Republicans failed in an effort Tuesday to have the House censure Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who said in a congressional speech last week that U.S. troops are being sent to Iraq “to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement.”

Without debate, the House voted 196-173 to kill the proposal to censure Stark for “his despicable conduct.” The vote was mostly along party lines, with all 168 Republicans on hand supporting the measure offered by Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. Five Democrats joined them….

…Stark initially refused to apologize despite condemnations from GOP lawmakers and others. Moments after Tuesday’s vote, however, he addressed the House to apologize to his colleagues, “to the president and his family,” and to U.S. troops offended by his remarks.

The remarks made today by Representatative Stark on the floor of the House are reprehensible.
To accuse a sitting President of amusing himself with the death of our troops goes well beyond behavior which should ever be condoned by any of our elected officials.

These words were uttered during the debate to override the President’s veto of the expansion of the S-CHIP program. The leadership in the House should demand an apology from Rep. Stark but I certainly will not hold my breath. Republicans need to make clear that remarks such as these if made by their side of the aisle would receive calls for at the least an apology if not censure. It is outrageous that this should stand on any level without serious challenge.

At this time it appears the House has not succeeded
in their attempt to override.

12:16 - House fails to override, 273-156. The Democrats picked up 8 votes, and I believe the Republicans gained 11. This means that Congress will have to act quickly to maintain S-CHIP benefits to current qualifiers — and that means some horse trading with the White House.

*Update: Senator Reid is in no mood for compromise with the White House:

The bill is bipartisan, and the Senate has shown it could override a veto. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has replied with an emphatic “no” when asked if he would seek a compromise with the administration.

I would like to say I’m surprised but this House vote was a stinging defeat for the Majority Leader. He may find in order to save this program he will have to deal with a President who continues to thwart many of his efforts [HT: AJ Strata] not ony on this program but also attempts to threaten our national security.

So much for that lame duck President we heard so much about.

*Update 2:Republican Leader in the House issues a statement:

WASHINGTON, D.C. House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today issued the following statement regarding remarks made on the House floor by Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) during the debate on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP):

“Our troops in Iraq are fighting against al-Qaeda and other radical jihadists hellbent on killing the people we are sent here to represent. Congressman Stark’s statement dishonors not only the Commander-in-Chief, but the thousands of courageous men and women of America’s armed forces who believe in their mission and are putting their lives on the line for our freedom and security. Congressman Stark should retract his statement and apologize to the House, our Commander-in-Chief, and the families of our soldiers and commanders fighting terror overseas.”

During debate on the SCHIP children’s health care legislation today, Rep. Stark stated: “You don’t have money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.”

The above is a Drudge Report flash. I will update accordingly if there are changes.

Realizing referring to killings of Armenians by Turkish people almost 100 years ago is only aggravating the situation with Turkey and hurting our military effort in Iraq some House members from both parties are turning away from their initial support of it.

Worried about antagonizing Turkish leaders, House members from both parties have begun to withdraw their support from a resolution supported by the Democratic leadership that would condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians nearly a century ago.

Almost a dozen lawmakers had shifted against the measure over the last 24 hours, accelerating a sudden exodus that has cast deep doubt over the measure’s prospects. Some representatives made clear that they were heeding warnings from the White House, which has called the measure dangerously provocative, and from the Turkish government, which has said House passage would prompt Turkey to reconsider its ties to the United States, including logistical support for the Iraq war.

Until today, the resolution appeared to be on a path to House passage, with strong support from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California. It was approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But this evening, a group of group of senior House Democrats had made it known they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure.

“Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over something that happened a century ago, and maybe this isn’t a good time to be doing that,” said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who dropped his sponsorship of the resolution Monday night. .

Others who took the same action said that while they deplored the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, beginning in 1915, the modern-day consequences in the Middle East could not be overlooked.

“We simply cannot allow the grievances of the past — as real as they may be — to in any way derail our efforts to prevent further atrocities for future history books,” said Representative Wally Herger, Republican of California.

It’s good to see some are changing their minds and actually looking out for the good of our own country.

Yes, genocide took place, but is now the time to force a resolution that would have made us have circuitous routes into Iraq for our military?

After having said, prior to the August Congressional recess, that the House would vote on a criminal contempt resolution against Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolton the Democratic leadership has come back and said “Not yet.”

Maybe while on recess they realized the hullaballoo about the U.S. Attorneys firings was much ado about nothing, which it is.

This doesn’t mean everyone is happy and singing Kumbaya around the Democratic caucus campground.

