Our government is so lame. The House just held a vote on the supplemental war funding bill. The vote was actually a motion to instruct the conferees to accept the Lieberman-Graham amendment that would exempt photos taken of detainee mistreatment from being subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
A bit of explanation is probably warranted here. Whenever the House and Senate pass bills that are not word-for-word identical, they must resolve the differences and then both vote to pass a bill that is identical. To do this, members of both houses of Congress are selected to hammer out the differences in what is known as a Conference. The Senate version of the Supplemental Bill has the FOIA exemption, but the House version does not. So the conferees of both houses have to meet and decide whether the exemption stays in the final bill or it goes.
The motion to instruct the conferees vote is non-binding. But it sends a strong signal to the conferees that House members want the FOIA exemption in the bill that they just passed the motion by a vote of 267-162, with 95 Democrats voting yes. Perhaps, most importantly, two of the Democratic conferees (John Murtha and Chet Edwards) voted in favor of the motion. That means that there is a majority of the House conferees are on the record as being in favor of the exemption.
Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)- N
Nita Lowey (D-NY)- N
David Obey (D-WI)- N
John Murtha (D-PA)- Y
Chet Edwards (D-TX)- Y
Jerry Lewis (R-CA)- Y
Bill Young (R-FL)- Y
Kay Granger (R-TX)- Y
So, based on that evidence I would expect the FOIA exemption to be in the Supplemental Bill. Yet, it is not at all clear that the bill can pass if it does contain the exemption. It’s now possible that the Supplemental War Funding will not pass the House. That wouldn’t end war funding, but it would create a delay. And everyone would have to go back to the blackboard.
As for those 95 Democrats who voted to suppress evidence of detainee abuse? They’re cowards from vulnerable districts. But, they still have a chance to show some courage on the vote for final passage.
link doesn’t work for some reason.
not surprised by murtha’s vote.
that the democrats are cowards is not news.
which link?
hey pat murphy went pee-pee in his pampers!
indeed, he did.
Sad, Democrats covering for acts done under the Cheny/Bush reign.
Of course, I’m waiting for the giant “No, Fuck You” moment to come where the conference committee comes back with the IMF funding stripped from the bill and the FOIA exemptions left in place. I’m fully expecting that to happen, since the Republican objections are the IMF funding, not the actual war supplemental or the FOIA exemptions. I don’t know what that would do in the Senate, but dropping the IMF funding would unfortunately probably get the bill to pass the House with the FOIA exemptions in place. Then our only hope of finding out what the fuck our government has been doing that Obama and company are so damn scared of is that we get a whistleblower with access to the photos who decides to run the risk of a treason charge and leak the damn things to the press anyway.
Courage? Are you serious? There has to be some kind of wager we can make on this – drink a shot for every Democrat who shows some courage by changing their vote on the final? I’m not sure what the wager should be but let’s figure that out – I’m betting that no more than 5 Dems change their vote.
Why would one ever expect the Empire to display elementary honesty and a respect for truth. That is not the way of Empires including this one.
Quoted from HuffPo: