One of the most frequently asked questions about Senate procedure these days is, WTF with these "holds?" Or more accurately, "How come Harry Reid blew off Chris Dodd's hold on the FISA bill, but Tom Coburn gets to have 100 bills on hold and nobody bats an eyelash?"

Well, aside from the fact that eyelashes are, in fact, now batting on the Coburn holds, it seems clear that not all holds are created equal. Here's my attempt to explain why. I tried making this more formal, but it just kept getting bogged down. So here it is, quick and dirty, pretty much the way I discussed it with a friend in e-mail.

Holds, like everything in the Senate, actually have a lot of moving parts. When you put a hold on a bill, the Majority Leader does a private mental calculus, sometimes informed by other political intelligence, whip counts, outright threats, or what have you, and sometimes not.

It goes something like this:

A Senator tells Reid (or tells McConnell to tell Reid) he wants to put a hold on a bill.

Reid asks himself whether enough people give a shit about the bill for him to spend the amount of time it's going to take either to: 1) figure out how many Senators give a shit, or; 2) go through the process of voting on it despite the hold.

Why might Reid want to go through the process of voting on it despite the hold? Well, he might not want to, per se, but the job of Majority Leader in the Senate is different from that of Majority Leader in the House in that in the House, bills come to the floor backed by a decision of a majority. That is, bills that come to the floor under a rulehave already had a vote in which some majority has said they want it there. So majorities routinely tell the minority that it's tough luck if they don't like it, it's coming anyway. In the Senate, the normal mode of bringing something to the floor is by unanimous consent.

That's where the hold comes from. It's just an indication to the Majority Leader, whose job it is to keep the schedule moving, that a Senator will, if necessary, object to a unanimous consent request to bring the bill to the floor.

Now, that's not the only way bills get to the Senate floor. It's just the preferred way. Because if you have a unanimous consent agreement, you can build the equivalent of a House rule into it -- how much debate time will there be, how many amendments, which ones, and so forth. But if you don't have such an agreement, then everything's under the Senate's very open debate rules, including the possibility of a filibuster. If the Senate agrees to a unanimous consent agreement limiting debate time before bringing a bill to the floor, it can't be filibustered after that. Without the agreement, there's a danger of filibuster.

So if one Senator says he'll object to a unanimous consent agreement, it's also an implied signal that if the Majority Leader brings the bill to the floor anyway, the objecting Senator may filibuster.

Now the Majority Leader starts calculating. One Senator filibustering all by himself is a pain in the ass, but nobody can stay on their feet forever. And if the filibustering Senator sits down and stops talking, the floor is open to make a motion that the Senate immediately proceed to a vote. So the next question is, does he have allies? Will they also stay on their feet for hours or even days at a time if necessary? How many allies are there? Enough so that nobody will really even have to work all that hard, and can just take, say, a two hour shift and keep the debate going forever? Or more importantly, does he have so many allies that the Majority Leader would lose a cloturevote? In considering this, the calculation has to include not only how many allies the Senator has on the substantive issues, but also how many Senators would support the filibuster just to screw with the Majority Leader? Or because they have a hold on something too, and need the other Senator's support for it?

The other calculation is about time. If the schedule is busy, and especially if there are any deadlines looming, even a failed filibuster with no allies at all can ruin your week. If the Majority Leader can't get a unanimous consent agreement, his only other choice if he wants to move the bill is to make a motion to proceed to consider. That's just a motion that the Senate start debate on whatever the bill is. The problem is that the motion to proceed is itself subject to a filibuster. So the same calculations have to be made.

Even if the Senator is almost entirely alone, getting a bill to the floor is a pain in the ass. Because the motion to proceed is subject to a filibuster, the Majority Leader will make the motion and then immediately file a motion for cloture on the motion to proceed. That's because a cloture motion must, by rule, wait two days before there can be a vote on it. So it's two days from making the motion to proceed before you can even have a vote on whether or not to vote on that motion to proceed. Then, even if you trounce the objecting Senator in the cloture vote, the rules also allow up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate, if the objecting Senator(s) choose to claim them. So all told, it can take 78 hours of Senate time to overcome the objections of a Senator with a hold. And that's just to get to the start of debate on the bill, which will itself then be subject to a filibuster. As would all amendments to the bill.

If the objecting Senator is still making a stink, you'll want to file for cloture on the bill, too, which means waiting the same 78 hours to get that over with. So it can take a full week of the Senate's time to get to a vote on a bill that's being held -- and that's only if there are no amendments to it. If there are amendments and you file for cloture as soon as the actual bill's debate starts, it can have the effect of precluding debate on amendments, because once cloture is invoked on the bill, that ends debate, including debate on amendments. And some of those amendments are going to be things you and your colleagues want to vote on. You might even find that if you file cloture right away, some Senators who have important amendments but oppose the filibuster will vote no on cloture anyway, just so that they can get a chance to offer and debate their amendments. So you can't file cloture right away. Instead you have to let debate on the amendments begin. And if the objecting Senator just wants to blow up the whole thing, he can filibuster the amendments, and then again you take three days to get to a vote on that amendment. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Of course, someone in the position that Senator Dodd was in last December might want to filibuster the motion to proceed, and filibuster the underlying bill at the end of the process. But he wouldn't want to filibuster his own amendment to strip the immunity provisions from the FISA bill. In fact, a lot of Senators who opposed Dodd's amendment and supported the bill probably wanted to file cloture on the whole bill right away, so that very few if any amendments could have been considered. In the negotiations preceding consideration of the bill, then, that provided leverage for the other side in getting concessions back from Dodd. For instance, the 60 vote requirement for passage of certain amendments might have been something that Dodd found he had to agree to, just to get the other Senators to agree not to file for cloture on the whole bill right away, thereby preserving his opportunity to offer his immunity-stripping amendment.

So the rules actually don't allow a single Senator to simply block a bill forever just by putting a hold on it. But the practical effect of a hold and the threat it implies -- depending on how many allies the Senator has to help him hold the floor -- is that the Senate may have to spend weeks on end dealing with this one bill and its amendments. And if it's a dumb-ass bill that nobody really needs to pass, even if it would be nice to have it, the Majority Leader's mental calculus on the question of should he tell the holding Senator to go jump in the lake, is an immediate "no." It sucks, but it's better just to "honor" the hold and not bother with the time they would waste pushing this bill through. That's the case with some of what Coburn held. Everybody wanted to pass them, they were very popular (i.e., not "dumb-ass" at all), but ultimately nobody wanted to spend a whole week on it.