The decision delays any constitutional showdown, at least for the moment, between Congress and President Bush over the extent of executive privilege and the president’s ability to fend off congressional investigations.

But the slowdown, approved by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top lieutenants, is also stirring objections among Democrats.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said he is uncomfortable with the delay and worries the House will be seen as toothless unless it moves quickly to hold top officials in contempt for failing to provide documents and testimony in congressional probes.

The House Judiciary Committee approved contempt citations against Bolten and Miers on July 25, after the two failed to comply with subpoenas as part of the committee’s investigation into the sacking of nine U.S. attorneys.

With the dismal record of the current Congress someone needs to inform Mr. Conyers it’s a bit late to worry about being called “toothless”. No significant legislation has been passed and the changes promised have not occurred.

This Congress has only been interested in two things since it took over in January: forcing the president to bring home the troops before the mission is completed, and investigating scandals that don’t exist.

Just before Congress changed hands Congressman Henry Waxman of California said the hardest part of his job would be to decide what to investigate first.

That statement shows exactly where the Democrats’ agenda is, and even that’s a failed agenda.

Tuesday the Speaker issued a press release actually acknowledging her hands are tied.

“The American people long ago rejected the President’s plan to stay in Iraq, which is why they voted for a New Direction in 2006. Yet, with his veto pen and the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate, the President is preventing the redeployment of our troops, the rebuilding of our military, and the refocusing of our nation’s efforts on fighting terrorism.”

How convenient to be concerned about our troops in the sense they want to rebuild the military when we’ve never seen anyone in Democratic leadership positions in the past fifty years who has wanted to rebuild our military.

The Democrats’ idea of fighting terrorism is to conduct a few bombing runs and blow up an aspirin factory and then claim they did everything possible to get rid of the terrorists.

Meanwhile, the terrorists attack us on our own soil, killing nearly 3,000 Americans and they’re worried about the “abuse” we meted out when we “tortured” people at Abu Ghraib.

The Speaker of the House and other Democrats, including Dennis Kucinich, are more worried about appeasing the terror-sponsoring regime of Assad in Syria than in getting the terrorists who still want to kill us or convert us whether or not we leave Iraq immediately.

The House passed a bill that will tax the oil industry by $16 billion.

They want to put some of that money into renewable energy sources such as windmills.

What about those of us who don’t live where there’s a lot of wind to power those windmills?

Taxes are the big reason for your gas and oil prices being so high, and when they go higher you can thank your Congress for it if the Senate goes along with it.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.
Republican opponents said the legislation ignored the need to produce more domestic oil, natural gas and coal. One GOP lawmaker bemoaned “the pure venom … against the oil and gas industry.”

The House passed the tax provisions by a vote of 221-189. Earlier it had approved, 241-172, a companion energy package aimed at boosting energy efficiency and expanding use of biofuels, wind power and other renewable energy sources.

“We are turning to the future,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The two bills, passed at an unusual Saturday session as lawmakers prepared to leave town for their monthlong summer recess, will be merged with legislation passed by the Senate in June.

On one of the most contentious and heavily lobbied issues, the House voted to require investor-owned electric utilities nationwide to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind or biofuels.

The utilities and business interests had argued aggressively against the federal renewables mandate, saying it would raise electricity prices in regions of the country that do not have abundant wind energy. But environmentalists said the requirement will spur investments in renewable fuels and help address global warming as utilities use less coal.

“This will save consumers money,” said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., the provision’s co-sponsor, maintaining utilities will have to use less high-priced natural gas. He noted that nearly half the states already have a renewable energy mandate for utilities, and if utilities can’t find enough renewable they can meet part of the requirement through power conservation measures.

Speaking strictly as a partisan Republican and only for myself I have never seen a tax on anything lowering the price of what has been taxed.

The House of Representatives passed a bill today that would require troops begin withdrawing 120 days after enactment of the bill, and to withdraw completely from Iraq by April 1, 2008.

The Democratic-controlled House shrugged off another veto threat from President Bush in approving a measure requiring the withdraw U.S. troops by spring.

Earlier, Bush ruled out any change in war policy before September.

Democratic leaders engineered a 223-201passage of legislation requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops to begin within 120 days, and to be completed by April 1, 2008. The measure envisions a limited residual force to train Iraqis, protect U.S. assets and fight Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

The vote generally followed party lines: 219 Democrats and four Republicans in favor, and 191 Republicans and 10 Democrats opposed.

