The Senate Democrats have been foiled again in their effort to decide whether or not to fund the troops.

The Senate on Wednesday rejected legislation that would cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31, 2008.

The vote was a loss for Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and other Democrats who want to end the war. But the effort picked up support from members, including presidential hopefuls previously reluctant to limit war funding - an indication of the conflict’s unpopularity among voters.

The proposal lost 29-67 on a procedural vote, falling 31 votes short of the necessary votes to advance. Of the 67 senators who opposed Feingold’s proposal, there were 19 Democrats, 47 Republicans and Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman. Of the 29 supporting, 28 were Democrats and Vermont Independent Bernard Sanders.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democratic presidential front-runner, previously opposed setting a deadline on the war. But she said she agreed to back the measure “because we, as a united party, must work together with clarity of purpose and mission to begin bringing our troops home and end this war.”

Sen. Barack Obama, another leading 2008 prospect, said he would prefer a plan that offers more flexibility but wanted “to send a strong statement to the Iraqi government, the president and my Republican colleagues that it’s long past time to change course.”

The proposal had been expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance under Senate rules, but was intended to gauge the tolerance of members on anti-war legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid staged a series of war votes Wednesday to inform negotiations with the House on a war spending bill.

“We stand united…. in our belief that troops are enmeshed in an intractable civil war,” said Reid, D-Nev.

Feingold’s measure, co-sponsored by Reid and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., proved divisive for Democrats.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war.

“We don’t want to send the message to the troops” that Congress does not support them, said Levin, D-Mich. “We’re going to support those troops.”

But other Democrats said the move was necessary.

“I’m not crazy about the language in the Feingold amendment, but I am crazy about the idea that we have to keep the pressure on,” said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who also wants the Democratic presidential nomination.

They’re all dancing on the head of a pin saying they support the troops and then trying to justify a vote against the emergency funding bill.

Disgraceful.

From Right Wing News we get this quote on the Governor of Kansas and her attempt to blame the Bush administration for not helping during the recent tornado:

Here’s a quote from a New York Times article on the attempt of Kathleen Sebelius to blame George Bush for her slow and incompetent response to a tornado in Kansas,

As State Senator Donald Betts Jr., Democrat of Wichita, put it: “We should have had National Guard troops there right after the tornado hit, securing the place, pulling up debris, to make sure that if there was still life, people could have been saved. The response time was too slow, and it’s becoming a trend. We saw this after Katrina, and it’s like history repeating itself.”

Now comes the observation of a Kansas resident courtesy of American Thinker: (more…)

The Democratic House of Representatives is hell-bent on confrontations with the president as to what authority belongs to whom.

Now they are set to approve a bill that would fund the troops only until July, a scant two months away.

President Bush would veto a bill drafted by House Democratic leaders that would fund the Iraq war only into the summer months, his spokesman said Wednesday.

The Democrats’ proposal would pay for the war through July, then give Congress the option of cutting off money after that if conditions do not improve. Bush requested more than $90 billion to fund the war through September.

“There are restrictions on funding and there are also some of the spending items that were mentioned in the first veto message that are still in the bill,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said on Air Force One traveling with Bush.

Asked directly if Bush would veto the House bill in its current form, Snow said, “Yes.”

Bush vetoed an earlier bill because it set deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.

The new proposal is aimed at appeasing Democratic lawmakers who want to end the war immediately and are urging leaders not to back down after Bush’s veto. But lacking a firm endorsement by the Senate, the challenge by House Democrats seemed more for political show than a preview of another veto showdown with Bush.

If you know it’s going to be vetoed and you can’t override the veto, why engage in fruitless effort?

Congress has the power of the purse and, as such, can withdraw funding for the war at any time. If they don’t want to compromise to make our troops safe longer than two months then use the constitutional power they have and defund the war.

All this other nonsense is just that.

It seems Arizona Senator Jon Kyl and not Senator John McCain is the White House go-to man for immigration legislation.

Last year the Senate passed a pretty liberal immigration bill that allows a path to citizenship for just about anyone who wants it. If not for the Republican House last year this bill would have become law.

Now all eyes are on Jon Kyl.

For two years, the White House thought the chances of getting an immigration bill passed in Congress lay with Arizona’s Republican senator. Unfortunately for President Bush, he was counting on the wrong one.