With Dodd and FISA, the situation was different. A large majority of the Senate wanted to pass it, didn't much care if it took two weeks to do it, and felt it was a reasonable trade-off to have to do it, since the Protect America Act was "expiring" and they'd just have to bite the bullet and be bored for two weeks.

Once that became clear, the question was whether Reid should take the responsibility of making the motion to proceed, or whether he should refuse on principle, only to see Rockefeller make it and win it over Reid's objections (assuming he really was opposed to it). Staying on top as Majority Leader is a delicate balance. The Senate Democratic Caucus is relatively small, and it's filled with egos who all believe they could and should be Majority Leader instead of you. So you want to avoid situations where sizable majorities of your own caucus side with someone else and override you because they perceive you as standing in the way of their voting on a bill that they think will save their asses from Republican attacks. If you get between them and the magic potion they think will win them reelection, they will find themselves a Majority Leader who won't do that to them.

So Reid counts the votes, sees that it's inevitable that this bill is coming to the floor in three days or less, and he can either sacrifice his leadership position on that altar, or read the writing on the wall and move it to the floor and vote against it if he doesn't like it.

And that's the story of the Senatorial hold.

But keep in mind that that whole thing is too complex for any traditional media reporter to write about. No editor would ever give a reporter that much space to explain something that complex, when he's supposed to be covering the actual bill. Instead, it's much easier to just tell people that a hold can magically keep a bill off the floor forever, since in the overwhelming number of cases, that's what the practical effect of it looks like from the outside. So people get used to believing that, and then are stunned when a hold they actually favor goes the other way.

And that's why blogs were invented, and people like them better than newspapers. The end.

"Crossword Tommy" Coburn, scourge of bathroom lesbians everywhere, is notorious among his colleagues for being a serial abuser of the Senatorial "hold," used to block legislation from coming to the floor for a vote.

Lots of people have wondered how it is that Coburn is able to hold up so many bills, many of them extremely popular on both sides of the aisle. Well, the truth is that a hold by itself doesn't actually stop legislation. A lot of other factors have to come together to make it work, but that's a subject for another day.

Today, let's just enjoy the anticipation of seeing what happens when those other factors begin to unravel:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is planning a "Coburn Omnibus" for July that would wrap most if not all of the bills held by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) into one large measure to be voted on by the Senate, according to a Coburn aide and two Democratic leadership staffers.

Coburn is blocking roughly a hundred bills that are generally non-controversial or have broad support. By placing a hold, Coburn prevents the bills from passing quickly through the Senate under a unanimous consent request. With floor time at such a premium, Reid would have trouble bringing up each bill for an individual debate and vote.

But in a stroke of legislative creativity that may have no precedent, Reid could lump all of the bills into one package and bring up the Coburn Omnibus for a single vote. Coburn can still object, but the broad popularity of the bills means that there would likely be more than enough support for veto-proof passage.

Ha-ha!

This would really be a terrific play by Reid. Individually, these bills -- though they enjoy popular, bipartisan support -- aren't by themselves a high enough priority for the use of Senate floor time to justify jumping through the hoops of Coburn's objections, motions to proceed, cloture votes, etc. But lumped together, they can all be moved at once, and lean on one another for the support of a large majority of Senators, many of whom have had e-friggin'-nuff of Coburn's shenanigans.

Kudos to Reid for the idea, and a backhanded thanks to Crossword Tommy for illustrating for us why, once upon a time at least, Senators didn't just put holds on everything under the sun.

Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood House Majority Leader:

House Meets At 9:00 a.m.: Morning Hour [definition];
10:00 a.m.: Legislative Business  
Unlimited "One Minutes" [definition] Per Side

Last Vote Predicted: 5:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Suspensions [definition] (23 Bills):

1. H.R. 6331 - Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (Rep. Dingell/Rangel – Energy and Commerce/Ways and Means
2. H.R. 6327 - The Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2008 (Rep. Rangel – Ways and Means)
3. H.R. 6307 – Fostering Connections to Success Act (Rep. McDermott – Ways and Means)
4. H.Res. 1294 - National Save For Retirement Week (Rep. Schwartz – Ways and Means)
5. H.R. 6346 - Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act (Rep. Stupak – Energy and Commerce)
6. H.Con.Res. 163 - Expressing the sense of Congress in support of further research and activities to increase public awareness, professional education, diagnosis, and treatment of Dandy-Walker syndrome and hydrocephalus (Rep. Wilson (NM) – Energy and Commerce)
7. H.Res. 353 - Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that there should be an increased Federal commitment supporting the development of innovative advanced imaging technologies for prostate cancer detection and treatment (Rep. Cummings – Energy and Commerce)
8. H.R. 2818 - Veterans' Epilepsy Treatment Act of 2008 (Rep. Perlmutter – Veterans’ Affairs)
9. H.Res. 1098 - Supporting the goals and ideals of the Year of the American Veteran (Rep. Filner – Veterans’ Affairs)
10. H.Res. 1231 - Supporting the goals and ideals of Vietnam Veterans Day and calling on the American people to recognize such a day (Rep. Shuler – Veterans’ Affairs)
11. H.R. 2245 - To designate the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Wenatchee, Washington, as the Elwood "Bud" Link Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic (Rep. Hastings (WA) – Veterans’ Affairs)
12. H.R. 4264 - To name the Department of Veterans Affairs spinal cord injury center in Tampa, Florida, as the "Michael Bilirakis Department of Veterans Affairs Spinal Cord Injury Center" (Rep. Miller (FL) – Veterans’ Affairs)
13. H.R. 4289 - To name the Department of Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Ponce, Puerto Rico, as the "Euripides Rubio Department of Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic" (Rep. Fortuno – Veterans’ Affairs)
14. H.R. 4918 - To name the Department of Veterans Affairs medical center in Miami, Florida, as the "Bruce W. Carter Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center" (Rep. Ros-Lehtinen– Veterans’ Affairs)
15. H.Res. 1291 - Expressing gratitude for the contributions of the American GI Forum on its 60th anniversary (Rep. Rodriguez – Veterans’ Affairs)
16. H.Res. 1271 - Recognizing National Homeownership Month and the importance of homeownership in the United States (Rep. Gary Miller (CA) – Financial Services)
17. H.R. 6312 - To advance credit union efforts to promote economic growth, modify credit union regulatory standards and reduce burdens, to provide regulatory relief and improve productivity for insured depository institutions, and for other purposes (Rep. Kanjorski/Rep. Moore (KS) – Financial Services)
18. H.Con.Res. 370 - Expressing support for designation of September 2008 as "Gospel Music Heritage Month" and honoring gospel music for its valuable and longstanding contributions to the culture of the United States (Rep. Sheila Jackson–Lee – Oversight and Government Reform)
19. H.Res. 1283 - Expressing heartfelt sympathy for the victims and their families following the tornado that hit Little Sioux, Iowa, on June 11, 2008 (Rep. Terry (NE) – Oversight and Government Reform)
20. H.Con.Res. 195 - Expressing the sense of the Congress that a National Dysphagia Awareness Month should be established (Rep. Wamp – Oversight and Government Reform)
21. H.Res. 970 - Expressing support for designation of June 30 as "National Corvette Day (Rep. Shimkus – Oversight and Government Reform)
22. H.Con.Res. 365 – Honoring the life of Robert Mondavi (Rep. Thompson (CA) – Oversight and Government Reform)
23. H.R. 5687 - The Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 2008 (Rep. Clay – Oversight and Government Reform)

