. Maybe Norm Ornstein or Tom Mann or Stan Collender can fill us in. Given that Republicans have basically adopted a scorched earth policy of forcing Democrats to jump through every parliamentary hurdle on every bill already, how much more can they slow things down? And if the answer is "a lot," would it be worth the political heat? I imagine this is mostly an academic discussion, but it would still be interesting to find out. Just how much more can Republicans muck up the machinery of the Senate than they already have?
And seating Scott Brown really wouldn't help.
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Boehner's New Chief of Staff
Congressional Republicans are looking to bring back the Contract On With America.
With House Republicans planning to reprise the Contract With America that catapulted them into House control in 1994, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the party leader, is bringing back an architect of the original contract as his chief of staff.
Mr. Boehner’s office said Tuesday that Barry Jackson, a former top adviser who went on to become an influential White House deputy to Karl Rove, would become Mr. Boehner’s new chief of staff.
Who says the Republicans don't have any new ideas?
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Murkowski Amendment
Al Gore exposes Lisa Murkowski's lobbyists.
The Washington Post confirmed "that two Washington lobbyists, Jeffrey R. Holmstead and Roger R. Martella, Jr., helped craft the original amendment Murkowski planned to offer on the floor last fall."
Who are Holmstead and Martella?
~snip
Republicans and climate deniers are allowing energy company lobbyists to write environmental legislation. Now they are close to having the votes to make this horrible amendment a reality. That is why it is so important you sign Repower America’s petition opposing the Murkowski amendment now by clicking here.
But I'm sure those lobbyists have the best interests of the environment in mind.
The good news is that even Chuck Grassley says the amendment is unlikely to pass.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said that not even all 40 Republicans may be on board with a proposed measure from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to forestall the EPA from regulating emissions.
"As a practical matter, I think it's difficult to get 51 votes when you have 60 Democrats, and they tend to so much follow the environmental line. There would be maybe trouble getting it passed," Grassley said during a conference call with Iowa reporters. "And I wouldn't even want to say that all 40 Republicans would vote for it, but I think it overwhelmingly have the support of Republicans."
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Prop 8 Trial
It's not Congress-related (at least not yet), but the Prop 8 trial in California is in its sixth day and the Republican Mayor San Diego is actually helping.
In 2007, Mr. Sanders, a Republican, announced he would no longer favor civil unions over same-sex marriage, a change in his position. His daughter Lisa, who is a lesbian, worked to elect her father in 2005; her need to go to Vermont to marry her partner, Megan, prompted his switch, he said.
"Lisa worked on the campaign and was with me every step of the way," said the mayor, who had also served as the city’s police chief. Back in 2005, "the position on civil unions was one that she understood, one that she thought the community understood, and one that was politically palatable to my support base."
I'm not making any prediction, but it is refreshing to finally have these arguments made in court.
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Edgar Allen Poe
I couldn't find a good Hill/Washington story to label as The Most Important News of the Day™, so here is something interested out of Baltimore:
Nevermore? Mystery visitor misses Poe's birthday
BALTIMORE -- Is this tradition "nevermore"?
A mysterious visitor who left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the writer's birthday failed to show early Tuesday, breaking with a ritual that began more than 60 years ago.
"I'm confused, befuddled," said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. "I don't know what's going on."
The tradition dates back to at least 1949, according to newspaper accounts from the era, Jerome said. Since then, an unidentified person has come every Jan. 19 to leave three roses and a half-bottle of cognac at Poe's grave in a church cemetery in downtown Baltimore.
Edgar Allen Poe would have been 201 years old. Of course, he may still be alive.