Lean Left

« Previous | Next »

No Bottom With This Line
Posted by KTK

You just can’t discover how low the Republicans will go - on anything. They invent new ways to be petty, childish, false, and meanspirited almost daily.

Now they have taken to rewriting Democratic language in a Congressional committee report, inserting inflammatory words to make them look bad. This is about at the level of schoolyard graffiti - but it’s the actual behavior of leading Republican Congressmembers as they go about the people’s business.

I’ve said it so many times, but every day it’s more true . . . God, I want the adults back in charge again.

The following amendments were offered and voted down by recorded votes in the Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 748-The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA):

DESCRIPTION OF AMENDMENT
AMENDMENT DESCRIPTION IN HOUSE REPORT 109-51

DEMS: a Nadler amendment allows an adult who could be prosecuted under the bill to go to a Federal district court and seek a waiver to the state’s parental notice laws if this remedy is not available in the state court. (no 11-16)
GOP REWRITE: Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have created an additional layer of Federal court review that could be used by sexual predators to escape conviction under the bill. By a roll call vote of 11 yeas to 16 nays, the amendment was defeated.

DEMS: a Nadler amendment to exempt a grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions in the bill (no 12-19)
GOP REWRITE: Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 19 nays, the amendment was defeated.

DEMS: a Scott amendment to exempt cab drivers, bus drivers and others in the business transportation profession from the criminal provisions in the bill (no 13-17):
GOP REWRITE: Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution if they are taxicab drivers, bus drivers, or others in the business of professional transport. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 17 nays, the amendment was defeated.

DEMS: a Scott amendment that would have limited criminal liability to the person committing the offense in the first degree (no 12-18)
GOP REWRITE: Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted from prosecution under the bill those who aid and abet criminals who could be prosecuted under the bill. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 18 nays, the amendment was defeated

DEMS: a Jackson-Lee amendment to exempt clergy, godparents, aunts, uncles or first cousins from the penalties in the bill (no 13-20)
GOP REWRITE: Ms. Jackson-Lee offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were clergy, godparents, aunts, uncles, or first cousins of a minor, and would require a study by the Government Accounting Office. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 20 nays, the amendment was defeated.

Get it? Every amendment referring to a given group of people was rewritten to refer to “sexual predators”. This is about as intelligent and mature as appending “between the sheets” to the amendments . . . but that’s your GOP in action.

Louise Slaughter, ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, stated:

At least five amendments to this bill, which were designed to protect the rights of family members and innocent bystanders from prosecution under this bill, were rewritten as amendments designed to protect sexual predators from prosecution and were then included in the committee report as if that was the original intent of the authors. The thing is, sexual predators were not mentioned anywhere in any of these amendments.

These amendments were no more about sexual predators then they were about terrorists or arsonists or any other criminal class in our society. These amendments were about the rights of grandmothers and siblings and clergy and innocent bystanders. . . .

The [Committee] Chairman [James Sensenbrenner] stood by those altered amendment descriptions.

He made very clear to the Rules Committee that the alterations to these members’ amendments were deliberate. . . .

In fact…He said, and I quote…”You don’t like what we wrote about your amendments, and we don’t like what you said about our bill.”

Very mature. The GOP’s response to debate over their bill is to . . . write naughty words on the Democrats’ proposals? And they want this to go down in writing in the Congressional Record?

Note that this is part of the GOP’s new scorched-earth tactics. The same issues were brought up in Congress in 2002, when the GOP already had a majority, and Raw Story posts a copy of the Congressional Record page reporting proposed Democratic amendments to the bill for that year. Every one of them is reported in neutral, perfectly ordinary language. Now the GOP has decided that “taunting” is its newest strategy. Childish assholes.

[Link via Raw Story.]

April 27th, 2005 General, Politics, Legal Issues, Culture, Health | 3 comments