Politics Blog

I just have to comment since this was one of my favorite stories over the past two years. I applaud the President for sparing Libby any jail time. However, it would be nice to see President Bush take on the hysterical claims of Joe Wilson and his lying enablers directly at some point when this is all over. Wilson’s wife was not covert. No crime was committed and two years were wasted on this investigation. The public needs to be reminded of this.

Opinion journal argues for a full pardon. I’m not sure how I feel about that as Libby is still appealing the appointment of the special prosecutor and that case probably needs to be settled.

Finally, it is fantastic to see Fitzmas end with such a whimper. Keith Olbermann said last night this was a “virtual pardon.” Right. The DU and Kos commenters are in hysterics and threatening to impeach President Bush. Where was all this indignation when President Clinton commuted the sentence of Mel Reynolds, child molester? And here I thought liberals cared about the children.

-- The Ace

The Ross Report
by Richard Ross of Conservatives with Attitude!

The House Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing next week into the commuting of Libby’s sentence. They don’t yet know who they are going to call, but as of this morning they are thinking that they may not have enough time to call Libby himself and properly prepare. That could change.

Henry Waxman’s staff over at Government Oversight and Reform is still pursuing Peter Fitzgerald. Recall that Fitzgerald has already declined an invitation to testify, citing the ongoing appeals process. Though that process continues, Democrats on the committee think that the time may be now right for Fitzgerald to appear.

In the meantime this morning staff is looking through statements made by Republicans in the affair surrounding the pardon of Marc Rich. Republican were outraged at the time when it was disclosed that President Clinton did not consult the DoJ before acting. The same seems to have been the case now with Libby.

Meanwhile, conventional opinion on the Hill is circulating around the idea that the president is playing to his ideological conservative base in an attempt to mend fences after backing the comprehensive immigration reform that they all despised. He’s not thinking about the next election, the thinking goes, when Indies will decide things. He’s thinking about the next year and half and trying to salvage an agenda, since Bush hassuch little support or credibility anymore.

It should be noted that a full pardon would have meant that Libby would have been compelled to testify and could no longer take the Fifth. But as it stands, his appeal is still pending. One advantage of a commutation.

-- 'The Commish' A.J. Sparxx

Dems love Lindsey:

Robert Botsch, a University of South Carolina-Aiken professor, said if Graham has a problem it’s likely to be in the GOP primary with its hard-core conservative base.

The general election is safe for Graham, Botsch maintains. “He is the closest thing we’ve had to a Democratic senator in a long time,” Botsch noted.

Even Democrats agree.

Last year, Joe Erwin of Greenville, immediate past chairman of the S.C. Democratic Party, was asked what Democrat might challenge Graham in 2008. Erwin doubted anyone would.

“We already have our best Democrat up there in Lindsey,” Erwin quipped.

HT: Jon Sandor

-- W.C. Varones

The Ross Report
by Richard Ross of Conservatives with Attitude!

Senior US intelligence officials say British authorities now believe “the key of the key suspects” in the London and Glasgow terrorist plot have now all been detained. Others may be arrested, but the Brits feel safe in thinking they have the major players in the plot.

“These guys left behind a gold mine of evidence,” said the official, asked why things moved so quickly and why the officials feel so comfortable.

We will continue to investigate this story and bring you the latest as information breaks.

-- 'The Commish' A.J. Sparxx

Liberal Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) was a surprise vote against both Bush-Kennedy cloture motions last week. Here’s why he voted no:

About two weeks before [the Bush-Kennedy amnesty] died, I sat down with Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), who up to that point had voted to let the bill go forward. Bayh was blue about the legislation’s prospects, and his explanation had more to do with the political climate than with the bill’s particulars – although he cited some of those in explaining why he voted, in the end, to block a measure he called “a theoretical hodgepodge.”

“The timing of this is all wrong,” Bayh said. “There’s a tremendous amount of middle-class anxiety in the country right now,” and anger over immigration reflected “the complete lack of a domestic agenda to address the needs of the middle class” in areas such as health care, pensions and education. When voters saw Congress directing its attention to 12 million illegal immigrants, he said, “They asked: ‘When are you going to get around to me? Are you going to get around to me?’ ” Bayh himself strongly favors legalizing the status of the 12 million. He opposed some of the bill’s more punitive sections and sided with Latino groups in trying to strengthen the rules on family reunification.