H.R. 5876 – Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens (Rep. George Miller - Education and Labor) (Complete Consideration)

Pending Amendments:

• George Miller/McKeon Amendment
• Shea-Porter Amendment

Kirk Motion to Instruct Conferees on H.R. 4040 - The Consumer Product Safety Modernization Act of 2007 (Rep. Rush – Energy and Commerce)

Postponed Suspension Vote (1)

1. H.R. 3546 - To authorize the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program at fiscal year 2006 levels through 2012 (Rep. Johnson (GA) – Judiciary)

In the Senate:

10:00am
Resume consideration of the House message to accompany H.R.3221, the Housing Reform legislation for up to one hour, equally divided and controlled.

10:30am filing deadline for amendments to Dodd-Shelby Substitute amendment #4983 with respect to the H.R.3221, Housing.

12:30 - 2:15pm Recess for the weekly caucus luncheons.
Votes:
Approximately 11:00am Roll Call Vote on the motion to concur in the House amendment with the Dodd-Shelby substitute amendment #4893: .

What about FISA and the Iraq supplemental? Expected on Thursday or Friday, possibly on the same day. FISA may take a circuitous route, with a cloturevote on the motion to proceed (we'll call it "MTP"), if necessary, on Wednesday, and then debate on the actual FISA bill to follow on Thursday.

Bonus procedure quiz!

Sometimes after debate on a bill is concluded, the House will postpone a vote on it until some later time. Under what rule may those votes -- such as the vote on H.R. 3546, above -- be postponed?

Answer: Rule XX, clause 8.

Who cares? Different question. But now if you find yourself watching C-SPAN on a Monday morning during consideration of suspension bills, and you hear a vote called, and the chair say, "Pursuant to clause 8 of Rule XX and the chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be postponed," you'll say, "Hey, I know good old clause 8 of Rule XX!"

And your significant other will leave you.

"The chair's prior announcement," by the way, would have been an announcement at the beginning of the day's legislative business of the intention to invoke clause 8 of Rule XX. In case you were wondering.

Another week that starts with a parade of suspension bills. This is not unusual, by the way. The schedule starts to get a little heavy with them towards the end of a session, though, and we're getting to that point with the August recess just weeks away, and the campaign trail looming.

So Monday starts with an exciting array of suspensions, kicking the work day off at 12:30 -- also not unusual for the House. Remember, everybody's flying in from their home districts after the weekend, so starting work at 12:30 isn't the lackadaisical schedule it appears to be. Unlimited one minutes and other morning business (i.e., talking about anything you want to) takes up the early afternoon, then debate -- such as it is -- begins on 12 suspension bills at 2:00, with votes on those bills postponed (pursuant to clause 8 of Rule XX) until 6:30.

Tuesday's still got 22 more suspensions on the slate.

From late Tuesday, when they've dispensed with the suspensions, work begins on bills subject to rules:

• H.R. 5876 - Stop Child Abuse in Residential Programs for Teens
• H.R. 6275 - The Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008
• H.R. 3195 - ADA Restoration Act
• Two Native American land claims bills -- H.R. 4115 and H.R. 2176 -- dealing with claims of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Bay Mills Indian Community, respectively
• H.R. 6052 - The Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act of 2008

On the Senate side, work begins at 3:00 today, with no votes expected. Work continues on H.R. 3221, the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008, last punted back to the Senate in mid-May.

No floor action is scheduled yet on the supplemental or on FISA, but it's expected early this week, with Congress set to recess after Friday's session for a one-week district work period for the July 4th holiday.

Shame on Congress, especially shame on Democrats.......You sound like a bunch of Republican chicken hawks!
Republican Chicken hawk: "I support the war, I support the war....but I’m not going to fight on the frontlines, my contribution to Victory (or defeat) will be an occasional vote and lip service"

Democratic Chicken hawk:  I am against war funding without a timetable for withdrawal, I am against retroactive immunity for telecoms......but I am not going to fight on the front lines, with every legislative tools I have to stop them.......I am just going to keep saying I am against it, vote against it when I am sure my vote is in vain, and do nothing more to Stop what I profess to be so completely against having happen.

Despite Democrats voting nearly two-to-one against a blank check for the Iraq war, oh, and also despite their holding the majority in the United States House of Representatives, another $150 billion-plus has been appropriated for the war that would pay for itself, and give us 50 cents-a-gallon gas.

UPDATE: Dems go 230-3 for the domestic spending portion of the bill. And happily, the passage of the bill honoring Chi Chi Rodriguez went smoothly, as did yesterday's bill designating April 2008 National Public Radio Appreciation Month. Not a typo. April 2008.

UPDATE 2: War funding roll call vote here.

The House currently stands in recess, subject to the call of the chair. That means nothing's going on on the House floor right now, and that's the case because the Rules committee is meeting to work out the procedure under which the Iraq war supplemental will come to the floor later this afternoon.

It's already late afternoon on Thursday, with just one more week in session for the Congress before it breaks for its July 4th recess. Still pending are the supplemental and the FISA bill, two enormously important pieces of legislation that the Congress definitely wants to dispense with before it breaks.

That puts us in a similar position to last December, when Senator Chris Dodd's filibuster of the FISA bill backed the Senate up against the recess wall, and the bill was eventually pulled so that they could finish up other pressing business before their recess.

Under ordinary circumstances, the deals that have been cut on these two bills would pretty much make them a done deal, especially in the House where there's very little capacity to significantly delay a bill for which there is the support of a determined majority. In the Senate, of course, a 60-vote majority can overcome even the famed filibuster power.

But sometimes, all you really need is a delay, and that is something that an equally determined minority -- even a very small one -- can almost always provide, if they're willing to endure varying degrees of the scorn of their colleagues.

In the House, the ground rules of the debate will be set by the Rules committee, as usual. But within the usual procedure used by the chair to put the Rules committee dictates in place are often numerous opportunities to cause delay, none of which are enough by themselves to significantly slow down important legislation, but which together can buy an hour here, an hour there, and pretty soon, you're talking about real time.

