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.
