Senate Pulls all-nighter: GOP determined to commit suicide

Somebody, please give them all guns. Why postpone the inevitable?

Democrats stage all-night debate on Iraq

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 11 minutes ago

Senate Democrats made Republicans stand, talk and sit for marathon arguments against the protracted war in Iraq in an all-night session where the most eye-catching props were the beds brought in for the sleepy.

Republicans, indeed, responded with a yawn — agreeing to stay around as Tuesday turned to Wednesday and respond to any votes that might be scheduled even though they remained steadfast in their opposition to the Democrats' anti-war legislation.

"This is nonsense," said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

Added Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., of his Democratic colleagues: "I bet I can stay up longer than they can." (How old is this guy, 5 -6?)

And so he did, speaking on the floor after even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had retired a little after midnight, to a cot set up in a parlor adjacent to his office.

Reid had pushed through a motion minutes earlier, on a 41-37 roll-call vote, instructing the Senate Sergeant-at-arms to "request the attendance of absent senators" in an effort to keep members near the chamber. Having made his point, Reid than announced there would be no further votes before 5 a.m. EDT.

By then, attendance had fallen off. As the day dawned, bleary-eyed senators passed the same motion 37-23.

Thus, most senators got a chance for a few hours of shuteye even while a handful of their colleagues took turns droning on through the night with floor speeches.

The "live" audience for the speeches was sparce, however, and there was no indication how aggressive the sergeant-at-arms was being in carrying out his official instructions to keep members near the chamber — or whether he was insisting that they be awake.

With a half-dozen spectators watching from the gallery, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and John Thune of South Dakota were among those speaking during the long night, joined by Democrats Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Jim Webb of Virginia. Republican presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona finished his speech around 4:10 a.m. He was followed by White House hopeful Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in the last election, had the floor as the sun started rising over Capitol Hill.

The Senate was to vote later in the morning on legislation by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., that would require President Bush to begin pulling troops out of Iraq in 120 days. After April 30, an unspecified number of troops would be allowed to remain in Iraq to fight terrorists, protect U.S. assets and train Iraqi security forces. (Yeah, like thats gonna happen)

The legislation was expected to attract the support of a narrow majority of senators — around 52 votes — but fall short of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate and end a filibuster.

"Will the all-night session change any votes? I hope so," said Reid, D-Nev. "Because it will focus attention on the obstructionism of the Republicans."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice planned to spend most of Wednesday on Capitol Hill lobbying lawmakers on Bush's Iraq policy, a senior State Department official said.

Rice's plans included spending up to five hours in the morning and early afternoon in group and private meetings in both the Senate and House. The focus would be Iraq and other foreign policy issues, including the Middle East, the official said.

While the issue was momentous — a war more than four years in duration, costing more than 3,600 U.S. troops their lives — the proceedings were thick with politics.

MoveOn.org, the anti-war group, announced plans for more than 130 events around the country to coincide with the Senate debate, part of an effort to pressure Republicans into allowing a final vote on the legislation. A candlelight vigil and rally across the street from the Capitol was prominent among them, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., among those attending.

Republican Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon and Olympia Snowe of Maine appeared with Democratic supporters of the legislation at a news conference. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., was also expected to endorse the measure.

"We are at the crossroads of hope and reality, and the time has come to address reality," said Snowe, who said the Iraqi government was guilty of "serial intransigence" when it came to trying to solve the country's political problems.

Smith, who is seeking re-election next year, said Iraqis appeared focused on "revenge, not reconciliation," and that the administration needed to change its approach. "The American mission is to make sure that Iraq doesn't fall into the hands of al-Qaida," he said, rather than referee a civil war.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Senate Dems Seek To Limit Murder Monkey

Senate Dems move to limit Iraq mission


By DAVID ESPO,
AP Special Correspondent

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

The officials, Democratic aides and others familiar with private discussions, spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying rank-and-file senators had not yet been briefed on the effort. They added, though, the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) is expected to present the proposal to fellow Democrats early next week for their consideration.
The plan is to attempt to add the measure to anti-terrorism legislation that scheduled to be on the Senate floor next week and the week following.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid, declined to discuss the deliberations, saying only, "No final decisions have been made on how to proceed."

Any attempt to limit Bush's powers as commander in chief would likely face strong opposition from Republican allies of the administration in the Senate and could also face a veto threat.
The decision to try to limit the military mission marks the next move in what Reid and other Senate war critics have said will be a multistep effort to force a change in Bush's strategy and eventually force an end to U.S. participation in the nearly four-year-old war.

Earlier efforts to pass a nonbinding measure critical of Bush's decision to deploy 21,500 additional troops ended in gridlock after Senate Republicans blocked votes on two separate measures.

The emerging Senate plan differs markedly from an approach favored by critics of the war in the House, where a nonbinding measure passed last week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she expects the next challenge to Bush's war policies to come in the form of legislation requiring the Pentagon to adhere to strict training and readiness standards in the case of troops ticketed for the war zone.

Rep. John Murtha D-Pa., the leading advocate of that approach, has said it would effectively deny Bush the ability to proceed with the troop buildup that has been partially implemented since he announced it in January.

Some Senate Democrats have been privately critical of that approach, saying it would have virtually no chance of passing and could easily backfire politically in the face of Republican arguments that it would deny reinforcements to troops already in the war zone.

