The "Coburn Omnibus" (or the "Tomnibus," as the NYT has more cleverly dubbed it) is due for its first procedural test this afternoon, with a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill (now designated S. 3297, the "Advancing America's Priorities Act"). Yes, that means a cloture vote on the question of whether or not to start debating the bill.

If that doesn't tell you something right there about the level of Republican obstructionism, maybe this will: the cloture vote may be preceded by a motion to instruct the Senate Sergeant at Arms to establish a quorum. Meaning that there's some significant chance that Republicans will try to prevent this from coming to a vote by hiding out in their offices (or elsewhere) in order to deny the Senate the quorum needed to vote on whether or not they should begin debate on a bill made up of 30+ other bills that one guy has blocked, even though most of them passed the House with 400+ votes in favor.

So what's in this thing, anyway? Here's the list of included measures (italicized bills have Republican lead sponsors:

1. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Registry Act (S. 1382/HR 2295)
2. Christoper and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act (S. 1183/HR 1727)
3. Stroke Prevention (S. 999 - Cochran/HR 477)
4. Postpartum Depression (S. 1375/HR 20)
5. Vision Care for Kids (HR 507/S. 1117 - Bond)
6. Downs Syndrome support (S. 1810 - Brownback/HR 3112 - Sensenbrenner)
7. Emmitt Till Unsolved Crimes (S. 535/HR 923)
8. Mentally Ill Offender Treatment (S. 2304 - Domenici/HR 3992)
9. Star-Spangled Banner and War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission (S. 1079/HR 1389)
10. Drug Endangered Kids (HR 1199/S. 1210)
11. Runaway and Homeless Youth (S. 2982/HR 5524)
12. Child Pornography Prosecution (HR 4120)
13. Enhancing Child Pornography Prosecution (S. 2869 - Vitter/HR 4136)
14. PROTECT Our Children Act (S 1738/HR 3845)
15. Paul Simon Study Abroad (HR 1469/S 991)
16. Reconstruction Civilian Management (HR 1084/S 613) - Lugar
17. OPIC Reauthorization (HR 2798/S 2349)
18. Tropical Forest Conservation (S. 2020 - Lugar/HR 2185 - Kirk)
19. Funding for victims of torture (HR 1678 - Smith (NJ)/S 840 - Coleman)
20. Museum of the History of Polish Jews (HR 3320 - Smith (NJ))
21. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority  (S. 1446/HR 401 - Tom Davis (VA))
22. Preservation of Records of Servitude, Emancipation, and Post-Civil War Reconstruction (HR 390)
23. Pre-Disaster Mitigation Act (HR 6109/S. 3175 - Lieberman)
24. Broadband Deployment (S. 1492/HR 3919)
25. Ocean Exploration, Mapping & Research (HR 1834 - Saxton/HR 2400/S. 39 - Stevens)
26. Hydrographic Services Improvement (S. 1582/HR 3352 - Young (AK))
27. Coastal and Ocean Observation System  (S. 950 - Snowe/HR 2342)
28. National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act (S 3160/HR 5618)
29. Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring (S. 1581/HR 4174)
30. Realtime Writers Grants (S. 675/HR 1687) (passed House in Higher Ed bill)
31. Smithsonian construction bill (HR 5492)
32. Captive Primate/Animal Safety (S. 1498/HR 4933)
33. The Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Watertrails Network Continuing Authorization Act (S. 2707/HR 5540)
34. Beach Protection Act (S 2844/HR 2537)
35. Appalachian Regional Development Act (S. 496 - Voinovich/HR 799)

So what's Coburn's problem? Well, his story all along has been that he's such a gosh-darned good budget hawk, and these bills will... zzzzz... increase the deficit.

But the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reminds us that Coburn's making an amateur mistake:

   The Congressional Budget Office has reviewed S. 3297, a bill to advance America's priorities, as introduced on July 22, 2008. The bill includes numerous provisions that would affect health care, criminal statutes, laws to protect wildlife and the environment, international aid programs, efforts to promote commerce, ocean research, and other government programs.

