do whatever they want in the name of security regardless of civil liberties or constitutional protections.

Just pathetic. I wonder if it’s becoming more apparent to the American people that our Government is just as bad as Egypt’s.

Clear Policy of No Reprisals

Why do we have to give a damn sitcom title to everything?

Sweet job Jon; very nice!

{ approving nod of the head }

Obama will never be call Slick Willy

Obama is just going to be call a MORON

Mubarak must need some humor,because Obama is giving it to him Daily

Obama and asking Mubarak to do something, Obama will not do.

Is it fair to say Obama is approaching Bush stupidity

I hope Al Jazeera English picks up on this and draws the parallel on TV.

There’s no irony here. Obama may be “publically pressuring” Egypt but behind the scenes he’s giving them a wink and a nod to continue their tyrannical ways. Pathetic.

Speaking of AJE, there are a couple of especially good pieces on the website:

Discussion of the universal right to self-determination (video)
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/rizkhan/2011/02/2011238843342531.html

How the U.S. is helping Abbas construct a police state in the West Bank
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112710311546108.html

Thank you. I’d seen the first link but not read the second. Great read, and very insightful.

Exactly. Obama is doing the standard Obama. Say one thing publicy. Do the opposite privately!

days ago I wrote to my senators and presidents and turned the Kerry/McCain Egypt bill on them and said that Egypt should get nothing less than what we want which is the end of our emergency law, the Patriot act. So, great job. That bill that Kerry/ McCain put through is worth the read to see how hypocritical these people are.

I read yesterday that DiFi said there just wasn’t time to amend the thing! (handwring, handwring…)

Give obama a break. He has to appear that he believes in democracy at the same time he is whoring for the wealthy people who at this time are losing millions in stocks and business deals in Egypt. What is he to do? If he goes along with the protesters, he loses billions and billions. Then who will fund his 2012 election?

Obama is a failure in every sense of the word.

There is no irony here. Obama is doing what has been decided for him. The revolt in Egypt has forced him to choose and he initially chose well in backing the people. Here, no one will gather the force of numbers unless it lines their pockets or greases the way for more personal gain. This nation has become dumb, listless, and unwilling to change the channel on their life or government because they cannot find the remote under their flabby folds of uninspired physiques which are reflective of their character.

Aren’t we under a continuity of government “special” rule that gets renewed every year or so ?

obama has absolutely no integrity. I have as much loathing for him as I did for bush.

Maybe he’s figuring if he adds both things together, they will cancel each other out.

What, you’ve never played bazillion-dimensional chess before?

The Egyptians are out in the streets,they have shut down their Govt.
We,Americans on the other hand are incapable of protest of our corrupt repressive Govt.

A temporary reprieve in the House, at least (keep at it, Julian Sanchez!):

The House of Representatives just defeated the proposal to extend the three February-sunsetted/expiring PATRIOT Act provisions until December, 2011.

Vote count, by memory: 277 in favor, 148 against, 10 not voting. Since the vote was on a request to pass the proposal by suspending the rules of regular order (a method that provides for a maximum of 40 minutes of debate), a two-thirds majority was required (something around 290 in favor), and, again, was not obtained, as of about 7 p.m. Eastern time today.

Thanks also to the C-SPAN callers who spoke during the vote, and were almost-unanimously opposed to the extension – from Juneau, Alaska, to New York City, to Florida, to Michigan.

We have a clear policy of ” no reprisals” for our torture architects and their minions that gleefully carried out their orders, can’t they see how that works ?

This blatant hypocrisy is not lost on the Egyptians. Or the Iraqis, the Lebanese, the Libyans or anyone else in that region.

Good post, Jon.
FMTT, barry.

Woot! That is outstanding news! Wasn’t the whole point of suspending the rules of regular order intended to speed things right along? Guess that doesn’t work out so well if you can’t get the 2/3 needed.

So if it fails to pass do you know what the next move is? I can’t imagine that the Hypocrite-In-Chief or his evil little minions in Congress (why yes, I am looking at you DiFi) will let those provisions expire without a fight…

what a bunch of morans you all are … IF obama doesn’t appear strong THEN the republicans will lie about him

even though the republicans lie about everything all the time anyway

and then obama won’t be ELECTABLE – remember how gore and kerry and dukakis were “electable” and got their asses kicked … well – forget what you remember!!

ah, fuck it – trying to make phake excuses for this sell out makes me sick.

rmm

Wasn’t the whole point of suspending the rules of regular order intended to speed things right along? Guess that doesn’t work out so well if you can’t get the 2/3 needed.