“The report makes clear that not even the White House can conclude there has been significant progress,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

To Bush and others who seek more time for the administration’s policy to work, she said, “We have already waited too long.”

Republicans sided with Bush — at least for now. The bill “undermines Gen. Petraeus, undermines the mission he has to make America and Iraq safe,” said the House GOP leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio. “What we have here is not leadership, it’s negligence.”

We’ll wait to see what the Senate does about this bill and what comes out of reconciliation.

Right now, if people vote the same way they did today, this is not a veto-proof majority.

I am so fed up with the antics of Congress as a whole, and not just one party, I feel as though I just want to pull out my hair and scream.

They don’t seem to do anything anymore for the sake of the country, but only for the sake of their precious parties, and neither party is pure in anything.

They stay in campaign mode from the day of one election to the day of the next. Look at how long they have made the presidential contest this time. For what? Do we need two years of harping about the same old same old before we finally get them to shut up for a day so we can vote and then the next day someone new can start running ads for the next election?

Congressman William Jefferson is indicted on 16 charges and the House of Representatives can’t resist pointing fingers at each other as though either side is clean on issues of corruption.

Monday’s indictment of Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) touched off an ethics battle in the House yesterday, with leaders from both parties moving quickly against Jefferson even as they accused each other of having no real interest in tighter ethics rules.

In short order, the House last night approved a Democratic motion that would make an ethics investigation automatic upon the indictment of any House member and then approved a Republican motion that could lead to Jefferson’s expulsion.

…

Rep. Stephanie Tubb Jones(D-Ohio), chairman of the ethics committee, announced that her panel will reconvene an investigative subcommittee assembled last year to probe allegations against Jefferson. That panel disbanded with the end of the last Congress. But she bristled at Boehner’s resolution as an encroachment into her jurisdiction.

“As a Committee, we will fulfill our responsibility to the House of Representatives. I refuse to allow these proceedings to be politicized by House Republican Leadership,” Tubbs Jones said in a statement.

…

For Republicans, Jefferson’s indictment on 16 counts of corruption, racketeering and bribery marked an opportunity to shift attention from their own ethics issues, which have nearly half a dozen GOP lawmakers under federal investigation and forced three members to resign. But their moves also leave them exposed to countercharges of hypocrisy.

GOP leaders made no moves to expel Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) from the House after their indictments last year, going out of their way to try to preserve a path for DeLay’s return to the leadership and saying Ney would have to decide whether to resign.

…

“After Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney, I’m very proud my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have finally found their moral voice,” said Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.).

They all seem to have forgotten that when you point a finger you have three more pointing back at you.

Byron York of National Review gives his take on the interrogation of Monica Goodling, late of the Justice Dept., yesterday:

Those were significant issues. But they weren’t enough to capture the attention of some committee Democrats, for whom there were more important questions to consider. Questions like: Where did Monica go to law school?

The short answer is Regent University Law School in Virginia Beach, Virginia, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson. The longer answer was provided by newly-elected Tennessee Democratic Rep. Stephen Cohen. Cohen had apparently read Wednesday morning’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, which described Regent this way:

Regent University claims 150 past and present members of the Bush administration among its alumni. Accredited by the American Bar Assn., the law school boasts of a “distinctive” Christian-based mission “to bring to bear the will of our Creator, Almighty God, upon legal education and the legal profession,” according to its website.

A quick student of the Times, Cohen asked Goodling, “The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of almighty God, our creator. What is the will of almighty God, our creator, on the legal profession?”

Goodling seemed perplexed. “I’m not sure that I could define that question for you,” she said.

“Did you ask people who applied for jobs as [assistant U.S. attorneys] anything about their religion?”

“No, I certainly did not.”

“Ever had religion discussions come up?”

“Not to the best of my recollection.”

Cohen pressed. Hasn’t the Justice Department hired an unusually large number of graduates of Regent?

“I think we have a lot more people from Harvard and Yale,” said Goodling.

“That’s refreshing,” said Cohen, a graduate of the University of Memphis School of Law. “Is it a fact — are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?”

At that point, hisses and hoots began to be rise from the Republican side of the dais, and, for just a moment at least, 2141 Rayburn sounded a bit like the House of Commons. Goodling assured Cohen that she had passed the bar the first time around.

What was particularly odd about the moment, at least for a hearing not devoted to the state of U.S schools, was that it was the second time the subject of higher education had come up in the space of just a few minutes. Earlier, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was very concerned that Goodling had asked about the political leanings of a job seeker named Seth Adam Meinero, “a graduate of Howard University, one of the top, outstanding law schools in the nation.” (Rep. Cohen did not protest, even though Howard’s bar-passing statistics don’t measure up to Regent’s.) Goodling said she regretted making a “snap judgment” about Meinero’s supposed political leanings, although she stressed that Meinero ultimately got the job he was seeking.