While the White House was working with Sen. John McCain, Arizona’s other senator, Jon Kyl, emerged this year as the most important player in the immigration debate, showing that even as the Congress has grown more liberal with Democrats in control, the immigration debate has shifted to the right.

It’s also a recognition that as Mr. Kyl goes, so go a number of Republicans.

“If it’s good enough for Kyl, it’s going to be good enough for a lot of conservatives,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican and one of the top House lawmakers pressing for a bill this year.

The debate starts today when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, is expected to use a parliamentary procedure to resurrect one of last year’s bills. His move is designed to pressure Republicans to get something done, but they said they can’t meet the deadline.

Mr. Kyl is leading a group of Republicans working with the White House, two Cabinet secretaries and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Democrats’ leader on immigration, to try to write a tough and workable bill.

“There’s only one way that there’s going to be legislation adopted this year, and that’s in a bipartisan way,” Mr. Kyl said yesterday, warning that Mr. Reid’s move could “break up any chance” for such an agreement.

Excuse me for not having the intellect to understand how Sen. Reid, the Majority Leader in the Senate is resurrecting one of last year’s bills (without hearings) so he can get the Republicans to get something done.

Feel free to explain that one to me.
(more…)

California Conservative does a pretty good job of fisking the comments made by Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi after the president’s veto speech last night.

Here’s the transcript of their speech:

Statement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on President Bush’s veto of the Iraq spending bill, as provided by CQ Transcriptions:

REID: The president may be content with keeping our troops mired in the middle of an open-ended civil war, but we’re not — and neither are most Americans.

A bipartisan majority of Congress sent the president a bill to fully fund our troops and change the mission in Iraq. The president refused to sign this bill. That’s his right, but now he has an obligation to explain his plan to responsibly end this war.

In the coming days, we’ll continue to reach out to the president, and we hope congressional Republicans who remained silent — congressional Republicans through this whole debate — will work with us as well.

But if the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he’ll stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq, he is mistaken. (more…)

DJ Drummond has a wonderful post up titled The Harry Reid School of “Governance”

I am linking the last two paragraphs and urge you to go over and read the whole thing.

Now Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made a number of regrettable statements. Not only that any decent American would regret such sentiments, but that at some point in the future I believe the Democrats will be quite sorry Harry got hold of a microphone. For now, however, the extremists in the Democratic Party have hijacked the war and are doing their worst to drive the campaign to the nearest hole. It may be plainly said that the Democrats seriously intend to bring about U.S. casualties in Iraq by encouraging terrorist resistance, in the hope that they can use the slaughter for their personal political gain. The voice from the Left has gone full course from supporting the war and the men fighting it, to spiteful hate against everyone trying to win in Iraq or finish the job begun in 2003. There is no honorable debate among Democrats anymore on this point – they have established the defeat of the United States as their primary objective. What Democrats of honor remain, such as Senator Joe Lieberman, are silenced and suppressed, made outcasts and warned not to interfere with party objectives. Scarcely in human history has a major political party hoped such vile desires against its soldiers, and schemed such traitorous plots against the nation of their birth and heritage.

The Democrats will continue to exist as a major political party for decades to come. But by their own hand, they are committing themselves to second-tier status. Americans understand and respect traditional liberal values, but they won’t tear down their moral values to advance liberal ideals. Democrats continue to misunderstand what those moral values are; values which transcend part, which the voters expect, frankly, any serious candidate to embrace, like not undermining authority in wartime, or sticking to the issues in an election and eschewing personal attacks by the candidate or his staff, or recognizing the honor in a candidate, even an opponent. It seems that when a candidate displays these qualities, Democrats regard it as a sign of weakness rather than strength, and this badly mis-judges the American sense of honor.

DNC chairman Howard Dean, when asked how to avoid just hearing the same old sound clips from candidates suggested barring the doors and keeping the press out.

Sounds like he wants us to go back to the age before even the telegraph in our campaigns.

But then again he misses the good old days of Walter Cronkite:

The Democratic National Committee chairman criticized media coverage, arguing that networks such as CBS used to put content first and didn’t mind losing money for the prestige of delivering a quality news report. Dean said the days of Walter Cronkite are gone and the corporatization of the media has led to a desire to boost profits.

