This is too important to not post. Imagine a country where your elected representatives have no real authority to represent you. When votes in the elected body are counted, the party in power ignores the count and declares it "passed" or "not passed" according their desires.
No, we're not talking about a third-world nation in a constant state of revolution. We're talking about the U.S. Congress. When the party in power displays total disregard for the lawmaking process, this country is in serious trouble. Expresso Pundit and Sonoran Alliance have both provided excellent posts on what happened yesterday in the good old U.S.A..
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8 comments:
Mayor Daley would have been proud. Too bad they couldn't have conjured up a few votes from some deceased congressmen to "do it right".
Ahhh ... the memories of 2002-2006. That IS what you refer to, right?
Sirocco,
Delay may have delayed (heh, heh) votes until he got the outcome he was looking for, and I agree that is not always fair, but is part and parcel of congress, unfortunately, and did not begin in 2002.
However, changing the results of a gaveled-down vote is another matter entirely. Outcome is outcome, you don't get do-overs. Obviously you can see why this is wrong, and if Republicans had done it, Democrats would be rending their clothes in the street, not to mention the hissy fit that New York Times would throw. I would challenge you to show me when this has EVER occurred in the congress prior to this moment.
Unique parliamentary precedent is rarely a good thing, and our Democratic House leadership has it in spades.
I have to see the news item first. TonyGOPrano said he saw a news item n Fox this morning, but I haven't seen anything other than Shedagg's mailer and responses at a few sites here.
I agree that if it actually happened this way, it's completely wrong.
Here's a happier story for our left leaning viewers to to read:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070803/ap_en_ce/people_sean_penn_2
Sean Penn applauding Hugo Chavez's comments that Americans are engaged in "genocide" in Iraq. Now that is just Democrat freak-show action at its finest. Rigging a vote?...these guys are mere pikers by comparison.
We have the YouTube video of what happened. Just need to get it posted. Sorry, been out all day.
So, which congresswoman changed her vote??? That would bee interesting to know
From what I have read, a lot did.
Supposedly as the vote approached a close it was failing. At the last minute three Republicans went to change their vote. In response, five Democrats went to change there votes. At some point with all the votes getting swapped, the vote gets gaveled down.
Dems claimed they mistakenly closed the vote early. My suspicion is they actually closed it right on time, in the midst of all the vote changes, which hadn't completed yet.
There was an offer to redo the vote which was turned down, which makes it clear (in my eyes at least) that Republican leaders know very well they don't have the votes, and also know they can make hay out of this, and will.
Very sloppy and very poor on the Dems part. If they knew they had the votes, and had just gaveled it down early, they ought, IMO, to simply have let the vote stand then introduce another vote addressing the issue again as soon as possible (right away if they could).
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