Rep. Jackson Lee also caused a few observers to scratch their heads when she opened her questioning of Goodling this way: “Allow me just to simply begin a series of questions, Ms. Goodling, and I would ask that they — your answers — be as cryptic and as brief as possible, however truthful, because we do have a shortened period of time.”

“Cryptic?” whispered one reporter. “Did she say cryptic? I think she did.”

Indeed she did. But Goodling did not follow Rep. Jackson Lee’s directions. In fact, her answers were quite clear and direct.

That is, when she got the opportunity to answer the questions put to her. Later in the hearing, Jackson Lee, by then taking a temporary turn in the chairman’s seat, had to restrain fellow Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, who was so anxious to question Goodling that he seemed uninterested in her answers.

“So you all bypassed a chief of [the Civil Division] and went to somebody who had no experience in management simply because they were a liberal?” Ellison asked Goodling.

“No, not at all,” she answered. “There were other reasons involved in the decision.”

“Now — “

“To clarify, we — “

“No, I don’t need a clarification,” Ellison said. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Well, I would like to complete my answer.”

“Well, I don’t need an answer.”

“Be cryptic”? “Well, I don’t need an answer”? That’s why I used the word “interrogation” in the post. This is a wild goose hunt and may catch the wild goose, but it seems they really don’t want to hear everything that is pertinent to this investigation.

In all honesty, I must say Congressman John Murtha has grown too big for his pants since the last election.

Murtha is known for his fondness of earmarks, particularly in his district.

When, during a meeting of the powerful appropriations subcommittee on military spending, which Mr. Murtha chairs, Republican Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan tried unsuccessfully to strike an earmark (pork) from an intelligence bill, Congressman Murtha didn’t take too kindly to it.

In fact, he walked over to the Republican side of the House of Representatives and this exchange occurred:

During a series of House votes Thursday, Murtha walked to the chamber’s Republican side to confront Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a 43-year-old former FBI agent. Earlier this month, Rogers had tried unsuccessfully to strike a Murtha earmark from an intelligence spending bill. The item would restore $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center, a facility in Murtha’s Pennsylvania district that some Republicans say is unneeded.

According to Rogers’ account, which Murtha did not dispute, the Democrat angrily told Rogers he should never seek earmarks of his own because “you’re not going to get any, now or forever.”

“This was clearly designed to try to intimidate me,” Rogers said in an interview Friday. “He said it loud enough for other people to hear.”

House rules prohibit lawmakers from placing conditions on earmarks or targeted tax benefits that are based on another member’s votes. [Rules are made to be broken or changed. ED]

Murtha’s office, asked for response Friday, issued a three-sentence statement: “The committee and staff give every Democrat and Republican the same consideration. We have extensive hearings and every request is given careful consideration. We will continue to do just that.”

I’ll make a bet with anyone that Murtha will not be reprimanded by the House and another one that Congressman Rogers’ requests for earmarks will be given consideration and then voted down.

That’s just an educated guess based on how acrimonious this Congress has become.

Here we go. We don’t know the charges he plans to allege yet, but Rep. Dennis Kucinich plans to start impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Dennis Kucinich hasn’t yet won any co-sponsors for articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney that he plans to introduce, but said he encourages other congressional members to read the charges.

“This is something that members have to consider before they sign on,” Kucinich, a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate, told FOX News.

The Ohio congressman has generated interest from at least one potential supporter. Freshman Rep. Keith Ellison confirmed that he will consider joining Kucinich’s effort, however, said he would not sign on to anything until he hears the charges against Cheney.

Ellison, D-Minn., noted that when he served in the state Legislature, he filed articles of impeachment against President Bush. Since that May 2006 action, he has supported the idea of launching “an investigation” into whether Bush should be impeached, he said.

Kucinich’s proposal comes ahead of a series of protests this weekend calling for the impeachment of both Bush and Cheney, 66, who on Tuesday briefly returned to George Washington University Medical Center to get his leg “checked out.”

Kucinich, who had planned to explain the charges on Tuesday, delayed announcement of the impeachment articles after hearing of Cheney’s stop at the doctor’s office.

“News reports this morning indicate the vice president was experiencing a medical crisis. Until the vice president’s condition is clarified, I am placing any action on hold,” Kucinich said in a written statement.