   Most of the bill's provisions would specifically or implicitly authorize increased appropriations for purposes specified in the bill. By themselves - that is, in the absence of subsequent legislation - those authorizations do not cause changes in federal spending or revenues.

That is, Coburn's objecting to the costs of authorization bills, which only designate an outer limit to how much money can later be spent... by appropriations bills. The budgetary impact of authorization bills, therefore, is zero. Only bills that actually spend money count against the budget. Coburn was hoping no one would notice, I guess.

Ten Republican Senators have bills in this package: Thad Cochran (MS), Kit Bond (MO), Olympia Snowe (ME), Ted Stevens (AK), David Vitter (LA), Sam Brownback (KS), Pete Domenici (NM), Dick Lugar (IN), George Voinovich (OH), and Norm Coleman (MN).

So here's the question going into the vote: Will Senate Republicans flip on their own legislation, just to back up the paranoid theories of a crazy doofus whose main concern in life (besides crossword puzzles) appears to be the growing menace of teenage bathroom lesbians?

If last week was any indication, yes they will. Senate Republicans are intent on putting their most vulnerable colleagues through the wringer, apparently insisting on blocking any bill that doesn't drill for oil in your Aunt Bertha's daisy patch.

They may be, it turns out, That. F-ing. Crazy.

Tune in at 4 p.m. EDT to find out.

UPDATE: Yep, they're that crazy. Cloture goes down, 52-40. Have a nice weekend, Senators. And it's only Monday.

UPDATED DIARY - beginning now with Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower, explaining why there should be no retroactive immunity.

On the flip, Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd & others speak FOR and against retroactive immunity -- and on the dangerous flaws of the various versions of the revisions to the FISA law.

Here’s the skinny: When you see the words “Republican” and “compromise” in the same phrase, it should pretty much tell you all you need to know about a piece of pending legislation. Republicans don’t actually believe in compromise; either that, or they don’t understand what it means. The GOP, as it now stands, either gets its way, or, if it doesn’t, demands a recount or a do-over. Politics for this bunch is both blood sport and a zero sum game—they don’t play nice, and they don’t meet you half way. That’s been the case for the better part of the last fifteen years. . . at least.

That’s all you need to know, that’s all Democrats in Congress should need to know, but I’m going to tell you more.

Yesterday, Think Progress noted that one of the Republican's pundit mouthpieces was floating the idea that they were going to attempt to get the Cheney/Rockefeller FISA bill past the House by attaching to a media shield bill that has strong bipartisan support. That effort would mean some procedural hurdles for the minority that hopefully leadership would be willing to block. This sounds like a trial balloon, but nonetheless signals the ongoing obsession the Right has with passing the Protect AT&T Act.

Meanwhile, ranking SSCI member Kit Bond told The Hill that the White House is "willing to compromise" on amnesty.

Bond said: "I think we’ve come up with some things that would involve the court, but not get to a position where it would endanger the program or the carriers."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined to comment.

Bond said the language, drafted with White House consent, represented a "new provision we’ve come up with" on immunity. He would not give details other than to say that the FISA court would have a role. It is unclear whether the new approach will gain approval from Democratic leaders and negotiators....

Recently, talks have gone on separate tracks. Bond has taken his case directly to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who also has held separate talks with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Bond said talks with a wider range of lawmakers and staff were unfocused.

Bond and Hoyer have narrowed their talks down to two areas: retroactive immunity and procedures on targeting people outside the United States in eavesdropping and minimizing communications captured incidentally during surveillance operations.

Hoyer has recently suggested revisions, including more court involvement in minimization and targeting procedures.

"There were something like 50 people, and they came up with 25 different ideas, and [Hoyer] sent the list over to me and said, ‘Thank you very much for your ideas, but you and I have talked about the two main ones,’ " Bond said of a recent meeting with all House and Senate negotiators.

Bond’s efforts might not go over well with Rockefeller, who offered his own proposal last week.

"I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but I’m hopeful," Rockefeller said about reaching an agreement.

Bond described Rockefeller’s plan as "bizarre" and said it "totally undid what we passed in the Senate."

The news that Rockefeller is totally undoing what passed in the Seante is the most encouraging news from him in months, but Bond's obnoxious dismissal of it just reiterates the pointlessness of trying to deal with Republicans. At the same time, it's not encouraging that Hoyer apparently has been working more with Bond than with Rockefeller.

One potential, and not completely disastrous, compromise they could be floating would be along the lines of the Specter-Whitehouse substitution bill, which would would allow plaintiffs to substitute the government as the defendant in the pending cases, thus dismissing the teleco defendants. What it's important it that it would ensure that plaintiffs retain full discovery rights – i.e., they can serve discovery requests on the dismissed teleco companies. It's entirely possible, as Kevin Drum and bmaz have argued that the telcos signed indemnification agreements with the government when the warrantless surveillance program began. Any such agreement would be classified, so we don't know they exist, but it seems pretty likely.

Indemnification would be acceptable, provided the cases go forward and the plaintiffs have discovery rights vis-a-vis the telcos. These cases have never been about the potential damage awards against the telcos, despite the Right's efforts to paint this as a greedy trial lawyer issue. What it has always been about is information: about the public's right to know what our government has been doing and why. Given the administration's penchant for secrecy, it doesn't seem likely that this is the kind of compromise that they'd be willing to agree to.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Republicans, Senator Bond, Rep. Hoekstra and Rep. Smith, have authored an opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Hard of Hearing, regarding FISA and the need for telco immunity.  Unfortunately, you probably won't be shocked at their opinion of a certain constitutional amendment.

In the ongoing effort to protect the security of the telcos who spied on us, Bush and his lap dogs are holding their breath and kicking their feet.

Bush:

Asked about a potential deal with Democrats, Bush said, "I would just tell you there's no compromise on whether these phone companies get liability protection." The administration says it needs the help of the phone companies for its post Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance.

And his puppet-on-a-string, Kit Bond:

"Last week, the House Democratic leadership had the opportunity to put national security first but they chose instead to leave town for a twelve day vacation. Today’s so-called bicameral staff meeting is nothing more than a partisan attempt by Democratic staff at the 11th hour to dismantle the bipartisan compromise that a majority of the Senate and the House support.

"The time for excuses and more meetings is over. House Democratic leaders have had months to work in a bipartisan fashion yet they have done nothing but stall. If they want to work in good faith they should give their members the opportunity to pass the bipartisan compromise that protects civil liberties and gives our terror fighters the tools they need to keep American families safe."

That's Republican compromise for you: Democratic capitulation. When the House Dems and their leadership didn't capitulate, the temper tantrums ensued.

Let's just point out again that it was the Democrats who offered to extend the Protect America Act to "keep us safe," and Bush and the Republicans who forced that law to lapse.

Let's also point out again that this is not about national security. It's about mega-corporation security with the bonus of a cover up of the administration's law-breaking.

Bush and his rubber-stampers are the ones who've said all along that not having the Protect American Act would make us less safe. By their actions, in their own formulation they put corporations and cover up ahead of American lives.

Leave it to Bush, Chertoff, and the GOP chicken-littles in Congress to bring out the fear card with the FISA vote coming up.  The disgraceful Senator from my home state, Kit Bond, has said that the Feingold Amendment would allow Osama bin Laden to call this country freely, and Chertoff says that the country is falling behind on security.  Add to it Bush and Cheney with their normal BS, and we are going to be attacked tomorrow if FISA is not passed as the GOP wants.

Enough is enough.  I so hope that the American public realizes that these supposed leaders are trying to scare them.  I also hope that the Democratic majority in the Senate and House do not cave in to these childish actions as they have done in the past. If they do, the readers of this blog and others need to fill their inboxes and jam their telephone lines.  We need to start holding our elected representatives accountable for their votes and their actions.  

