FISA still up in the air in the Senate

Is the Senate's race to the recess catching up with them? The upper chamber still has the housing bill (H.R. 3221) to finish up, in addition to FISA and the Iraq supplemental/GI Bill/unemployment extension.

Here's Harry Reid, on the floor earlier tonight, describing the problem and its consequences:

I know of only one holdup on our being able to complete the housing legislation. If we can't get that Senator to sign off on this, then we only have one alternative and that is we'll file cloture tomorrow on another arm of this housing legislation. We will have cloture on that two legislative days later and then we still have one more to do. Now, that would mean we would have to be here over the weekend. Now, that was not anticipated we would do that. In the meantime, having done that, we are not going to be able to -- it will hold up our being able to do FISA. We wanted to do a consent agreement on that tonight. That was -- I was told that would not be possible.

Now, Mr. President, on that, there are people who don't like the FISA legislation. Now, I recognize that the majority of the Senate does. But some people don't like it. But in spite of that, I have found the two people that speak out mostly against that -- and there are others -- but Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been very -- Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been very diligent in their opposition to the legislation. But, of course, they understand the Senate very well. They understand the Senate very well.

[...]

And so what we would like to do is have a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to that. Well, we can't do that unless it's by consent. So, therefore, we're going to have to do cloture on the motion to proceed to FISA at some later time. And then that only allows us to proceed to the bill. And then we still have to do cloture on the bill.

Now, Mr. President, FISA is a product of the administration. It's passed the House and that's fine. But we're not going to stop people from going home for the 4th of July recess over FISA. If people don't want to do it, then we're not going to do it. It's not because we're holding it up over here, is what I'm saying. It's being held up by the minority. Now, we're going to -- we're going to proceed and we're going to stay here and finish this housing bill. Mr. President, the Case-Schiller home price index registered the largest decline in home prices in that index's history. That's more than 40 years. Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. So we're going to finish the housing bill. It may knock a few people out of parades on July 4th, or whatever -- however long it takes us to do this.

Now, the other product we have that we want to finish before we go home is the supplemental appropriation bill. Again, Mr. President, there's been a delicately crafted piece of legislation that has come from the House on this. They've worked very hard to get the House leadership to approve that, Democratic and Republican, the President of the United States has signed off on this.

Is it everything that I want? Is it everything we want over here? The answer is no. But I think, Mr. President, it's something that will pass with a very large margin over here. But we can't get to it unless people allow us to get to it. And so that, too, would have to wait until we get back after the July 4th recess. I think that would be a shame. We've been [told] that the Pentagon can pay the bills until about the middle of February. Then they're out of money. Now, that -- the President -- I want the President, all of his people to hear what I'm saying. We are not holding up the supplemental. We, the Democrats, are not holding it up. We, the Democrats, are not holding up FISA.

It was an odd choice to schedule FISA for consideration before the supplemental. Nobody wants to go home for July 4th parades without passing the GI Bill, and a fair number of Senators feel the same way about the housing bill, the war funding and/or the unemployment benefits extenstion. Putting FISA -- a contentious bill that was sure to produce extended debate -- before the supplemental virtually guaranteed either a delayed adjournment or serious discomfort among the membership.

What an... interesting decision that was. Let's see how that plays out tomorrow, when debate resumes on the housing bill, and the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the FISA bill coming due in the afternoon.

Just like in December, the FISA bill suddenly faces long odds for passage before recess grants yet another (short) reprieve.

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

This evening's Rescue Rangers are vcmvo2, Got a Grip, watercarrier4diogenes, Avila, Shayera, and dopper0189, with vcmvo2 as editor.

The diaries up for rescue are:

• In this important diary, Valtin gives a new interpretation of the "real" date that the Bush administration torture policy took effect in Media & Gov't Torture Cover-up: Sen. Levin, Release the 12/01 SERE Docs. Forget what you thought you knew about this, just drop everything and read this well-sourced diary! (vcmvo2)
• Using great YouTube links, The Bargeron reminds us of the conservative movement's historical lack of understanding of what diplomacy means in The Misuse of "Appeasement". (dopper0189)
• As an expat American living in the UK, Ovid provides a study in political policy contrasts with the well-written and well-researched US Politics Versus World Politics. (Avila)
• Circle's personal story brings attention to the possibility of growing tragedy in While the Repubs Fiddle (with Terrorists): California Burns. (shayera)
• In Responding to the world food crisis: Silver bullets or systems changes? Thomas Dobbs argues convincingly that searching for the silver bullet to address food shortages is a "too little, too late" attitude that must change. (vcmvo2)
• ImpeachKingBushII has some advice for Lindsey Graham: Senator Graham, stop being Bush's JAG lawyer and start being a US Senator! (shayera)
• fake consultant offers up an intriguing idea about how to quickly change the face of the auto industry and asks us to participate in ironing out the details in On Buying Out The Fleet, Or, Here's A Gas War We Can Win. (Got a Grip)
• Frederick Clarkson asks a truly rhetorical question, Can Dobson Out-Fruitcake Obama on the Constitution? (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Let's follow iampunha as he trips down memory lane to discover fungus and witches and madness - Oh My! in June 24, 1374: a plague, a chill, a poison. (Got a Grip)
• Amber6541 shines a light on more of the family's funny business in Jeb Bush's involvement in government sponsorship for religious schools in Florida. (watercarrier4diogenes)
• Frankenoid points out that those in charge of the Democratic Convention efforts may not have a firm grasp of how the intertubez work and offers suggestions in how we can help those in charge to overcome their own best efforts at cocking it all up in Help us Herd Cats in Denver. (Got a Grip)
• don mikulecky analyzes and discusses a vastly different approach to teaching science so that it is relevant in today's world: Complexity science for teachers. (vcmvo2)
• Jeff Huber suggests that perhaps the best way of trying to read the tea leaves where BushCo's intentions toward Iran are concerned would be to examine the historical record of their past actions and stated goals in Boxing Up the Crazies. (Got a Grip)