While Kucinich prepares to introduce impeachment articles, hundreds of delegates to this Saturday’s California Democratic Convention in San Diego are expected to introduce their own impeachment resolution against the president and vice president, said Jacob Park, national coordinator for the April 28 action.

Park said Democratic activists are bringing up the resolution because they believe Bush and Cheney “misled the nation into war,” are violating civil liberties by not getting warrants to eavesdrop on individuals in the United States and are committing torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Yup, let’s let the mob decide what we do. The important thing is the mob wants Bush and Cheney impeached.

The mob, made up of kids unable to vote yet or unwilling to vote yet, and aging hippies are the ones in charge.

It’s kind of like the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has for the second day since returning from a two-week Easter break postponed naming conferees for the reconciliation of the military supplemental spending bill.

She says it’s because a lot of Representatives from the Northeast were unable to get to Washington due to the recent storms and because some lawmakers attended services at Virginia Tech, but they could at least have been named without being there.

“We need the conferees in order to make progress on the bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will join Mrs. Pelosi and other congressional leaders at a White House meeting with President Bush today.

Patience also wore thin among Senate Democrats assigned two weeks ago to the conference committee that will reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the $100 billion bill.

“We are going to be talking about that and trying to put some pressure on bringing that [conference committee] about,” Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat and member of the conference committee, said on his way to the party’s weekly policy luncheon.

“I’m hoping we can do that sooner because it is something that we need to decide,” said Mr. Inouye, chairman of the Appropriations defense subcommittee.

You know this bill is going to be vetoed and time is of the essence to get a new bill that everyone can live with.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of watching this contest of seeing who can pee higher on the wall.

The above headline is directly from the San Francisco Gate.

Please pay attention to the important words “may be interested”.
It does not say they are interested or they will go.

Rep. Lantos has said he is sponsoring a bill he expects to pass in May that would make available for all nations, including Iran, nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.

Lantos noted that “with the speaker’s support,” he has co-sponsored legislation in the House that calls for making available to all countries — including Iran — nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes under international oversight by establishing a “nuclear fuel bank.”

“So if the Iranian president says that he is developing (nuclear material) for peaceful purposes, we are assisting him in that process,” said Lantos, who anticipated the legislation could pass as early as May.

I actually think that’s the news in this piece.

Excuse me, please, while I go vomit and have a quiet nervous breakdown.

Feel free to join me in the nervous breakdown and we can all sit around like this and be blissfully ignorant of our world.

Republicans in the House yesterday forced a bill that would protect the John Does in the recent lawsuit filed by the imams who were praying in the Minneapolis airport and then got on the plane talking loudly against President Bush and the war in Iraq. Some had asked for seat extenders even though they were all slim men.

House Republicans yesterday surprised Democrats with a procedural vote to protect public-transportation passengers from being sued if they report suspicious activity — the first step by lawmakers to protect “John Doe” airline travelers already targeted in such a lawsuit.

After a heated debate and calls for order, the motion to recommit the Democrats’ Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2007 back to committee with instructions to add the protective language passed on a vote of 304-121.

All 121 of the “no” votes were cast by Democrats, while 199 Republicans and 105 Democrats voted in favor.

Republicans said the lawsuit filed by six Muslim imams against US Airways and “John Does,” passengers who reported suspicious behavior, could have a “chilling effect” on passengers who may fear being sued for acting vigilant.

Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, offered the motion saying all Americans — airline passengers included — must be protected from lawsuits if they report suspicious behavior that may foreshadow a terrorist attack.

“All of our lives changed after September 11, and one of the most important things we have done is ask local citizens to do what they can to avoid another terrorist attack, if you see something, say something,” said Mr. King.

“We have to stand by our people and report suspicious activity,” he said. “I cannot imagine anyone would be opposed to this.”

Mr. King called it a “disgrace” that the suit seeks to identify “people who acted out of good faith and reported what they thought was suspicious activity.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, opposed the motion over loud objections from colleagues on the House floor, forcing several calls to order from the chair.

“Absolutely they should have the ability to seek redress in a court of law,” said Mr. Thompson, who suggested that protecting passengers from a lawsuit would encourage racial profiling.

“This might be well-intended, but it has unintended consequences,” Mr. Thompson said, before he accepted the motion to recommit.

The motion to recommit was based on a bill introduced last week by Rep. Steve Pearce, New Mexico Republican, to protect “John Does” or passengers targeted in a lawsuit filed by six Muslim imams earlier this month in Minneapolis.

