On Monday, the U.S. Senate finally found something they could get some bipartisan agreement about. They voted 69-27 to allow the states to collect sales taxes on internet purchases. Nineteen Republicans supported the bill and five Democrats opposed it. But Speaker Boehner won’t support it, so it’s dead.
Yesterday, the Senate finally confirmed David Medine to serve as the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. That’s the board that George W. Bush created in response to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation, and which was so toothless that even Lanny Davis felt shamed enough to quit. For some reason, the Republicans agreed to a vote on Medine’s confirmation and then all 45 of them voted against him. In other words, they had the votes to block his confirmation but they let it go ahead anyway. Why did they all vote against a guy who is going to do nothing more than to advise the president on how his policies might impact civil liberties?
Republicans, led by Sen. Charles Grassley, opposed the nominee and voted against him.
“I was disappointed that he failed to answer a basic yes-or-no question about national security law: ‘Do you believe that we are engaged in a war on terrorism?’,” Sen. Grassley said. “Instead of a simple yes or no, he opted for a more limited answer that military power is permissible in appropriate cases.”
Pretty mature behavior, right?
It appears that they don’t want anyone telling the president he can’t do something because of privacy concerns. We are at war with terrorism, so anything goes.
Meanwhile, the GOP is having a Benghazi circus today because they still can’t believe that the American people don’t like people who politicize tragedy.