For instance, the House is asked for unanimous consent for various procedural and ministerial functions dozens of times during any given day. Most of them are merely requests routinely granted out of courtesy to colleagues, such as unanimous consent requests to insert written material in the record. But others, though equally routine, are requests for things like dispensing with the reading of bills, which can sometimes take hours all by itself. That's a huge waste of time (even though most Members haven't read the bills), and it's routinely dispensed with... unless somebody's pissed off. And then they utter the magic words, "I object." And then we either sit through hours of bill reading, or have to call everyone out of their meetings and onto the floor for a vote authorizing the dispensation of the reading, or whatever it is that's been objected to.

With two highly controversial bills coming down the pike in two days in the House, and the Senate poised to take them up immediately after, the serial objections of Members who want to slow things down can really add a significant burden to the work of passing them. What's more, you don't even really have to object in the end (though you might force a vote if you do, and that's 15 minutes by itself right there). Instead, you can rise and "reserve the right to object," and sometimes go on at some length about why you're thinking of objecting, casting about for some sort of concession or accommodation from the other side before withdrawing or finally asserting your objection. And if you're not the only one with potential objections, well, this can go on for some time.

But in end, House rules make it nearly impossible to hold matters up for much more than a few hours or a day. Twice that, though, if you've got two bills facing the same threat.

And that brings us to the Senate, where the power of a very small minority to delay is considerably greater, though also limited. But if the supplemental were delayed for a day in the House, thus delaying the FISA bill for another day in the House, you'd find FISA not reaching the Senate until early next week -- unless the Senators gave up their weekend to get to it, which is a distinct possibility.

But if FISA and/or the supplemental didn't get to the Senate until next week, and one Senator attempted to "hold" the bill, the bill's supporters would make a motion to proceed, which can overcome the "hold" (which is itself just another form of objecting to unanimous consent). The motion to proceed, however, is itself subject to a filibuster. And if a Senator did in fact begin a filibuster of the motion to proceed, although a cloturemotion could shut him or her down, the Senate by rule must wait two days before voting on cloture, and even if cloture is invoked, it still allows for 30 additional hours of debate before calling things to an end. That's more than three days that it would take just to get to a vote on the motion to proceed.

And if that weren't enough, the underlying bill may be subject to a filibuster as well, though it's possible that the particular procedures used to move these bill could conceivably preclude it. But if not, you'd be looking at another three days. That puts them right up against their recess.

Now, if that were to happen with both the supplemental and FISA (and no, I haven't heard of any combination of Senators who were willing to do that to either one, let alone both), then you could find yourself approaching the end of next week with neither bill complete, and that recess looming. Could they just wait until after the recess and take it up then? Sure. So what's the value of that?

The only value there is that from early July through early August is the last five legislative weeks before the Congress breaks for the national party conventions. The last chance for the parties to frame their issues going into the big show. And the last chance for Barack Obama to be a Senator.

At this point, Barack Obama is the nominal leader of the Democratic Party. He's opposed to retroactive immunity for the telecoms, and everyone who was opposed to it before this so-called "deal" was struck is, you'll notice, still opposed to it, though some have opted to throw up their hands and pretend they're being forced to vote on it.

But a word from Barack Obama at this point would have the potential to change everything. A word from him saying that this "deal" stands in direct contradiction to the agenda he's bringing to the presidential race would weigh heavily on Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's really only getting heavy pressure from Intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller on this, and thus is likely to be inclined (despite his own opposition to immunity) to grease that particular squeaky wheel. There could be a counterbalance from Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy, but so far, we haven't heard that squeak. He's issued a statement saying he opposes the "deal," but he's not pushing the way Rockefeller is pushing. And though Reid is the Majority Leader, that's as much a service position as it is a leadership position. His membership just isn't telling him no. The voices that are speaking with conviction are the voices saying yes.

Barack Obama, though, is the heavyweight in the arena right now, and his voice, properly applied, could be worth a dozen chairmen. But he's not using it, and in fact, there's no guarantee he ever will.

But get us into next week, pitch a fight in the Senate, back the Congress up against the recess wall, and call in the biggest gun we have, and we just might have that snowflake's chance in the hot place.

UPDATE: And here comes the rule for the supplemental, on the floor now.

In a story reported by the Associated Press, which apparently doesn't like bloggers using or linking to their stories (so I won't), it seems the Senate tried to bring up the unemployment benefits extension bill passed by the House last week, but Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) blocked the move by objecting to Majority Leader Harry Reid's unanimous consent request.

Jobless numbers came in last month showing increases at a 20-year high, but Republicans, true to form, are blocking a bill that offers a 13-week extension of benefits for states with unemployment rates over 6%. At issue: $11.7 billion in benefits for some 3.2 million unemployed workers, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's a whopping $3656.25 per beneficiary.

The GOP complaint? They view the Democratic plan as a giveaway. A spending spree for people who don't deserve it.

Democrats are likely to respond by demonstrating some of the irony of this newfound Republican parsimony, by attaching the unemployment extension to the $150 billion-plus Iraq emergency supplemental expected on the floor in the coming days.

Should be an interesting showdown, though perhaps we've already seen this movie. The president will have his pick of out-of-touch reasons for vetoing even the Iraq funding bill. He's already said he'd veto a free-standing unemployment bill, and the Iraq appropriations too, if they didn't meet his specifications -- i.e., no withdrawal language and a cap of $108 billion. (Seems a bit ridiculous to use the words "cap" and "one hundred eight billion dollars" in the same sentence, but there it is.)

Looks like this could get pushed into July, with the Congress set to recess at the end of next week.

The House is set to deal today with Dennis Kucinich's impeachment resolution, which he introduced on Monday night. By rule, his assertion that his resolution constitutes a question of the privileges of the House must be ruled on within two legislative days. The chair ruled yesterday -- correctly -- that an impeachment proposition does constitute a question of the privileges of the House, and announced that the procedure would be to move the previous question and close debate on the matter pending the resolution of a motion to refer the resolution to the Judiciary committee.

The motion to refer failed on a voice vote yesterday, and Rep. Kucinich exercised his right to demand a recorded vote instead. That vote is expected this afternoon.

Interestingly, it was Kucinich himself who moved that the resolution be referred to the committee. That's a better alternative than tabling it (if you don't want the whole thing buried with no chance of resurrection, that is), but not the only alternative. It could instead be debated right then and there on the House floor.