Mr. Pearce said the imams are “using courts to terrorize Americans.”

“If we allow this lawsuit to go forward it will have a chilling effect,” Mr. Pearce said.

A Republican memo issued prior to the vote cites the November incident when the men were removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix for suspicious behavior, the details of which were first reported by The Washington Times.

The men prayed loudly before boarding, did not take their assigned seats and formed patterns officials said mirrored the September 11 hijackers, asked for seat-belt extenders not needed, and criticized President Bush and the war in Iraq.

In a bipartisan way the members of the House have finally done something to benefit their constituents—the American people.

If we didn’t already know it we know it now. Each major party is going to use the House vote from last week attaching ridiculous conditions on the military supplemental funding bill and plenty of pork to get the extra votes needed such as help for spinach growers, peanut storage help, dairy help etc. to the bill that was supposed to be about funding the troops.

The leadership chose not to use a plain up or down vote on whether or not to stop funding of the troops, but added so many restrictions to the bill it would do the same thing while sweetening the pot a bit for the Congressmen and women across the board who were having difficulty voting for the bill.

Let’s remember that bill passed by the barest majority of 118 which is exactly one more vote than half of the House. Two Republicans put it over the top.

Campaign staffers from both parties are using the vote on Democrats’ troop withdrawal plan to target vulnerable members of Congress in the 2008 races.

Within hours of the House’s 218-212 vote Friday, Republicans sent 50 campaign missives saying Democrats were “waving a white flag of surrender” by approving a war-funding bill that set a timetable for pulling troops from Iraq.

“It’s not a vote that’s going to be forgotten any time soon,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).

Democrats plan to portray votes against the bill as rubber stamps for an unpopular president when they campaign against the Republicans who opposed it.

“We had two choices: more troops, more money, more time, more of the same, no strings attached,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the Democratic Caucus chairman. “That is what the president has had for four years, and he has asked for another year of exactly the same thing.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said a vote against the bill equated to renewing President Bush’s “blank check for an open-ended commitment to a war without end.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) echoed this theme, saying Democrats were bringing accountability and oversight “for the first time in six years.”

The NRCC’s campaign message hitting 50 members, mostly freshmen, said approval of the measure was akin to setting “a date certain for retreat and defeat in Iraq” and embracing a plan “to cut off funding for our troops.”

Many of the freshman congressmen and women who voted for this bill campaigned in conservative districts as conservatives. Let’s see how that goes over at home and if the voters remember it when the next election rolls around.

Source.

Here’s a list of the freshmen congressmen who voted for this bill, after many of them campaigned as conservatives in conservative districts:

AZ-5: Harry Mitchell
AZ-8: Gabrielle Giffords
CA-11: Jerry McNerney
CO-7: Ed Perlmutter
CT-2: Joe Courtney
CT-5: Christopher Murphy
FL-16: Tim Mahoney
FL-22: Ron Klein
IA-1: Bruce Braley
IN-2: Joe Donnelly
IN-8: Brad Ellsworth
IN-9: Baron Hill
KS-2: Nancy Boyda
KY-3: John Yarmuth
MN-1: Timothy Walz
NC-11: Heath Shuler
NH-1: Carol Shea-Porter
NH-2: Paul Hodes
NY-19: John Hall
NY-20: Kirsten Gillibrand
NY-24: Michael Arcuri
OH-18: Zachary Space
PA-4: Jason Atmire
PA-7: Joe Sestak
PA-8: Patrick Murphy
PA-10: Christopher Carney
TX-22: Nick Lampson
WI-8: Steve Kagen

WASHINGTON (AP) - A sharply divided House voted Friday to order President Bush to bring combat troops home from Iraq next year, a victory for Democrats in an epic war-powers struggle and Congress’ boldest challenge yet to the administration’s policy.

Ignoring a White House veto threat, lawmakers voted 218-212, mostly along party lines, for a binding war spending bill requiring that combat operations cease before September 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government does not meet certain requirements. Democrats said it was time to heed the mandate of their election sweep last November, which gave them control of Congress.

“The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not.”

The vote, echoing clashes between lawmakers and the White House over the Vietnam War four decades ago, pushed the Democratic-led Congress a step closer to a constitutional collision with the wartime commander in chief. Bush has insisted that lawmakers allow more time for his strategy of sending nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq to work.

The roll call also marked a triumph for Pelosi., who labored in recent days to bring together a Democratic caucus deeply divided over the war. Some of the party’s more liberal members voted against the bill because they said it would no