{"id":102,"date":"2005-11-03T00:41:06","date_gmt":"2005-11-03T06:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=102"},"modified":"2005-11-05T21:39:40","modified_gmt":"2005-11-06T03:39:40","slug":"gop-angered-by-closed-senate-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/gop-angered-by-closed-senate-session\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democrats <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

feelings. He lashes out like a dittohead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session<\/a>
\nMeeting Reopened After <\/p>\n

Two Hours By Charles Babington and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writers<\/p>\n

Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door <\/p>\n

session yesterday, infuriating Republicans but extracting from them a promise to speed up an inquiry into the Bush <\/p>\n

administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons in the run-up to the war<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

With no warning in the mid-<\/p>\n

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

its massive doors after evicting all visitors, reporters and most staffers. …<\/p>\n

Republicans condemned the Democrats’ maneuver, <\/p>\n

which marked the first time in more than 25 years that one party had insisted on a closed session without consulting the other party. <\/p>\n

But within two hours, Republicans appointed a bipartisan panel to report on the progress of a Senate intelligence committee <\/p>\n

report on prewar intelligence<\/strong>, which Democrats say has been delayed for nearly a year. …<\/p>\n

The usually unflappable <\/p>\n

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

been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” he said. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no <\/p>\n

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

can’t trust Senator Reid.”<\/p>\n

“They have no ideas”? How about the idea of pursuing the Bush administration <\/p>\n

with one tenth the zeal they showed in attacking Clinton? How about some spine and ethics instead of party-only loyalty. mjh<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reid said he was forced to seek the closed session to spur action on the investigation. “The <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

to the American people that this investigation has been stymied.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rockefeller said Democratic requests for information <\/p>\n

related to the investigation are routinely denied or ignored, and he suggested that the Senate Republican leadership was under orders <\/p>\n

from the Bush administration not to cooperate.<\/p>\n

“Any time the intelligence committee pursued a line of inquiry that brought us <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

time and time again<\/strong>,” Rockefeller said. “The very independence of the United States Congress as a separate and coequal <\/p>\n

branch of the government has been called into question.”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading GOP Angered by Closed Senate Session<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}