Presumably; perhaps the leadership also wanted to assess the lay of the land in the new Republican House.

If I did my math right, even if the 6 non-voting Republicans had all voted Aye, the majority (283) would still have been five votes short of two-thirds (288), if the 4 non-voting Democrats remained non-voting. There was some definite wobble in the count during the fifteen minutes that the vote was held open after the announced fifteen-minute vote window had closed. Some votes went back and forth between Aye and No, a few times, each way. The largest No vote came just before the vote was called, when a vote or two in the Aye column switched to No to stay.

So if it fails to pass do you know what the next move is?

No – I haven’t been paying close attention to this in the House – but I’d expect some unpredictable twists and turns ahead, if it’s true that a minority of House Republicans are actually going to try to live up to their limited-government campaign rhetoric on this issue (and if John Boehner lives up to his promises to allow genuine floor debate and amending – including, or particularly, on major policy decisions like this one).

I have, however, been noticing stuff like this in the Senate – from Friday, February 4:

The following bills were read the second time, and placed on the calendar:

S. 289. A bill to extend expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 until December 31, 2013, and for other purposes.

S. 290. A bill to extend the sunset of certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, and for other purposes.

S. 291. A bill to repeal the sunset provisions in the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and other related provisions and permanently reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act.

As requested by Harry Reid on Friday (following their first reading on Thursday), in order to bypass committee referral and send the bills directly to the Senate Calendar, ready for motions to proceed to the floor. [As I understand it, S. 289 is the Dianne Feinstein PATRIOT/FISA Amendments Act/2013 vehicle, S. 290 is the Pat Leahy modest PATRIOT improvements vehicle, and S. 291 is Chuck Grassley's permanent PATRIOT reauthorization.]

What today’s House defeat primarily does, I think, is to give opponents of these measures in both the House and Senate valuable time to try to make a difference in the final outcome, any way they can.

Here’s some more irony to chew over;

As BHO and the oligarchy force march hundreds of thousands of Americans into foreclosure and bankruptcy and poverty, we are all going to be expected to bail out the banks that are too big fail, , , , ,

IN AFGHANISTAN!!

Yep, that’s right. All those $billions contributed by us and some allies were invested by our corrupt ‘partners’ in the Karzai regime in the Dubai real estate bubble, which then collapsed, taking all those billions away.

It’s called the Kabul Bank, and it’s the closest thing to a central bank for Afg. It pays all gubbmint employees, including the Army.

Should be interesting.

See, it’s okay when the U.S. does it ‘cuz they’re automatically the Good Guys and it’s bad when anyone else does it ‘cuz they’re automatically the Bad Guys.

In other words, ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.

Thanks powwow, much appreciated as always. I had heard about DiFi’s and Leahey’s versions, but had missed Grassley’s attempt to make our own version of emergency rule permanent here in the US. How fabulous is that?

You know what’s really galling is Grassley is old enough to know better. I bet there was a time when he would carry on about the “Godless commies” and their tyrannical police state and now he is doing his best to give it a leg up here.

I want my country back.

Good gawd! 289-291 are all bs

And Grassley’s 291 is just kabuki to make the other two look not-so-bad

Thanks for slogging through that mud powow

Edit: Harry Reid is a real piece of work

As requested by Harry Reid on Friday (following their first reading on Thursday), in order to bypass committee referral and send the bills directly to the Senate Calendar, ready for motions to proceed to the floor.

Stupidity with a generous amount of hypocrisy mixed in.

I have no doubt that what your saying is true, that two faced sob is behind closed doors doing all he can to support Mubarak effort to crush this uprising by the Egyptian people. I have learned that whatever Obama says publicly he opposes privately.

my thoughts exactly

Unfortunately for the principled minority of members of the new House majority, their concerns are being completely ignored, and the House is being given the full treatment of raw Speaker-wielded power, Pelosi-style – shutting down any further consideration or amendment of this proposed extension by the members of the House in public session – by Speaker Boehner and his Rules Committee, in order to impose his will about the matter on the House ASAP.

As Julian Sanchez notes in his important new overview of that House PATRIOT Act extension today:

The vote failed only because GOP leadership had sought to ram the bill through under a “suspension of the rules”–a streamlined process generally used for the most uncontroversial bills, limiting debate and barring the introduction of amendments–which required a two-thirds majority for passage. Given last week’s developments in the Senate, it’s still a near certainty that the expiring provisions will be extended again before the end of the month. In fact, there’s a Rules Committee meeting today to get the bill back on the House floor.