“The media has been reduced to info-tainment,” Dean said. “Info-tainment sells, the problem is they reach the lowest common denominator instead of forcing a little education down our throats, which we are probably in need of from time to time.”

But, but, but, Howard, how would the rest of the country know what a candidate stands for? Or does it matter just what the small groups care?

We’ve been hearing the president described by various Democrats as “isolated”, compared to Nixon, a “spoiled child” etc.

It turns out it’s a concerted effort by the Democrats:

Emboldened congressional Democrats have turned up their rhetoric when talking about President Bush, comparing him to Richard M. Nixon and using sharp language that conjures up images of secluded dictators.

“The president’s in his bunker on both the war in Iraq and Attorney General Gonzales,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said yesterday. “What everyone else sees clearly he doesn’t see at all, and that’s a real problem for our country.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada advanced the same idea, saying: “The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House.”

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic caucus, has labeled Mr. Bush’s war strategy the “fairy tales and rose-colored glasses plan for Iraq.” Mr. Emanuel, who worked in the Clinton White House, also recently urged his colleagues in a policy memo to portray Mr. Bush as pursuing a “stay-the-course, status quo strategy.”

“The president remains incredibly weak and at odds with public opinion. … His approval rating streak is now in the ballpark of Richard Nixon’s in the months leading up to his resignation,” read the Emanuel memo, first reported by the Associated Press.

Christopher Sands, a senior fellow at conservative-leaning Hudson Institute, said the “isolation” language allows the Democrats to paint the Bush administration as defensive and stubborn, and to try to control public opinion by getting voters to compare the president to Mr. Nixon during Watergate.

“This is the standard line now,” he said.

When asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about the Bush-Nixon comparison, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed the Democratic rhetoric as a “ridiculous notion.”

Rep. James P. Moran, Virginia Democrat, accused Mr. Bush of acting like a “spoiled child,” saying it is a role the president has had “all his life.”

Mr. Bush’s own posture has changed since he offered the Democrats an olive branch after they gained control of Congress in November. Instead of working toward bipartisan cooperation as he initially promised, the president now accuses the Democrats of wanting to “undercut our troops” by including a withdrawal timetable in the Iraq-spending bill.

“They passed bills that would impose restrictions on our military commanders and set an arbitrary date for withdrawal from Iraq, giving our enemies the victory they desperately want,” the president said April 14 in his weekly radio address.

Mr. Sands said Republicans are wise to paint the argument as winning or losing in Iraq, because most voters would agree they would rather win.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, raised some eyebrows last month responding to Mr. Bush’s pledge to veto the war-spending bill. “Calm down with the threats. There is a new Congress in town,” she said.

In a recent television interview, Mrs. Pelosi said: “The president is not king.”

It sounded too smart to come from Reid alone and now we know.

The Democrat-controlled Congress yesterday moved to limit U.S. combat operations in Iraq immediately and withdraw troops as early as July, hardening its stance for a veto showdown with President Bush over war funding.

Congressional negotiators from both chambers agreed to the new language yesterday afternoon, hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Congress will no longer “turn a blind eye to the Bush administration’s incompetence and dishonesty.”

“Yes, he is the president, but we are the people’s representatives,” the Nevada Democrat said. “Instead of sending us back to square one with a veto, some tough talk and nothing more, let him come to the table in the spirit of bipartisanship that Americans demand and deserve.”

I am sick and tired of Harry Reid calling the President of the United States incompetent and dishonest because he doesn’t go along with his defeatist attitude.

I can point out a few questionable deals done by Senator Reid, but because that’s not the issue I’ll refrain.

Bipartisanship in Washington means you do what I want. Both parties, but for Reid to call for bipartisanship after he has made a fool of himself in public with his partisan and personal comments about the president I doubt it will get him any points from the president.

If they want out of Iraq defund the war! Do a straight up or down bill to defund the war if you’re so certain you are right about the people being represented by you, Mr. Reid. I believe even more people voted for the president than you, but then I could be wrong.

Story here.

COgirl from Hang Right Politics has written this post about some words Tammy Bruce had to say on the Bill O’Reilly show.