That Kucinich himself would rather see it referred to committee might be taken as an indication that he acknowledges that the charges he makes in the resolution require a thorough examination. Whether they'll get that examination, though, is another matter. Almost everyone expects the resolution to die of neglect in committee. An immediate vote on the merits of the resolution -- the default alternative to a defeat of the motion to refer -- is probably something mischievous Republicans would like to see, and they might therefore be expected to vote no on referral. That leaves Democrats who want to put a lid on impeachment in the position of voting affirmatively to commit the issue to the jurisdiction of Chairman Conyers and the Judiciary Committee, though they'll deny that they actually want the Chairman to exercise that jurisdiction.

Strange days.

UPDATE: The motion to refer is adopted by a vote of 251-166, with no Democrats voting against, and 24 Republicans voting in the affirmative.

UPDATE 2: Kucinich Vows to Keep Up Impeachment Fight

"Leadership wants to bury it, but this is one resolution that will be coming back from the dead," Kucinich told Capitol Briefing. "Thirty days from now, if there is no action, I will be bringing the resolution up again, and I won't be the only one reading it."

Hey, remember that parliamentary pain in the ass, the motion to recommit? And remember how Republicans have been using it to create political annoyances, and even succeeding in using them to make Democrats destroy their own legislation?

Well, someone's had quite enough of that:

May 6, 2008

Dear Democratic Colleague:

I appreciate your support for my legislation to cancel the debts of the world's poorest countries, H.R. 2634, the Jubilee Act. I am confident that the passage of this legislation will make a real difference in the lives of millions of impoverished people around the world. Nevertheless, I was puzzled by the large number of Democrats who voted for the Republican motion to recommit during consideration of this legislation.

I am especially distraught that individual Democrats who voted in favor of the Republican motion to recommit did not obtain clarification from Chairman Barney Frank or myself regarding our position on this motion. It is important that Members of the Democratic Caucus have a level of trust and respect for one another that would lead them to consult with the authors of legislation prior to voting for Republican amendments, especially motions to recommit.

Unlike other types of amendments, motions to recommit are offered without advance notice to the majority party; are not pre-printed in the Congressional Record; and are not subject to vetting by the authors of the legislation, the leaders of the committee of jurisdiction, or members of the Rules Committee. Consequently, it is not surprising that Members discovered after the passage of the Jubilee Act that the motion to recommit was drafted improperly and needed to be corrected by a unanimous consent request the week after the passage of the bill.

I am also concerned that the Chair of the Democratic Caucus was one of the Members of the Caucus who organized the "yea" votes, despite the fact that an aide to the Chair was quoted in The Hill as saying the Chair voted "yea" by mistake.

I realize that this was only the most recent of many instances in which Members of the Democratic Caucus have voted for Republican motions to recommit. However, as I watched Democratic leaders organize "yea" votes on this motion, I was convinced that Democrats are traveling down a path of complicity on motions to recommit the likes of which we have never seen before. I cannot help but wonder if our Caucus will be torn apart by frequent support for Republican motions to recommit. I find myself wondering, "Where will this end?"

I appreciate the attention of my Democratic colleagues to these concerns, and I look forward to our discussing a consistent, unified approach by our Caucus towards Republican motions to recommit. I believe this is a discussion the Democratic Caucus should have as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

/s Maxine Waters

Member of Congress

Did you catch that?

I am also concerned that the Chair of the Democratic Caucus was one of the Members of the Caucus who organized the "yea" votes, despite the fact that an aide to the Chair was quoted in The Hill as saying the Chair voted "yea" by mistake.

Yow! That's Rahm Emanuel she's talking about there, who's regarded as one of the architects of the Democrats' tactical use of the motion to recommit in the 109th Congress. The success Democrats had in forcing the Republicans to vote against those motions -- and then later running against those bad votes and taking control of the House inn 2006 -- has left Dems worried that the same tactic can be used against them in 2008. And it's true. Minus the fact that the Republican brand is in such tatters that it won't matter, of course.

So what, exactly, was the problem with the motion to recommit on the Jubilee Act that Rep. Waters identified? Well, in an attempt at setting up another "gotcha" moment, Republicans thought they'd force a vote on the restriction that no debt relief ought to go to any country that has business dealings with Iran.

Of course, that's exactly the deal Condoleezza Rice is trying to cut for Iraq, which has both enormous debt and significant business dealings with Iran. But never mind that. While it's true that Iraq's debt wasn't covered by this bill, Iraq's problem is just a matter logic and consistency, and the "administration" and its enablers don't care about that stuff.

But the fact is, the motion was so sloppily drafted and so poorly researched that it ended up killing major portions of the underlying bill,  even though the majority of Republicans in the House agreed with its intent. It was so bad, in fact, that the House ended up having to go back a week later and remove the changes made by the motion by unanimous consent. Unanimous consent! Even the authors of the motion to recommit knew they'd screwed it up badly enough that it needed fixing.

Just watch Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) explaining the situation:

So as stupid as these motions are, the worry they create ends up driving Democrats to destroy the village in order to save it. They gut their own legislation, or end up agreeing to attach provisions odious enough to make the rest of us wish they'd just gut it, all in the hopes of avoiding "gotcha" campaign ads that are probably coming no matter what.

Meanwhile, what's happening out in the real world?

Republicans are losing critical special elections deep in their own territory, running campaigns trying to scare people with terrorism and/or immigration, accusing Dems of not "supporting the troops," and even tying them to the very frightening Barack Obama. And none of it is working with the electorate.

Democrats unafraid to run as Democrats are winning at the voting booths. The DCCC, which Rahm Emanuel no longer runs, is on a hot streak, winning three heavily Republican seats in special elections in the past two months. Meanwhile, the Democratic Caucus, which Rahm Emanuel does run, can't get out of its own way for fear of becoming vulnerable to Republican attack ads that haven't worked in any of those special elections.

Hmm.

Shh! Don't stop me, I think I'm learning something...

Congress Daily, via Politico, reports some of the "how" regarding the Democratic leadership's plans to bring the next Iraq funding bill to the floor without going through the appropriations committee:

HOW THEY'LL DO IT: CongressDaily's Christian Bourge and Peter Cohn say Democratic leaders may be able to bypass the appropriations committees by using the "never-enacted FY08 Military Construction Appropriations bill as a vehicle for the war supplemental and other provisions. . . . The bill would function as a 'shell' that would allow Democrats to avoid the usual committee process in both chambers and a formal House-Senate conference. House Democrats could also avoid giving Republicans a shot at procedural motions on the bill during floor votes."

What procedural motions are they looking to avoid? Probably our old friend, the motion to recommit.