Several Senate Democrats have called in recent days for revoking the original authorization that Bush sought and won from Congress in the months before the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

That measure authorized the president to use the armed forces "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate ... to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq" and to enforce relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions.

At the time the world body had passed resolutions regarding Iraq's presumed effort to develop weapons of mass destruction.

In a speech last week, Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, "I am working on legislation to repeal that authorization and replace it with a much narrower mission statement for our troops in Iraq."
He added that Congress should make clear what the mission of U.S. troops is: to responsibly draw down, while continuing to combat terrorists, train Iraqis and respond to emergencies.
"We should make equally clear what their mission is not: to stay in Iraq indefinitely and get mired in a savage civil war," said Biden, a 2008 Democratic presidential candidate.

Along with Biden, officials said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a small group of key Democrats were involved in the effort to draft legislation. Leadership aides are also playing a role.

It was not clear whether the measure would explicitly state that the 2002 authorization for the use of military force was being revoked. One proposal that had been circulated would declare that Bush was not authorized to involve U.S. armed forces in an Iraqi civil war, but it appeared that prohibition had been dropped as part of the discussions.

One Democrat said the legislation could remain silent on the issue of Bush's troop increase and noted that Reid had said he was ready to move beyond the deployment of more troops.
At the same time, several officials noted that any explicit authority for U.S. troops to confront al-Qaida would effectively bless Bush's decision to dispatch about 3,500 troops to the volatile Anbar Province in the western part of Iraq.

The balance of the 21,500 additional troops would go to Baghdad, where the administration hopes they can help quell sectarian violence and give the Iraqi government time to establish its authority.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Appeals Court Ruling Upholds Military Commissions Act

But that is far from the end of the story. Lawyers for Gitmo Detainees plan to appeal and Partick Leahy plans to revisit the dismantling of the Great Writ in the Senate.

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20—A federal appeals court today upheld the constitutionality of a new law that strips federal courts of the authority to review the cases of foreign prisoners held by the military at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Twice before the United States Supreme Court has ruled that federal courts may consider habeas corpus petitions by the Guantánamo Bay detainees. In response to those decisions, Congress has twice rewritten the law in an attempt to limit the avenues of appeal by the detainees.

The most recent revision to the law, at issue in today’s decision, was signed by President Bush last October. It eliminated the jurisdiction of federal courts over habeas challenges by any non-citizens held as enemy combatants, and set up a military review for the prisoners at Guantánamo, with limited right of appeal to the federal courts afterwards.

By a 2-to-1 vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, did not violate a provision in Article 1 of the Constitution that prevents the government from suspending habeas corpus — the right of a detained person to challenge the legality of the detention — except in “cases of rebellion or invasion.”

The court’s majority, citing Supreme Court and other precedent, held that the right of habeas corpus does not extend to foreign citizens detained outside the United States — the prisoners covered by the new law. A lower court in December followed the same logic to the same conclusion in a related case, involving Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose earlier appeal to the Supreme Court had led to the overturning of the previous Congressional attempts to limit the prisoners’ avenues to the federal courts.

Bush administration officials hailed the latest decision.

“The decision reaffirms the validity of the framework that Congress established in the Military Commission Act permitting Guantánamo detainees to challenge their detention through combatant status review tribunals with the opportunity for judicial review before the D.C. Circuit,” said Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman.

But lawyers representing the detainees vowed to once again seek a review by the Supreme Court.

“This decision empowers the president to do whatever he wishes to prisoners without any legal limitation as long as he does it off shore, and encourages such notorious practices as extraordinary rendition and a contempt for international human rights law,” said Shayana Kadidal , a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the detainees. “The matter will ultimately have to be resolved by the Supreme Court for a third time.”

Democrats now in control of Congress said they would move quickly to introduce legislation that would unambiguously give federal courts the right to consider habeas petitions by detainees.

“The Military Commissions Act is a dangerous and misguided law that undercuts our freedoms and assaults our Constitution by removing vital checks and balances designed to prevent government overreaching and lawlessness,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The decision today, Lakhdar Boumediene v. George W. Bush, involved a consolidation of the cases of 63 detainees, all from foreign countries, who had sought review in two separate federal district courts in Washington. One federal district judge had ruled in 2005 that she had the authority to consider the cases, while another judge ruled that he did not, and granted the administration’s motion to dismiss the cases.

Writing for the court in today’s decision, Judge A. Raymond Randolph said that the arguments put forward by the lawyers for the detainees “are creative but not cogent” and that Congress clearly meant to preclude the federal courts from considering the detainees’ cases. He said that there were no cases in which the habeas corpus could be used by foreign nationals held at an overseas military base and that the constitution “does not confer rights on aliens without property or presence within the United States.”

His opinion was also signed by Judge David B. Sentelle.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Judith W. Rogers said that the Military Commission Act had violated the constitutional provision that restricts the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. She reasoned that the suspension clause limits Congressional powers, rather than conferring a right on the accused.

“Prior to the enactment of the Military Commissions Act, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the detainees held at Guantánamo had a statutory right to habeas corpus,” Judge Rogers wrote. “The MCA purports to withdraw that right but does so in a manner that offends the constitutional constraint on suspension.”


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.