Crossposted from Show Me Progress:

The GOP is worried about the Fann race in house district 16, St. Charles County. Or at least Kit Bond is, since Fann's Republican opponent, Mark Parkinson, is Bond's protege, and Bond figures the Republican mayor of St. Peters has been ... too kind ... to Tom Fann. Parkinson is barely thirty and has only one job on his resume: as an aide to Kit Bond.

So we know why Bond wants Parkinson to win. Let me tell you why I believe Bond is worried about his guy: he bothered to show up in St. Charles within the last few days to ream out Mayor Len Pagano for apparently endorsing Tom Fann.

Is the distinguished gentleman from Missouri a lying sack of crap, or just stupid? Kit Bond, who despite all appearances to the contrary is actually a United States Senator:

GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

Yes, it is of course comparable to swimming. Being tied down, then having water poured down your nose and throat until you come as close as possible to asphyxiation, then having a rag or plastic wrap shoved into your mouth so that you cannot cough the water back out is exactly like learning the backstroke.

Given the number of times this has come up -- from Rush Limbaugh to Dick Cheney -- I can only conclude that conservatives live very different lives from everyone else, and that as a child Kit Bond must have gone to the world's most malevolent summer camp. I know of no swim lessons that involve intentionally attempting to drown a person. I have never heard of anyone learning to swim with a soaked rag shoved into their mouth to prevent them from breathing through it, then having water poured into their nose so that they cannot breathe through that either.

True, there are various "techniques" -- depending on the available amounts of water, on what is used to cover the mouth, on whether the prisoner is tied down or merely held down by the collective weight of his interrogators -- but nonetheless, it would be hard for me to declare it like the backstroke unless I was either a bloodthirsty sadist, an unapologetic liar, an idiot, or some amalgamation of all three. Given that Kit Bond is a Republican, and is mouthing (luckily, Gwen Ifill does not use watersoaked rags to gag her interviewees, though it would probably give better results) what has come to become standard Republican talking points, it is anyone's guess which of those three ignoble characteristics best represents the good Senator. Perhaps someone can ask him.

The Republican party has devolved into unapologetic supporters of violence on all levels. Torture, war: it is all the same. Watching the Republican primaries, what stands out the most is how eager to please all candidates are, when it comes to issues of violence, and how ravenously the audiences consume any such expressions. You will get applause for declaring that you will double the internment of prisoners; you will be booed if you dare say you will reform it. You will get applause for spinning tales of ticking clocks, imminent mushroom clouds, and the justifications for torturing anyone who may yet turn out to be entirely innocent and unknowledgeable; you will be a lone, fuming onstage exception, if you object to such tactics. It is not that Republicans are merely supportive of detention without charge, or of torture, or of prisoner abuse, or of war itself; they have given themselves over to all those things in service of pandering to a more base primality. It does not pay to think, anymore, only to passionately hate, and wound, and seek revenge. That is what it takes, to rally the God party.

Yesterday, Jonah Goldberg gave one of his charming College Republicans presentations, "All I am Saying is Give War a Chance", in which he was to give forth on the "costs, necessities, consequences, and benefits of war". This should be mildly eyebrow raising, as I have never once heard anyone give a student lecture exploring "The Case For Rape", or "The Case For Mugging", even though I would imagine you could reuse most of the same material: each uses violence to unapologetically force a weaker party into doing what you want of them. If you wanted to make a case for mere self defense, you would not make a case for the benefits of war -- for bloodshed as a way to gain actual advantage.

Rush Limbaugh cannot open his mouth about Abu Ghraib without an utter dismissal that anything about it was wrong. To him, the sexual abuse, sodomy, and beating to death of prisoners was petty fraternity house hazing: using techniques such as dousing prisoners with acid or shoving broken chemical lights up their rectums is all good, clean Republican fun: "people having a good time", to use his precise words.  For his part, supposedly moderate Republican Congressman Christopher Shays said of it "Abu Ghraib was not torture. It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from [Maryland] who were involved in a sex ring".

