Special Closed Session Tonight in the House

I have CSPAN on right now--live in the Senate, killing time on the House side:

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session - the first in 25 years - to debate surveillance legislation. Republicans requested privacy for what they termed "an honest debate" on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.

The closed-door debate was scheduled for late Thursday, after the House chamber could be cleared and swept by security personnel to make sure there are no listening devices.

The last private session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions have taken place in the House since 1825.

President Bush vowed to veto the House Democrats' version of the terrorist surveillance bill, saying it would undermine the nation's security.

Bush opposes it in part because it doesn't provide full, retroactive legal protection to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

About 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecommunications companies by people and organizations alleging they violated wiretapping and privacy laws. The lawsuits have been combined and are pending before a single federal judge in California.

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Explanations--we go to the brilliant Kagro X at DKos:

FISA fight: Leadership maneuvers you'll actually like
by Kagro X
Thu Mar 13, 2008 at 03:26:39 PM PDT
FISA fight got you down? Fed up with the Congressional Democratic leadership? Tired of watching Dems cave, and Republicans use the rules to run roughshod over them?

Perhaps you've heard about how House Republicans have used the motion to recommit to trip up various versions of the FISA bill that don't give retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies. And perhaps you're concerned that despite the much-improved FISA language coming to a vote in the House this week, it'll be undercut by another such motion.

Well, dig this:

The RESTORE Act, H.R. 3773, passed the House last year without including retroactive amnesty for the telecom companies and sent it on to the Senate.

When the Senate took up the issue, it opted not to deal with H.R. 3773, but instead passed its Rockefeller-backed FISA bill (S. 2248) that did include retroactive amnesty. And there was a tremendous uproar among immunity opponents over the procedure the Senate used, making the Bush-backed Rockefeller legislation the base bill, and the immunity-free Judiciary committee bill the substitute, creating an uphill battle for the fight against immunity. That situation created a lot of ill will toward Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Everyone remembers that.

But here's the interesting part. Rather than send S. 2248 to the House once it passed, Reid sent the bill on a little detour. With the unanimous consent of the Senate, he stripped out the language of H.R. 3773 and substituted in the language of S. 2248, vitiated the passage of S. 2248, and sent the amended H.R. 3773 back to the House.

That put the House in the position of considering the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, as opposed to the original version of S. 2248. What difference does that make? Well, it makes no substantive difference, in that H.R. 3773 as amended now included retroactive immunity, along with all the other garbage we didn't want the Senate to pass.

But as I've stressed a number of times, control of procedure can, in the end, control the substantive outcome.

So, what's a House that's opposed to retroactive immunity to do? Amend H.R. 3773 to take it back out, of course. And that -- along with a number of other substantive improvements -- is what Chairmen Conyers and Reyes plan to do, in the form of an amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773.

Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? The sort of thing people say when they make fun of the legislative process: the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 3773.

Only guess what's special about offering an amendment to the amendment that isn't true of just starting over with a new House bill that doesn't have immunity in it?

You can't move to recommit an amendment to an amendment.

So the House gets to strip immunity (and the other junk) back out of H.R. 3773, and the Republicans can't just undo that work with a motion designed to peel off Blue Dogs. If the amendment to the Senate amendment passes, it pops right back out of the House and goes back to the Senate on the express bus, no stops.

And there's more. It arrives back in the Senate in privileged form, as a message from the House (the message being: we amended your crap) the consideration of which is not subject to filibuster. To be sure, the Republicans (or anyone willing to stand in their shoes) can filibuster the actual debate on the House amendment to Senate amendment, but they can't filibuster the question of whether or not to even have that debate, as they can with most other legislation.

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER - 1152PM Eastern

Senate still in session, DiFi and Boxer are speaking out against an amendment condemning Berkley, CA. Conrad cuts through the crap and calls for yeas and nays...

This is the bullshit that goes on. They are trying to get through budgetary matters in the Senate, no word from the House. I suspect Boehner is crying, though, and maybe Blunt is holding up a picture of a terrorist holding a gun to a puppy's head.

Senator Allard is trying to define a child from conception and play some sort of game with SCHIP--it's unborn child/pro life stuff and it's designed to hold up legislation. Once in a while, you see this, and it's making sausage in public, is all it is.

I'm going to bed--we'll talk in the AM.

Updates as warranted--if this post disappears, it means there's no news made tonight.

Halle-Fucking-Lujah!

The House just told George Bush to fuck off and die, and his little dog, too.

And whadya know? A crack appeared in the Bush facade!