But he said he understood why many voters weren’t buying immigration reform this year. “When people are feeling more secure about their own situations, they’re more willing to welcome others,” he said in a follow-up interview yesterday. “If we had moved first to address the middle class’s anxieties, we would have had a much better chance of success.”

And the strongest arguments in the restrictionists’ arsenal played on a widespread belief that the federal government was too incompetent to enforce whatever tough provisions the bill contained. Bayh pointed to poor planning for the Iraq war and the failure to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as leading inevitably to skepticism. “A government that’s going to permit that is suddenly going to know how to make an entirely new employment system work?” Bayh asked.

-- PoliPundit

Amnesty supporter Fred Barnes, on senatorial motives:

The excuses some senators used to explain their “no” votes and mask their political motives were laughably lame. Harkin said he feared some workers could have been denied jobs “because of errors in a government database.” Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico told the New York Times that the supposed secrecy in which the bill was drafted created confusion and “caused it to flop.” Actually the bipartisan drafting sessions were widely reported and attended by more than a dozen senators. Domenici is up for reelection next year.

Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas switched his vote during the roll call from yes to no. “The country’s not ready,” he told the Washington Times in justifying his reversal. “I thought we were, but just concluded the country’s not ready.” Brownback voted for a more liberal immigration bill last year. This year he’s seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

Susan Collins rarely splits with her Maine colleague Olympia Snowe, but on immigration she did. She said the bill didn’t strike the right balance. “People were troubled by the proposed solution for the 12 million people here illegally,” she said. Collins is running for reelection next year. Snowe isn’t.

Whatever the tactical explanations, it’s clear that public opinion forced these senators - and some other senators - to vote no.

-- PoliPundit

Scott Rasmussen’s simple analysis:

The final Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll before the vote found that just 22% of Americans supported the legislation. No amount of Presidential persuasion, Senate logrolling, and procedural tricks was able to overcome that solid bi-partisan lack of public support (although it’s breathtaking to consider how close a determined leadership could come to passing such an unpopular bill).

The real mystery in all of this is why the Senators and their cheerleaders didn’t anticipate the public response. Perhaps they fell in love with their own rhetoric and forgot how it might sound to others.

Near the end of the debate, supporters of the doomed legislation often stated that the status quo is unacceptable. Most Americans would agree on that point. In fact, they might even hold that feeling more strongly than the Grand Bargainers of the Senate–72% of American voters believe it’s Very Important to reduce illegal immigration and enforce the borders. But controlling the border was never a focal point of the Senate debate. Instead, the Senators spent most of the time debating the fine points of various approaches to legalizing those who are here illegally. For voters, those topics were definitely a second-or-third tier aspect of the issue.

Because the Senators and the White House never showed much enthusiasm for reducing illegal immigration, only 16% believed the Senate bill would accomplish that goal. Forty-one percent (41%) thought passage of the legislation would actually lead to more illegal immigration. In other words, even though voters consider the status quo unacceptable, they had every confidence that Congress could make a bad situation worse.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of this basic fact. Outside of 46 Senators, hardly anybody thought the legislation would work. That’s why it was defeated. It wasn’t amnesty or guest-worker programs or paths to citizenship that doomed the bill. Each of those provisions made it more difficult for some segments of the population to accept. However, a majority would have accepted them as part of a true compromise that actually gained control of the border.

-- PoliPundit

Over the weekened, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said that 370 miles of border fencing would be completed by the end of 2008.

-- PoliPundit

I’ve found my parents to be good representatives of mainstream Republican voters. They are moderate Republicans, differing sometimes on issues but rarely voting Democrat in general elections. They live in a red county in a blue state, and follow political news casually. They have never seen a political blog. They don’t listen to right-wing radio.

Visiting my parents this weekend, I was surprised by how well they understood the immigration bill, and by how vehemently they were opposed to it. The rewarding of lawbreakers was a big issue, but even bigger was the deception: “this is not amnesty.” They were offended and insulted that Bush/Kennedy/McCain would lie so blatantly about a bill that was obviously amnesty.

People don’t want to be lied to. Reagan’s amnesty was a bad idea (certainly at least in hindsight), but at least he didn’t say it wasn’t amnesty.

-- W.C. Varones

Looks like this one could use a few more minutes on the barbie:

Police officers hold down one of the badly-burned men outside the Glasgow arrivals hall moments after he had set himself alight

Story here.

-- W.C. Varones