But whether they decide to use the abandoned hulk of the MILCON appropriations bill or not, the plan that seems to be gelling is to bring the proposed appropriations to the floor in three parts: one package containing the $108 billion demanded by Bush; one with the proposed Democratic restrictions aimed at bringing the occupation to a close, and; one with additional domestic spending, to help the medicine (or poison, as you prefer) go down.

That's supposed to make liberal Democrats feel good about facing their voters ("I voted against the war funding, but for a withdrawal!") and make conservative Democrats feel good about facing their own ("I voted for the war funding and against the withdrawal!"), with other mixed options thrown in for the people in the middle ("I voted for the war funding, but also for extending unemployment benefits!"). And of course, Democratic challengers get to run against Republicans who voted for the war funding, but against everything else. Which, oddly enough, is what a dozen or so incumbent Democrats are probably going to end up doing.

House Republicans are, predictably, outraged. Said noted crybaby and GOP appropriator Jerry Lewis:

"By doing all three — skipping committee markup, having a limited or closed debate on the floor, and skipping conference committee — the Democrats will effectively shut down any semblance of democratic process in this Congress."

It is terrible, isn't it? Except for a vote on whether or not to give the president the $108 billion he demands for the war, another vote on whether or not to wind the war down and withdraw, and a third vote on whether or not additional money ought to be added for domestic priorities, the Congress will barely have any semblance of democratic process at all!

But Lewis has a point. What Republicans will be missing out on is the opportunity to force a vote aimed at creating an embarrassing attack ad they can run against Democrats in the fall, and as you know, the troops really want that very badly. It's actually what most of them are fighting for, if you think about it. Or, perhaps, if you refuse to. Ever.

You do have to wonder, though, why Democrats at this late date are still having to consider a procedure that does an end-around to avoid a motion to recommit, and why they're doing it on this bill. Recall that last summer, we ended up saddled with the disastrous Protect America Act as a result of the House's inability to find a way around the threat posed by the motion to recommit. So if you're going to attempt a maneuver that has Minority Whip Roy Blunt sayingDems, "are threatening to burn the House down" (probably a better description of what Republicans will be doing in response, actually), why use it to fund a war Democrats say they don't want in the first place? And why not use it to stop a spying bill Bush was forcing down their throats?

Who knows? But that's what they appear to be getting ready to do. Burn down the House for the sake of passing another $100 billion+ in war funding. And maybe, just maybe, topping this off with the whipped cream of caving on FISA, of all things.

Seriously, dudes. One turd per toilet, please. If you're going to bend the rules this hard, all I ask is that you screw Republicans with them just slightly more often than you do Democrats. Is that really so much to ask?

I am a long-time reader of Daily Kos.  I have made several comments over the years, but I've never written a diary entry until now.  The inspiration to write a diary entry came from the deft maneuvering of the Democratic leadership on the FISA fight and some aspects of it that show how the Democrats are different from the Republicans, why the netroots and activism like we see here at DKos matter, and especially why the recent FISA maneuvering looks to me like something out of a novel or a movie.  I've mentioned this in a couple of comments recently, but I'm hoping  more people will see this fleshed-out diaried version so they can either join me in appreciating the magnitude of what the Democratic leaders in Congress have done or set me straight on why I'm giving them too much credit.  Either way, the conversation makes writing the diary worthwhile for me.  
After the fold, a brief intro to the diarist followed by a story so unreal it still has me pinching myself to see if I'm dreaming...

A procedural recap of what happened, and is happening, on FISA:

1. The House passed an immunity-free bill, H.R. 3773
2. The Senate passed a bill with immunity in it, S. 2248
3. The Senate stripped out the text of H.R. 3773 and substituted in the text of S. 2248, then sent the amended H.R. 3773 back to the House
4. Conyers and Reyes have an amendment to H.R. 3773 (as amended by the Senate) that would strip out what the Senate put in (the text of S. 2248) and put in its place the new, immunity-free language.

The House just voted on and passed the rule that governs debate on the question of whether or not to accept the Conyers-Reyes amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773.

Debate will be for one hour.

FISA fight got you down? Fed up with the Congressional Democratic leadership? Tired of watching Dems cave, and Republicans use the rules to run roughshod over them?

Perhaps you've heard about how House Republicans have used the motion to recommit to trip up various versions of the FISA bill that don't give retroactive amnesty to the telecom companies. And perhaps you're concerned that despite the much-improved FISA language coming to a vote in the House this week, it'll be undercut by another such motion.

Well, dig this:

The RESTORE Act, H.R. 3773, passed the House last year without including retroactive amnesty for the telecom companies and sent it on to the Senate.

When the Senate took up the issue, it opted not to deal with H.R. 3773, but instead passed its Rockefeller-backed FISA bill (S. 2248) that did include retroactive amnesty. And there was a tremendous uproar among immunity opponents over the procedure the Senate used, making the Bush-backed Rockefeller legislation the base bill, and the immunity-free Judiciary committee bill the substitute, creating an uphill battle for the fight against immunity. That situation created a lot of ill will toward Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Everyone remembers that.

But here's the interesting part. Rather than send S. 2248 to the House once it passed, Reid sent the bill on a little detour. With the unanimous consent of the Senate, he stripped out the language of H.R. 3773 and substituted in the language of S. 2248, vitiated the passage of S. 2248, and sent the amended H.R. 3773 back to the House.

That put the House in the position of considering the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, as opposed to the original version of S. 2248. What difference does that make? Well, it makes no substantive difference, in that H.R. 3773 as amended now included retroactive immunity, along with all the other garbage we didn't want the Senate to pass.

But as I've stressed a number of times, control of procedure can, in the end, control the substantive outcome.

So, what's a House that's opposed to retroactive immunity to do? Amend H.R. 3773 to take it back out, of course. And that -- along with a number of other substantive improvements -- is what Chairmen Conyers and Reyes plan to do, in the form of an amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773.

Sounds like a joke, doesn't it? The sort of thing people say when they make fun of the legislative process: the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 3773.

Only guess what's special about offering an amendment to the amendment that isn't true of just starting over with a new House bill that doesn't have immunity in it?

You can't move to recommit an amendment to an amendment.

So the House gets to strip immunity (and the other junk) back out of H.R. 3773, and the Republicans can't just undo that work with a motion designed to peel off Blue Dogs. If the amendment to the Senate amendment passes, it pops right back out of the House and goes back to the Senate on the express bus, no stops.

And there's more. It arrives back in the Senate in privileged form, as a message from the House (the message being: we amended your crap) the consideration of which is not subject to filibuster. To be sure, the Republicans (or anyone willing to stand in their shoes) can filibuster the actual debate on the House amendment to Senate amendment, but they can't filibuster the question of whether or not to even have that debate, as they can with most other legislation.