So why would we expect anything different, but that torture be defined down to, as conservative Rachel Marsden stated on CNN in November, a "CIA sponsored swim lesson"? Why would we expect any less than the Vice President himself giving explicit public endorsement of the technique, and Kit Bond giving his own dismissive approval, and all the conservative pundits, and the Republican candidates for President of the United States giving their public approval, all the while detaching it neatly from being torture by merely refusing it the word, regardless of plain history or fact?

The current Republican Party stands for nothing; there is no moral hole too deep but for the party to crawl into it and make it home. The imprisoning of individuals without evidence, the torture of those prisoners, manufacturing evidence for "preemptive" war, outing CIA agents that tread too close to things the administration doesn't want said... nothing. David Vitter can continue see all the whores he wants, as long as -- God help the party -- none of them are male. Anyone can stand in front of a podium and say literally anything, and it will be defended as noble and patriotic and religiously sound and morally just.

And the United States can indeed torture -- even as Kit Bond was mouthing the words "It's not being used", a CIA agent was being paraded around the halls of the press to say it was being used: we can only presume that Senator Kit Bond is functionally illiterate, and deaf and dumb besides, for him to have missed such a blazingly promoted scoop.

So Kit Bond is, at best, a very stupid man. At worst, he is a national liar, and a willing apologist for violence, and a defender of the drowning and potential death of possibly innocent people under the thin premise that it is not, after all, all that bad.

Nobody has any excuses, at this point, to not know what waterboarding is. Nobody in power can be that stupid: no, Kit Bond is not stupid. He is merely a defender of violent abuse and potential death, because his party has elected to be the pro-torture party, because their very moral and religious supporters are enamored with expressions of violence in all their forms.

UPDATE: Oh, this is rich.  Apparently Malkin, Drudge, and the NRCC are pretending to be up in arms today over Pelosi saying Republicans "like this war. They want this war to continue."

Oh, the scandal! How could she say such a mean thing! Oh, if only she had been more civilized, like appearing on television with a smile and reducing acts of intentional government-sanctioned torture into mere swimming techniques!

And yet -- duh. Republicans "like" war? Well, that's the very premise of Jonah Goldberg's lecture, at the least. It's the very premise of the "surge", for that matter. It's the very premise of continued drumbeating to bomb Iran, whether or not they have anything to actually bomb. They like the war, they demand the war continues, and many of them have demanded for four years that we find other countries, like Syria and Iran, to bring into the war.

Of course Republicans like the war. And as Kit Bond, Rush Limbaugh, other conservatives, and nearly all Republican presidential candidates have demonstratively proclaimed, they like a lot of other foul things besides. Not only like them, but are willing to publicly advocate for them.

Poor babies. They advocate for war, endorse torture, and dismiss prisoner abuse, but then someone said something mean to them. How uncouth.

From Tonight's Countdown Senator Kit Bond claims that...

Waterboarding is like Swimming... Freestyle, Backstroke.

Are you freaking kidding me?

Apparently not, because Congressman Duncan Hunter on O'Reilly claimed those who oppose Waterboarding..

Are part of the "Blame America First Crowd"

This all besides the fact that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 specifically prohibits any interrogation techniques not included in Army Field Manual.  And the Army Field Manual specifically prohibits Waterboarding.

Philip Taubman's excellent article in the November 11, 2007 edition of the NY Times, Death of Spy Satellite Program is a nightmare story of a complex, fabulously-expensive military engineering project gone horribly awry - almost from day one.

It is also a story of how conservative governing philosophy can, ironically, spend more money to buy less security.

Crossposted from Show Me Progress

On few issues is the line dividing Democrats from Republicans 100 percent pure and obvious, and the CAFO issue is not one of them. 

Democrats don't always behave as I would have them do.  Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton (pictured), for example, is sponsoring House legislation (a companion bill to one being offered by Kit Bond) to have CAFO (Contained Animal Feeding Operation) waste declared non-toxic.  Such a law would effectively remove CAFOs from EPA oversight.

To pretend that animal waste in those concentrations isn't toxic is horse hockey.  McDonald County, in the very southwest corner of the state, is dotted with CAFOs, and every water body in that county is on the impaired water bodies list.