Here is what happened this morning...after the spineless assholes in the Senate voted to roll over for telecom immunity and campaign contributions a couple of days ago, the House decided this morning that they would just let the current bill expire, and go on and leave town for a one-week recess.

In the wake of the Senate capitulation to perfidy and fascism, the House has been squabbling about how to proceed. The Republican boot-lickers - surprise, surprise - want the House to roll over like the Senate sycophants and give the telecoms immunity for listening in on your conversations and reading your email - but there seems to be a spine or two present in the lower chamber.

Yellow feathers are filling the air, and rivers of piss are running on the Republican side of things right now. The repugnant ones are indignantly setting up quite a chickenhawk-squawk, accusing Democrats of severely hampering intelligence operations and putting the country at risk! Terrorists will kill all 300 million of us by sundown Saturday if they don't capitulate the rest of the Fourth Amendment right now! (Boehner, change your Depends and man up, you sniveling chickenshit.)

Well, the House has aWol's attention - for the first time, a crack is appearing in the facade of feclkessness.

He has delayed his trip to Africa this weekend, saying he will stay in Washington to get the bill signed. "If we have to delay, we'll delay, " he said. "The House should not leave Washington without passing the Senate bill," he whined, pleadingly adding that insistence on Constitutional principles on behalf of the Democrats would "put the American people at risk."

I disagree - I happen to think that it is an affront that anyone would even suggest that Constitutional abrogation and domestic spying should be overlooked and the companies that played ball and spied on us should receive immunity from facing the consequences of their actions. All the little idiot has to do is give up on the insistence that telecoms be excused for their illegal behavior, and he will have his bill to sign.

And by the way - the next time someone tries to peddle that tired old trope that Republicans value personal responsibility - I am going to bust up laughing, in my rudest guffaw, right in the face of whoever is so stupid.

UPDATE: Check out the comments on this post at the WaPo blog...there is zero support for the Republican fearmongering. People finally get it, and I thank a God I don't believe in, and a Constitution I do.

It's beginning to look like "blue" skies and smooth sailing...

The GOP continues to flounder. I continue to find much heartfelt glee in this fact, and do not apologize for it. I never claimed to be non-partisan. I am an unapologetic Liberal Democrat.

Faced with Democrats running fundraising circles around Republicans -the DCCC has raised $56.6 million and has $29.2 million at its disposal, while the NRCC is sucking hind tit, having raised only $40.7 million, and showing a cash balance of $2.5 million. Faced with people not willing to bankroll losers, the lord high mucky-mucks of the GOP have resorted to recruiting obscenely wealthy individuals to run for office who can funnel millions of their own dollars into desperate efforts to buy seats. “National Republicans are in disarray, forcing them to recruit inexperienced and unprepared self-funders,” said Doug Thornell, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the news gets better for Democrats. Democrats now hold more Governor's mansions, and that gap looks like it is going to widen. While the Democrats might not make the magic number 60 in the Senate, they are likely to get close enough that they can strongarm moderate Republicans into backing off on their obstructionist ways. If five or more seats flip, that will likely serve as a wake-up call to some of the obstreperous jackasses in Class III and Class I, and their own sense of political self-survival will kick in.

In Virginia, the magic eight ball says that Mark Warner is going to take the seat being vacated by John Warner. The seats being vacated by Domenici (N.M.) and Stevens (AK) have a good shot of going to Democrats, if for no other reason than to teach the party a lesson - the Republican candidates are going to have the foul stench of their corrupt predecessors wafting behind them. Bob Kerry is likely to replace the retiring Chuck Hagel in Nebraska, Sununu is vulnerable in New Hampshire. Graham in South Carolina might prove vulnerable because he has lashed himself so tightly to aWol and his pet war. Kentucky is likely to Ditch Mitch, Larry Craig's seat just about has to go to a Democrat, Elizabeth Dole is vulnerable, and the seat held by Gordon Smith is all but assured to flip, possibly to Portland mayor Speaker of the Oregon House Jeff Merkley, although there is still a tough Democratic primary to get through. Whoever wins it will unseat Gordon.

[P.S. Thanks to all you Oregon readers for correcting me on this point - I know better than to blog while buzzing on Robitussin and Benadryl...I lived in the Willamette Valley for a bit in the 90's and to be perfectly honest, I am echoing a friend who is a Merkley backer. To hear her tell it, he is unopposed in the primary, and I'm firing off an email, since echoing her sentiment got my fanny handed to me. I'll look a bit closer and actually dedicate a post to the Democratic primary out there to show my contrition.]

And the outlook is even more dismal in the house, where unexpected retirements have dealt setbacks to the Republican pipedream of retaking the house. And I am left to savor the schaddenfreude and hum a happy tune...