What Bruce mentioned on the O’Reilly Factor was how when she was president of NOW, she had a list of names and phone numbers of people in the MSM. When she wanted to raise an issue, test a theory or just bad mouth someone on the right, all she had to do was pick up the phone and make a few calls. Once the NY [T]imes ran with the story, it was quickly picked up and was all over the news. If people hear a story enough, they begin to think it’s true even though many times the MSM never checked out the facts.

Bruce indicated that this technique is regularly done by the extreme left and they used it to bring down Imus. She wrote on her website, TammyBruce.com:

Keep in mind, Imus is not a ‘conservative,’ but he is also not a leftist. I see this attack on Imus very much like the attempt by Establishment Left to purge Lieberman (and what he represents) from the Democratic Party–there is indeed an ideological war going on, and even before the leftist gestapos out there feel they can turn to silencing conservatives, they have to purge their own house of liberals who don’t pledge allegiance to the leftist worldview. It’s why I get attacked by the left for not being a “real” Democrat and why Imus was one of the first on their Hit List to go.

It’s very Maoist, and very dangerous unless we all speak up. I think we’re a nation which can handle being occasionally offended, and can have that discussion socially. Yet, under the guise of protecting the apparently freakishly vulnerable and sensitive ears of minorities, we’re being asked to punish and destroy only those who dare to question and decry leftism, issue dissent and cause a politically incorrect ruckus (the two usually go together). All of us would prefer a world where certain phrases aren’t even considered as part of the social debate, but what this is really about is how far you are willing to be manipulated, in the name of ‘decency’, to allow and accept Stalinistic control over what can and cannot be heard .

Tammy Bruce is a Democrat who happened to vote for President Bush. COgirl happened to have the TV on when O’Reilly came on and heard it; otherwise she doesn’t listen to O’Reilly (neither do I) or she would never have heard this.

Update:Go to Hot Air to hear Bruce on the O’Reilly show.

I think a lot of people associate corrupt politicians with Louisiana from the days of Huey Long and maybe beyond that.

When Governor Blanco was encouraged not to run for re-election by the state Democrat party, the party approached former Sen. John Breaux, a fine man, to run for the governorship.

Mr. Breaux had a problem though, because by now he was a legal resident of the state of Maryland and claimed to be so. He said he wanted a ruling from the state Attorney General as to whether or not he was eligible to run because the state constitution requires the candidate to be a resident of the state for the preceding five years.

From this California Conservative post the Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles Foti (also a Democrat), has passed the decision on to the courts to decide.

Since he’s a Maryland resident, that ends that. He isn’t a Louisiana resident now, which is clearly within the 5 year window mandated for Breaux to be eligible for next year’s election. I’m no lawyer but I’d have to think that there’s some legal remedy to this insanity. If the Louisiana state Constitution says something explicitly, that should be the final word.

You don’t need the court’s assistance to figure that out.

This just means that the political fix is in. AG Foti will claim that his hands are clean, that he simply stands by the court’s ruling. Let’s just hope that the RNC will jump all over this. Let’s hope that the RNC will show the hypocrisy of the DNC by showing them arguing against taking Tom DeLay off the ballot after he’d moved to Virginia but then turning around to say that John Breaux, a Maryland resident, should be allowed to run for governor, contrary to the Louisiana Constitution.

We remember well that Sen. Lautenberg was allowed to get on the ticket to replace former Sen. Torrecelli in New Jersey after the legal time limit to be listed on the ticket had expired, because the Democratic party went to the State Supreme Court to get a ruling, which was also clearly against the state constitution.

Now, I’m not just picking on Democrats, so if someone can point out an instance where a Republican has done the same thing I will be glad to see it.

The whole point of this is political corruption. The Democrats in Louisiana know without Breaux as a candidate they have no chance of beating Bobby Jindal.

Again, by all accounts, Mr. Breaux is a very good man who just wants to serve the people of his home state again if it is legally possible. The problem to this non-lawyer is it isn’t legally possible, but from what we’ve seen in the past it is probable.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says President Bush is as isolated as Richard Nixon during Watergate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) compared President Bush to former President Nixon today, suggesting Bush is “as isolated” now over the Iraq war as Nixon was during the Watergate scandal, reports Politico’s Carrie Budoff.