The House leadership indeed wasted no time, after last evening’s vote, in moving “to ram” this bill – H.R. 514, a two-page bill – through by simple majority, after failing to suspend the rules yesterday (a procedure supposedly reserved for ‘non-controversial’ measures like naming post offices). The GOP leadership is doing everything it can to rescind the ‘gift of time’ that last evening’s defeat provided to those opposed to intrusive domestic surveillance.

The House Rules Committee (a committee completely beholden to the House Speaker) hurriedly called an emergency meeting today at 3 p.m. to adopt a rule for simple-majority House floor consideration.

Despite the feel-good rhetoric of John Boehner and others in leadership as the new Congress opened, promising a renewed transparency in Congress, and the right of members to have their amendments heard and debated on the floor, the Rules Committee today in “emergency” session instead adopted, 7-2, a closed rule – meaning no amendments may be offered on the floor to improve this legislation or to shorten the extension – with a total of only one hour of debate, should the rule be adopted when brought to the floor, presumably tomorrow or Friday.

This bill has received no committee consideration in the new Republican House – another broken Boehner promise about how legislation will be handled – despite having been nominally referred to both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees in late January. And, as Julian has been pointing out, the sunsetting provisions could easily be renewed for much less time than the proposed nine-plus months (adding more time to the previous year-long extension, during which time the Democrats didn’t lift a finger to examine these issues), in order to allow for sober, deliberative consideration of the three expiring provisions in the interim, beyond February 28.

The only remaining option for the principled, gutsy minority of Republicans, and allied Democrats, appears to be one motion to recommit which the closed rule would allow. A motion that those Republicans, by rights, should be allowed to offer, to try to force this bill into committee for a proper airing before it’s brought back to the floor of the House. That is, the Democrats should pass up the opportunity to score petty partisan points, in order to allow any Republican willing to stand his or her ground to argue for a more open, democratic process in the consideration of this nine-month extension of the three sunsetting PATRIOT Act provisions, and in the House more generally, as the 112th Congress begins its work in earnest.

Julian Sanchez again:

One reason reform keeps getting postponed is that Congress is busy and tends not to make time for these issues until the sunset deadlines are right around the corner–at which point a reliable band of pundits and legislators imply that absolute bedlam will ensue unless every single surveillance authority is extended–meaning reform will have to wait until later, at which point it will be an emergency all over again. Once you start looking at the numbers, though, all these Chicken Littles begin to look faintly ridiculous.

[...]

So let’s stop living in a state of perpetual panic. Some of these provisions we’d be better off without. Some, like roving wiretaps, just need minor tweaks to close loopholes for misuse. Some–I’m looking at you, National Security Letters–require substantial reform. Many of these changes ought to be common sense, and have attracted bipartisan support in the past. But let’s stop kicking the can down the road and saying we’ll debate the proper limits on the surveillance state when there’s time. It’s important enough that Congress can [and should] make time.

P.S. Meanwhile, in the Senate, with the sunset of three PATRIOT Act provisions imminent, the Senate proceeded to adjourn from late morning Tuesday through late afternoon Thursday to allow the Democratic members of the Senate to spend this week in some sort of private “issues conference.” Before they adjourned, “no roll call votes” were promised the membership of the Senate by the Majority Leader, for the rest of this week and until early Monday evening. Thus, despite the Senate supposedly being in the midst of a semi-open process of debating and amending a vital Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill since the beginning of last week, exactly four amendments (or equivalents, such as on motions to waive budget points of order) have received votes on the floor, and only one of those four was actually germane to the FAA legislation itself. FAA legislation about which Harry Reid has already revealed his itchy supermajority-hand, even as he ensures that the (simple-majority) floor business of the Senate remains suspended except when he’s prepared to see it resume:

Mr. REID. Madam President, I had a conversation last night [Monday, February 7th] with the Republican leader. For all Senators, we need to have amendments on this bill, the FAA bill, laid down. We all know there is a lot of feigning going on around here, a little posturing. We still have one issue left that deals with slots at airports. It is not going to be resolved. We have worked on this for years, and it will not be resolved except on the Senate floor. If it is not resolved and we do not have amendments laid down, taken care of, I will file cloture on this bill on Monday.