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this Open Thread.

Bush Justice Department politicizes absolutely everything

Two reports today confirm that under Bush the Justice Department has politicized everything it touches, even programs for the young.

Not that we should have needed any further proof of the obvious after AG Gonzales' deputy, Monica Goodling, confessed last May to illegally discriminating in hiring along partisan lines. But now it's official: DOJ hiring committees went to great lengths to exclude Democratic, liberal, and activist job applicants under both John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. A new report (PDF) investigates Republican manipulation of the Honors and Interns programs, which together bring new lawyers into DOJ. Ashcroft restructured the programs in 2002 specifically to ensure that more conservatives and fewer liberals were hired. He removed career officials from the hiring committees and replaced them with highly partisan political appointees.

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used "political or ideological" factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

"Many qualified candidates" were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, "constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations."

The DOJ's political elves went to extraordinary lengths to root out what they called "wackos" and "extremists", blackballing applicants for affiliation with such groups as The Nature Conservancy and The American Constitution Society. They invested much time in combing through applicants' backgrounds searching for disqualifying hints of liberalism or the belief that the world might somehow be improved. Even exceptionally distinguished liberal applicants were routinely denied job interviews, whereas mere membership in the Federalist Society was considered sufficient to guarantee an interview. Among the political appointees whom the report rebukes is the rather nasty former counsel to the Associate AG. Monica Goodling had put her in charge of the interview process.

Esther Slater McDonald..."wrote disparaging statements about the candidates' liberal and Democratic Party affiliations on the applications she reviewed and ... she voted to deselect candidates on that basis," said the report by Inspector General Glenn Fine.

It confirms our findings and our fears that the same senior Department officials involved with the firing of United States Attorneys were injecting improper political motives into the process of hiring young attorneys. I suspect further reports from the Inspector General will continue to shed light on the extent to which the Bush administration has allowed politics to affect - and infect - the Department's priorities, from law enforcement to the operation of the crucial Civil Rights Division to the Department's hiring practices.

Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, by contrast, characteristically tried to paint lipstick on the pig:

"I'm disappointed by findings that in 2006 a few individuals within the Justice Department apparently violated Department policy and possibly federal law in the hiring of Honors Program lawyers and Summer Law Interns..."I am encouraged, however, by the Inspector General's findings that several political appointees within the Justice Department raised concerns about the actions of their colleagues through the appropriate channels and spoke candidly with investigators. The misdeeds of a few individuals should not tarnish the reputation of the Department of Justice as a whole.

Those few individuals, all Republicans, are right at the top of the DOJ, however. They're the ones who shut down those objections from career employees. They're the ones who perverted the frickin Justice Department.

And despite Smith's confidence that things have surely improved under Michael Mukasey, that's far from clear. You remember two weeks ago when news leaked out that DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention was doling out grants to politically well connected Republicans (for example, to a program run by Bill Bennett's wife) while rejecting applications that were actually worthy? After employees blew the whistle on OJJDP director Robert Flores' corruption, DOJ started an investigation. No, not into the corruption; it was an investigation of the whistleblowing.

But Flores' corruption just is too egregious to cover up. Murray Waas has another revelation today. Under pressure from another political appointee, Steven McFarland (director of DOJ's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives task force), Flores awarded a massive grant to Lisa Trevino Cummins, formerly of the WH Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Cummins' application previously had been deemed unacceptable by Department reviewers, partly because fully a third of the grant was to go to her consulting firm just for helping the intended recipient spend the money. Cummins also planned to have the grant overseen by Kelly Cowles, who was under investigation by the Ohio Inspector General for mismanaging a similar grant.

And the ostensible recipient of Flores' largesse, with an assist from the well-connected Cummins?

Victory Outreach describes itself as a "church-oriented Christian ministry called to the task of evangelizing and disciplining the hurting people of the world, with the message of hope and plan of Jesus Christ."

Now that sounds like a real plan for addressing juvenile delinquency. Good news indeed...that Mukasey has put an end to the politicization of the Justice Department, I mean.

FISA Amendments Act and the Intelligence Oversight Board

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