Ladies and Gentlemen - your Republican Party in action

I am as annoyed as anyone that the Democrats in Congress haven't been more effective at doing, well, anything, but there is the unfortunate reality that the GOP is still stuck in lockstep mode and would rather go down on the USS Chimptanic than pretend they're Americans. Specifically, after bitching for years anytime the Democrats utilized the filibuster (remember the whole discussion about the "nuclear option"?), they can't help themselves, and filibuster everything so that every vote essentially has a 60 vote requirement to pass. Of course, it's more civilized than that, so the Senate just has a cloture vote to end debate and proceed to a real vote, and unless the cloture vote gets 60, the bill or amendment stalls. Counting Bernie Sanders (I-VT), but not Joe Lieberman (Jackass-CT), the Dems have 50 votes, and that's unfortunately not enough.

Case in point: Arlen Specter, one of the more moderate Republicans, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008. The amendment would strike the staggeringly offensive portion of the Military Commissions Act, passed last year, which revoked the Great Writ of Habeus Corpus for those detained by the US. This really should be a no-brainer, except for those who think that anyone arrested is guilty by default and, as such, gives up all their human and civil rights. Hey - who thinks that way? Republicans!

In the cloture vote yesterday, the amendment got 56 votes, including 6 Republicans (but not Fascist Joe), so of course it failed. I'm sure the whiny brat who plays President would have had a temper tantrum, and might have even pulled out the old veto pad, so it might not have mattered (unless they could get 67 votes).

Sigh.

Of course, they're consistent, these Republicans who claim to love America but hate everything the country once stood for. The other vote yesterday was about granting congressional representation to the US citizens living in the District of Columbia (and giving one more seat to Utah). And it failed. No taxation without representation, indeed.