It is a shame. I wish I could blame the Republicans for the impasse, but it is both parties. We have people on both sides of the aisle who are trying to take advantage, as they see it, on this slot issue. This is an extremely important piece of legislation. I know the slots to individual Senators is important. But it is not important enough to hold up this bill. We have been trying for years–years–to get this bill passed. This will create or save 280,000 jobs. It will improve the safety of our air travels. It will give rights to people who are flying who do not have those rights. We have a passengers’ bill of rights. It is a shame this one issue is holding up this bill.

I repeat, if we do not have this matter resolved Monday, I am filing cloture on this bill. We have to complete this legislation. Before we leave for our President’s Day recess to go back to work in our States, we also have the FISA legislation that is a must [Reid actually meant, I assume, the sunsetting PATRIOT Act provisions, not "FISA" - pow wow]. It expires. We have to take care of that before we leave.

Thursday update:

At about 3:11 p.m. Eastern today, the House of Representatives passed, 248-176, after brief debate (including another impressive performance by Dennis Kucinich), the referenced closed rule from the House Rules Committee, for the floor consideration of H.R. 514 – the nine-month extension of the PATRIOT Act provisions due to sunset on February 28.

That closed rule, as noted, provides for only one hour of floor debate about this extension, allows no amendments to even be offered on the floor by any of our 435 federal Representatives, and permits only one motion to recommit the bill to committee.

At 3:30 p.m. today, the House commenced nine and a half hours of floor debate on a separate bill – “debate” about everything but floor amendments, which again were blocked on that measure by the Rules Committee – which will run into tomorrow, Friday.

Thus at this point it’s not clear whether the one hour of debate, in advance of a vote on any motion to recommit, and on final passage of H.R. 514, will take place this week or next, in the House.

Julian Sanchez is keeping a close watch on developments at his tweeter page – http://twitter.com/normative – where today he linked to an outstanding seven-minute statement about the PATRIOT Act and, especially, the Fourth Amendment and the reasons for it, by new United States Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Senator Paul makes clear in that statement (made Wednesday of this week, I believe) that he will oppose any extension of these PATRIOT Act provisions in the Senate (without specifying whether that includes withholding his consent from the inevitable Party leadership requests for unanimous consent to waive regular order as part of speeding some sort of extension through the Senate by the end of next week – after which the Senate will be in recess for a week, not to return until the day that the provisions sunset). The Senate is due to re-emerge temporarily from its self-imposed hibernation at 4 p.m. today. At that time, any new backroom deal that has been cut by the Parties during the Senate’s three-day adjournment may be announced or referenced. [Edited to add: No such announcement or reference was made by Harry Reid when he made brief opening remarks at 4 p.m.; Reid instead reiterated that no more roll call votes will be held in the Senate until 5 or 5:30 p.m. on Monday (at which time there may be up to three votes, he indicated, evidently on judicial nominations and/or FAA amendments).]

Obama and Democracy is a hypocrisy! Obama says he’ll end two wars but he has started an illegal one (makes 3). Obama says Egyptians should be allowed peaceful protests but Americans and Veterans are arrested for peaceful protests of wars just a few weeks ago. US leaders say Egypt should end the ‘Emergency law’ as Obama pushes for 3 more years of the ‘temporary emergency’ Patriot Act. Obama has gone so far Right he makes the GOP look progressive. Obama speechifies about an innocent little girl killed by a gun in Arizona but his drones kill innocent children in Pakistan (don’t forget the bullets and bombs kill in Iraq and Afghanistan too). Obama appoints a Monsanto man for Food Safety Czar and now a man from GE [Global-Economy-we-ship-jobs-out-of-US] to create jobs in US. Obama pushed GMO everything while Michelle talks up healthy eating from her organic garden. The contradictions make me sick!
The corrupt corporations get the aide of the politicians that we pay and are supposed to work for us. The People’s government works for the unelected-power-elite; 98% of federal lawmakers represent the top 2%. The wealthy get to keep tax-breaks while People try to get by on un/under-employment. ‘We the People’ scratch for chickenfeed when we work and roll pennies for a dollar box of processed chicken nuggets when we’re laid-off. We struggle every day while the 2% gorges on golden nuggets and then float away on golden parachutes when they lose a job. And perhaps the worst deal is we pay our taxes on our minuscule wages and TPTB turn around and spend our tax dollars to spy on us and shower us with chemicals. People in Egypt are standing strong for true civilian Democracy but many Americans wrongly believe America is a Democracy. America needs to learn a lesson from Egypt and Stand Up for Freedom. Hypocrisy like Obama is not democracy! Obama is a puppet for Global Capitalism and the unelected-power-elite. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
http://saynotocorporateamerica.blogspot.com/