From Hill Heat...

The draft Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade plan would:

• lower carbon emissions a bit, but not enough
• give polluters massive windfall profits
• give the coal industry massive subsidies on top of those profits

How do the Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee respond to this polluter-welfare bill?

The Democrats, led by Barbara Boxer, offer effusive praise:

The Lieberman-Warner proposal is a huge breakthrough in the fight against global warming.

The Republicans, led by Kit Bond, go on the attack:

Your proposal would impose hardship on U.S. citizens and threaten robust growth in the U.S. economy.

Well, it looks like Mitch McConnell and his disciples in the Congress are once again attempting to shred the Constitution, and asking the American people to give up generations of Constitutional protections because he and George W. Bush are acutely incompetent. As we all know, the NIE came out the other day and showed serious problems. Instead of addressing these problems, Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership would rather ask us to shred our Constitution. Lets look at McConnell and Bond's proposals:

File this in the "shouldn't be news, but still is" category: During and after today's Senate debate on Iraq, Kit Bond actually admitted mistakes had been made, and attributed them to Bush:

As the Senate opened a new debate on the conflict, one of the president's staunchest supporters bluntly said the administration had pursued the wrong policy for years after toppling Saddam Hussein. "The strategy we had before was not the right strategy," said Christopher Bond, R-Mo. "We should have had a counterinsurgency strategy."

Asked later who bore responsibility for the error, Bond said, "Ultimately, obviously, the president."

Of course, this was referring to past strategies.  Bond was not going so far as to say that current strategies might need work.  Those he's fully in support of - and will be, we might guess, until the next time Bush switches strategy.  At which point this one will have been a mistake, but don't worry! The new one will be hunky dory.

While the fact that a die-hard like Bond would criticize Bush at all is a sign of Bush's weakness and the pressure on Republicans to reject his Iraq policy, in the end, as mcjoan has said again and again, what we need are some Republicans who will step up and vote for change.

Today's Washington Post reports on the efforts of our Democratic senators from Michigan, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow (and Republican Kit Bond as well), to push an amendment to the energy bill which would undermine the gains in CAFE standards currently in the legislation.

As it stands, the energy bill will require a combined car/truck CAFE of 35 MPG by 2020, with 4% annual increases through 2030.  That makes for a combined 52 MPG by 2030.  Personally I think that's aiming low, but I'm a pragmatist, and willing to take anything I can get right now, and improve as we go.  Unfortunately, the Detroit auto industry - working hard to drive themselves into oblivion by preserving their right to create enormous cars that people don't want - is trying to limit and delay these rather modest increases.  Details below.

by
Larry C Johnson (bio/blog)

Senators Bond, Hatch, and Burr have sent the rightwing nuts into a frenzy with their comments challenging the truthfulness of Valerie Wilson in one of the appendices to the latest report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on pre-war Intelligence about post-war Iraq.  If dumb is forever then the three intrepid Senators are guaranteed eternal life.  Bond can be excused because, like Bill "Bolangles" Robinson, "he drinks a bit".  Orrin Hatch's failing mental faculties are probably the result of his dotage--he has become more shrill with each passing year.  And Senator Burr?  Okay, just plain dumb.

With feigned outrage the three Senators assert they are trying to clear up confusion about the Committee's original report (see July 2004) but proceed to issue a new bunch of disingenuous stupidity and fluff to try to further cloud the picture and accuse Ambassador Wilson and his wife of acting dishonestly.  First, let's recall the specific facts presented in the original report:

I wrote Senator McCaskill two emails prior to the vote on the Iraq Supplemental funding bill. In the first, I asked her to listen to the voters who sent her there NOT to rubberstamp this President when it comes to the war and vote AGAINST any funding bill that did not contain withdrawal provisions. The next day, I sent her a letter telling her that she needed to vote AGAINST cloture on the bill since it was clear it would not contain any checks on this President's ability to continue the war. At no point in either of my letters did I threaten any retaliation for her vote if it wasn't as I hoped.

What's next after the flip