That doesn't mean we're out of the woods, of course. The Senate, at Jay Rockefeller's urging, can still decide it wants to overlook the ridiculous trail of surveillance overreaches and lawbreaking in the "administration's" use of surveillance tools that emerges with each passing day. The Senate, at Jay Rockefeller's urging, can still decide that it quite inexplicably continues to trust the Bush-Cheney "administration" with these tools and that they want to blindly continue in their almost childlike belief that they'll somehow be able to exercise oversight of these immense new powers, despite all of the roadblocks the White House routinely throws up in the way of even the most routine inquiries.

The Senate, and Jay Rockefeller, may yet decide they really do want to stand before the American people and say they they're the last people in the country who trust George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on this, even as the effect of the "administration's" fearmongering fades before their very eyes, and new members are elected to Congress in explicit defiance of it.

They might do that.

But if they do, they'll have to do their own dirty work on it, because Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have set up the chess board so that the House won't be forced to do it, nor will it let the Senate just quietly pass their immunity bill away from the now-brightening spotlight that's revealing the extent of the Bush-Cheney malfeasance on domestic spying.

You've got to (half) hand it to John Boehner and the House Republicans. When they half-ass it, they really half-ass it.

On Sunday, I explained the Republicans' latest protest maneuver, the use of the motion to recommit as a weapon (sorta-kinda) in the FISA fight.

Today, though, the Republican weapon of choice is the motion to adjourn, which is just what it sounds like. Why the motion to adjourn? Because today's legislative business is being considered under suspension of the rules (definition), a procedure that doesn't allow for motions to recommit (but which requires a 2/3 majority to pass anything).

So instead, the protest move is this: Republicans take the floor and complain that the House ought to take up the FISA bill with all due speed. And so, of course, the only logical move is... to move that the House adjourn.

Yep.

And during the vote, C-SPAN flashes up on the screen that:

GOP leader Boehner says they will try to "shut the House down" until the Senate foreign intel. bill is taken up.

Four motions to adjourn today. Getting 20, 6, 5 and 4 votes each time.

And how seriously do the Democrats take this threat? Here's the Chair notifying Members of the most recent motion to adjourn:

This 15 minute vote on the motion to adjourn will be followed by five minute votes on motions to suspend the rules with respect to House Resolution 924 and House Resolution 945.

Does that sound like anyone thought the House was likely to adjourn?

It's been tried four times already today, and hasn't garnered more than 20 votes yet.

Heckuva job, Boehner!

UPDATE: Another move underway right now. A "privileged motion" offered by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)to try to pass a resolution calling on the House to pass the Senate FISA bill right away. The argument: "failure" to pass the Senate bill brings "discredit" upon the House, and so affects the rights and privileges of Members.

It's a stupid stretch, and it's being tabled. Heckuva job, part II!

UPDATE: The motion to table the ruling of the chair finding the resolution not privileged passes, 218-192. Four Democrats voted nay. Next up, veto override on Intelligence authorization.

Well, OK, it's not pandemonium. But guess what? House Republicans are being petulant children again, and they're using the House procedural rules to play their games.

And you'll never guess what procedural device they're using to make their mischief.

Remember the motion to recommit? It's back (it never left, actually), and it's at the center of an annoying time-waster of a trick that looks like it's going to become standard Republican operating procedure for the next few weeks.

Here's what's happening.

At the end of consideration of pretty much any bill of any substance on any issue, a Republican offers a motion to recommit the bill to committee, with instructions to strike out everything in it and substitute in its place the text of the Senate-passed FISA bill -- the one with retroactive amnesty for the telecom companies.

It doesn't matter, for the Republicans' purposes, that the bill they're trying to pull this trick on has nothing whatsoever to do with FISA, electronic surveillance, or any related topic.

It matters to the rules, of course. And so every time, without fail, a Democrat raises a point of order (definition) against the motion, as non-germane (definition). The presiding officer sustains the point of order -- because it's quite correct and the Republicans know it. Still, each time the Republicans appeal the ruling of the chair (definition). That prompts the Democrats to move to table the appeal (definition), on which the House then holds a vote.

Democrats call this vote what it is: a procedural vote to sustain the actual rules of the House. The motion, if offered to a housing bill, a health care bill, or the AmeriCorps reauthorization bill -- as it has been over the past few days -- isn't germane.

Republicans, though, call this vote what they wish it was: a vote on the FISA amendments and telecom immunity, no doubt planning to tell people in upcoming attack ads that Democrat X voted "to weaken America" N number of times.

So in the end, the Republicans don't succeed in actually getting a vote on, much less passing, the Senate FISA bill. But they get to make trouble, rack up Democratic votes against it, and in fact end up getting a second bite at the motion to recommit apple, since the first one they offered was ruled out of order.

And that's where Republicans have been making even more trouble. During consideration of H.R. 3521, the Public Housing Asset Management Improvement Act, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) first offered the non-germane FISA motion, got shot down, lost the appeal vote, and was dispensed with. But once he was done, Michelle "Points for Putting Her Vomit in Contact with Jean Schmidt" Bachmann (R-MN) offered a motion to recommit, to add provisions invalidating public housing regulations prohibiting firearms possession.

Agree? Disagree? It doesn't really matter, because Bachmann's motion was written in a way that wouldn't let you agree, even if you wanted to -- as Steny Hoyer tried to do. That's because her motion instructed the committee to report her changes back "promptly," as opposed to "forthwith." A full explanation of the difference can be found here, but the basic deal is this: If your motion says "forthwith," that means they just pretend to send the bill back to committee, but really just make the damn change right there, and then vote on it right away with the changes. But if your motion says "promptly," the bill actually does go back to committee, where it basically dies.

So you see, it doesn't even matter whether you agreed with Bachmann or not. She wouldn't let you. Here's what happened when Hoyer tried to work things out with her:

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentlelady.

Would the gentlelady agree to a unanimous consent request to make your amendment a forthwith amendment so that it could be voted upon? My presumption is the gentlelady wants the amendment adopted, the gentlelady believes the majority of the House is for it. Would the gentlelady agree to such a unanimous consent?

Mrs. BACHMANN. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the request from the majority leader; however, the answer would be no.

We are aware of this problem, and it's very important that we send this back to the committee so that it will be fixed.

Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, so it's more important to delay it than to adopt it now?

Mrs. BACHMANN. Madam Speaker and Majority Leader, as you know, the important point is that the committee has a chance to look at this measure. They did not have a chance to do so. We want to make sure that they have the opportunity to fix the bill.

Hoyer offered to accept her changes and pass them right then and there on the floor. But Bachmann claimed rather than actually pass her amendment, she just, you know, wanted the committee to look at it.

