Democrats

in the Senate did what they had to do to get their Republican colleagues to act responsibly. Boo-hoo for poor Dr Frist and his hurt

feelings. He lashes out like a dittohead.

GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session
Meeting Reopened After

Two Hours By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writers

Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door

session yesterday, infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up an inquiry into the Bush

administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons in the run-up to the war.

With no warning in the mid-

afternoon, the Senate’s top Democrat invoked the little-used Rule 21, which forced aides to turn off the chamber’s cameras and close

its massive doors after evicting all visitors, reporters and most staffers. …

Republicans condemned the Democrats’ maneuver,

which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party.

But within two hours, Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a Senate intelligence committee

report on prewar intelligence, which Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year. …

The usually unflappable

majority leader, Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), was searching for words to express his outrage to reporters a few minutes later. The Senate “has

been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” he said. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no

ideas.” Never before had he been “slapped in the face with such an affront,” he said, adding: “For the next year and a half, I

can’t trust Senator Reid.”

“They have no ideas”? How about the idea of pursuing the Bush administration

with one tenth the zeal they showed in attacking Clinton? How about some spine and ethics instead of party-only loyalty. mjh

Reid said he was forced to seek the closed session to spur action on the investigation. “The

only way we’ve been able to get their attention is to spend 3 1/2 hours in a closed session,” he said. “It’s a slap in the face

to the American people that this investigation has been stymied.”

Rockefeller said Democratic requests for information

related to the investigation are routinely denied or ignored, and he suggested that the Senate Republican leadership was under orders

from the Bush administration not to cooperate.

“Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that brought us

close to the role of the White House in all of this in the use of intelligence prior to the war, our efforts have been thwarted

time and time again,” Rockefeller said. “The very independence of the United States Congress as a separate and coequal

branch of the government has been called into question.”