Reid was responding to questions over what Senate Democrats will do if Bush, as promised, vetoes the Iraq funding bill being crafted by Congress. Bush has said he will block the legislation from becoming law because both the House and Senate versions of the legislation include withdrawal timetables for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Bush also objects to $20 billion-plus in “pork” spending programs that Democrats have included in the bill, although Democratic leaders defend the funding as need emergency spending for Hurricane Katrina victims, child health programs, and veteran care.

Bush has invited Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to come to the White House next week to negotiate on a “clean” Iraq funding bill with no withdrawal language or pork spending, but Reid has said the president should instead come to Capitol Hill this Friday to meet with lawmakers.

If the president is serious, and not as isolated as people think he is, maybe he will take us up on it,” Reid said of his offer to meet with Bush on Capitol Hill. Reid and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) sent a letter to Bush today repeating the invitation, which Democrats first raised in late March.

“The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House.”

When asked whether he would accept a funding bill with political benchmarks for the Iraqi government but no withdrawal language, Reid said he would insist on specified deadlines for redeployment and withdrawal from Iraq because both the House and Senate have approved such requirements.

Both the House and Senate have approved such requirements with 2 Republicans providing the margin in the House and a close vote in the Senate. Neither looks like they can override Bush’s veto, so my thinking is some negotiations are going to have to take place, but it will not include a date for withdrawal.

And, though Mr. Reid may have forgotten, I haven’t. President Bush is not hunkered down in the Oval Office or Rose Garden the way Nixon was. He’s going out in public and making a case for his position, hoping it will be fairly reported.

From www.whitehouse.gov:

President George W. Bush discusses the emergency supplemental bill with the press Tuesday, April 3, 2007, in the Rose Garden. “Democrat leaders in Congress seem more interested in fighting political battles in Washington than in providing our troops what they need to fight the battles in Iraq,” said the President. “If Democrat leaders in Congress are bent on making a political statement, then they need to send me this unacceptable bill as quickly as possible when they come back. I’ll veto it, and then Congress can get down to the business of funding our troops without strings and without delay.”

President Bush on Tuesday said, ” In a time of war, it’s irresponsible for the… Democratic leadership in Congress to delay for months on end while our troops in combat are waiting for the funds. The bottom line is this: Congress’s failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to. That is unacceptable to me, and I believe it is unacceptable to the American people.”

This Washington Post article describes what the emboldened Democrats intend to do to harrass President Bush after the Easter recess (in addition to what they have already done.)

Here are some quotes:

Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues — such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders — with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon.

For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed either the House or the Senate in the three months since Democrats took control of Congress.

Despite the threats, Democratic lawmakers expect to open new fronts against the president when they return from their spring recess, including politically risky efforts to quickly close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; reinstate legal rights for terrorism suspects; and rein in what Democrats see as unwarranted encroachments on privacy and civil liberties allowed by the USA Patriot Act.

“I suppose there’s always a risk of going too far,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), “but the risk of not going is far greater.”

Yes, Mr. Hoyer, there is a great risk of going too far and we have seen in the recent past the American people are above-all fair-minded unless all the fair-minded ones have died and we are left with the radicals who think child-like behavior is acceptable.

Why do you think the public rallied around Clinton if not for their sense of protecting the underdog and the one who has been fairly or unfairly badgered?

Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a “political price” at the polls: “If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react.”

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk. He urged Democrats to stick to their turf on such issues as immigration, health care and popular social programs, and to prove they can govern.

“That’s where their strength is,” Panetta said. “If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that’s a recipe for losing seats in the next election.”

But even conservative Democrats insist their party is in no danger of overreaching its mandate from the November elections.

Panetta is right. And where is this “mandate” they claim? They have a two-seat majority in the Senate, one of which is Independent Joseph Lieberman who usually votes with the Republicans on issues of National Security.

The United States House of Representatives has 231 Democrats, 201 Republicans and two vacancies, one due to a death.

With such slim majorities, where is the mandate?

I just spoke to my congressman’s office to get the makeup of the House and asked the aide where the mandate is? She asked what I meant and I told her I keep hearing the Democrats talk of the mandate they got in November. I reminded her Nixon claimed a mandate and had won by a landslide but the Democrats denied he had a mandate.

Her answer was not one House Democrat lost the election in November and this is how they claim their mandate. I disagree. The numbers are too close and the partisianship is too great and too hateful, and I want adults in charge.

Is that too much to ask?

The Captain is also blogging on this story in a much better way than I can.