End result? The Public Housing Asset Management Improvement Act got pulled from the floor, and now languishes in limbo. Without Bachmann's changes.

Does that sound like she was serious to you? Doesn't matter. A public housing bill is dead, and she's happy.

The fake FISA motion was used again on Wednesday, during consideration of H.R. 1424, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act. Motion made to delete the text and turn it into the FISA bill, ruled non-germane, ruling appealed, appeal tabled. Then another motion to recommit was offered that actually had something to do with the bill, but the Republicans weren't ready to stand in the way of this one, so they allowed a straight-up vote on their motion, using "forthwith" instructions. They lost.

But the tricks were back on Thursday, for consideration of H.R. 2857, the GIVE Act, reauthorizing the AmeriCorps program. Only this time, they added another twist. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) offered the fake FISA motion. Motion ruled non-germane, ruling appealed, appeal tabled. Then the "real" motion, from Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-NY), requiring criminal background checks for AmeriCorps volunteers. But using the bill-killing "promptly" language.

In a replay of the Bachmann charade, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), offered on behalf of Democrats to accept Kuhl's changes, if he'd amend his motion language from "promptly" to "forthwith," and Kuhl offered a counter-proposal: he'd change it to "forthwith" if the Dems would bring an immediate vote on the Senate FISA bill.

No deal. Dems told Kuhl to go hang, but had to pull the AmeriCorps bill, too.

You may recall that the other day, mcjoan told us that Congressional Dems may just have to run out the clock on the 110th without getting anything major done. Now it looks like House Republicans have decided to make sure even less gets accomplished, by proposing amendments to every bill through the motion to recommit, but then declining Democratic offers to accept those changes, preferring to kill entire bills and their own amendments with contrived delays.

Congratulations, then, to the Republicans, for inventing the House equivalent of the filibuster. Or at least the House "hold." Granted, in the other body, just one Senator can do this all alone. But among the House Republican Borg, there is but one collective mind. So when one pulls this delaying move, all are sure to follow, committing their votes to it just as readily and robotically as they did in their glory days as the Rubber Stamp Republicans of old.

Look for more of the same in the coming days.

The delay in consideration of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill gains critical time for more Senators to examine the supposed legal justifications for telecom amnesty, and thereby come to the same conclusion that Sen. Ron Wyden did:

"I have read the documents and senators who haven't read them would be shocked to see how flimsy the case is on which the administration bases its case for immunity"

But there's another reason, too. If we hadn't had that Dodd fight yesterday, we would have seen the procedure dictating the outcome of the bill, and plenty of Senatorial steak sauce to go around. That is, without Dodd's fight, we end up with the Intel bill as the underlying bill and an unanimous consent agreement requiring 60 votes for any amendment to pass, which then means it takes 60 votes to adopt the Judiciary committee substitute version (with no telecom amnesty in it). That pretty much guarantees an eventual loss.

That in turn means Dem Senators get to go home and if they face an upset constituent who opposed telecom amnesty, he can say, "Yeah, so did I. In fact, I voted against it and for the substitute amendment without immunity, but we just didn't have the votes," even if the truth was that they had managed to muster 50+ for it (which was in doubt, to be sure).

You end up with a situation in which you get to cast a freebie "protest" vote, but still get what you want, if you "secretly" wanted immunity to pass. Dodd's fight exposed that, and removed that cover by questioning and objecting to the unanimous consent agreement right off the bat. Without that fight, a Senator like the hypothetical example above gets to have his cake and eat it too, while giving constituents answers that are "technically correct" enough to temporarily stump them long enough for them to make it out the back door, and that the traditional media did absolutely nothing to prepare them to see through.

Reading Daily Kos is like reading the newspaper a month in advance.

Reading Daily Kos is like reading the newspaper a week in advance.

Reading Daily Kos is like reading the damned newspaper... used to be.

If you were following the FISA and telecom amnesty debate in the traditional media (even their blog versions) yesterday, you were hopelessly lost. You would have read that Dodd's filibuster had "fizzled," and that the telecoms had won a victory. And you apparentlywould have been reading this well into the evening, since it wasn't until well after the bill had finally been pulled that the media got a real handle on what had happened, even if they never really understood how it had happened, much less why. But if you stuck with us, you probably had a pretty good handle on things, whether you're a visual learner, or prefer the narrative form.

The reasons are myriad, and we've discussed some of them before. First, there's the background media narrative to overcome. The conventional wisdom was that this deal was going through, and that was that. So the stories were in some sense already written. A change of direction always catches the media off guard. But beyond that, the plain fact is that the traditional media just isn't that well suited to covering a story like this.

Second, this situation was fluid, and traditional media that have strict deadlines for going to press just can't keep up. That's why so many media organizations have made the move to the Internet, or have developed news blogs. But that overcomes just one of the many hurdles.

Third, in addition to being fluid, it was complex and arcane. It took a long time to explain exactly what was going on, or what might happen. In fact, that explanation turned my planned 15 minute interview on The Young Turks radio program into a 45 minute appearance, explaining as thoroughly as I could what the situation was and various possibilities of how it might shake out, not to mention what that might mean and why it happening this way in the first place. No traditional media organization can spend that kind of time on things. Even the radio appearance was perhaps only possible because The Young Turks show had committed to continuing to tape their show as long as Dodd kept up his fight, so we had lots of time to kill and the longer we spent explaining it, the better. As a result, the traditional media coverage of yesterday's events by and large simply got the procedure wrong, mistaking the cloture vote on the motion to proceed for a cloture vote on Dodd's filibuster of the bill itself (which we never even got to), and forgetting entirely about the 30 hours of post-cloture debate, which is what we were actually seeing yesterday.

And fourth (I was going to say "finally," but nothing is final until the comments come in), there's the matter of the time and effort that we can put into a story like this -- both individually as bloggers, and collectively as a blogosphere -- that the traditional media can't. Or won't. I don't have to remind anyone here of what that boils down to...

but I will, because it's so delicious:

I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right...

Well you know what? Neither do I. But I did it anyway, because I care what the hell happens in this country, and I want to know what I'm talking about.

I worked on Capitol Hill for a few years, so I happen to know something about procedure in general. But I never worked on the Senate side. Do you want to know how I came to understand Senate procedure? I looked it up and read about it. What a concept.

So thanks for playing along with us. Hope you enjoyed the ride. We'll be back here on this bill again in January, and we can put what we learned to good use. Until then, don't forget to put your "Stupid Internet Hayseed" costumes (or your "Vinny in the Bronx" bathrobe) back on. You don't want to spook the natives.