Cartoon from Walt Handelsman at Newsday (reg. required for some pages).

No one can predict how today will go, there is some hope that since the Senate likes to appear to be the royalty of the Congress, we might avoid some of the circus antics that Saturday in the House brought. It's unlikely anyone will use procedural objections over and over to silence Barbara Boxer or Olympia Snowe.

It's an open thread for what you're seeing in, and thinking about, today's procedures.

From NOW on PBS--Power Struggle. More available here.

This is what I hate having to explain to my relatives and friends abroad in Europe about politics in the US. We know that global warming is a fact. We know that our actions, if they didn't cause global warming, definitely exacerbate it. We know that we must reduce our dependency on oil, for both ecological and political/strategic reasons. And yet, what we are able to do is hampered so predictably by the Republican party:

Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation:

• As Chairman Markey shepherded his American Clean Energy and Security Act through the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republicans employed multiple parliamentary tricks to — as Politico put it — “nitpick the bill into legislative oblivion.” Brian Beutler called these nefarious stall tactics, and noted that Democrats responded by hiring a speed reader.
• Last year during the debate over the Climate Security Act, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell demanded that the entire 491 page bill be read on the floor of the United States Senate. A strategy memo was leaked at the time detailing the Republican strategy for delaying the bill as much as humanly possible.

While this Republican obstructionism is not necessarily surprising, it is especially egregious this time. Here are a few things about this episode that struck me:

1. Despite the fact that Senator Inhofe has been working to orchestrate this obstruction for a week now, Republicans are pretending the effort is being led by the two moderate Republicans on the committee. Politico handled the stenography.

The Politco, acting as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party? Say it isn't so!

Can you imagine how much further we'd get in this country if we didn't have so many idiots in office?

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The New York Times revealed that Sen. John Ensign may have ignored laws when giving preferential treatment to a lobbyist that was the husband of his former lover. Fellow Republican Senator Jon Kyl refused to defend Ensign when given a chance Sunday.

Another Republican Senator, Tom Coburn, was caught lying about his role in negotiating payments to the family of Ensign's mistress.

Sen. Barbara Boxer confirmed that the Senate Ethic Committee had opened an investigation into Ensign's actions. "We will look at all aspects of this case, as we do whenever there is a case before us, and try to get to the bottom of it as quickly as we can in fairness to all," Boxer told CNN's John King.

This is conservative thought at its best.

I'm not kidding.

DSCC has a mock site going.

CNN has a piece on it.

As former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina prepares to enter the 2010 California Senate race on the GOP side, her quirky new Web site is being ridiculed by the online community — and not just by those on the political left.

Republicans are also snickering about her bare-bones site, CarlyforCalifornia.com, which launched Monday and welcomes visitors with an animation describing a potential showdown between Fiorina and Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in curious terms.

"It's Day and Night," the bright red Web site reads. "It's Dogs and Cats. It's Good and Bad. It's Carly vs. Boxer."

After hinting that the Republican's official entry into the race is "coming soon," the animation concludes with a pun: "Carlyfornia dreamin!!!"

She's showing off those hi-tech chops that she demonstrated so shrewdly while driving H-P into a ditch, I guess.

You know why bloggers don't get invited onto more news shows? Because we would absolutely clean the politicians' clocks over hypocrisy like this. Billions of dollars to spend on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed more than a million innocent civilians, but they go all brave and weepy-eyed over theoretical babies. Funny, how little attention they give to them once they're out of the womb:

In the wake of Dr. George Tiller's murder, the U.S. Senate is debating a resolution that condemns violence against abortion providers. The words "reproductive health care" are in the bill, causing Republicans and anti-abortion senators to oppose it, according to a Minnesota Independent article.

Senators Amy Klobuchar, who is the lead sponsor, Jeanne Shaheen and Barbara Boxer worded the bill to say "acts of violence should never be used to prevent women from receiving reproductive health care." The bill's opponents say it glorifies abortion. The article also said that an anonymous Republican senator moved to use the "secret hold," which prevents a vote on the bill.

Klobuchar told the Minnesota Independent, "As a former prosecutor I have seen how acts of violence can tear apart communities...No matter how heated the debate or how great our differences, violence is never the answer."

A similar bill passed the House June 9, but it was a watered-down version of the one currently in the Senate. It did not mention Dr. Tiller or his profession, and did not use the words "reproductive rights" or "abortion."

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Rachel talks to Barbara Boxer about the stimulus bill and the need to get Republicans on board with their votes. Why any of these Democratic Senators all continue to cave any time the Republicans say they want to filibuster and don't actually make them filibuster and break out the cots and diapers is beyond me and her explanation here didn't cut it for me for the most part.

I can understand on this particular bill and them wanting to get it through quickly why they chose not to do it this time, but if the Democrats don't start showing that their spine has not been completely removed and make the GOP have a real filibuster on issues they really care about, they are hopeless and determined to lose at a game the other party cares more about winning than the future of this country and whether we get out of this economic crisis or not without another depression. Harry Reid has made it a way too regular event to give every time the Repulicans sneeze and threaten to filibuster anything and it needs to stop.

Barbara Boxer in her describing to Rachel how the Senate works just confirms my notions that it's an elite club where all of them think a little too highly of themselves and of each other and not enough of the jobs they were sent there to do and the people they're supposed to represent. I like Barbara Boxer and still do for the most part as far as her policy positions go, but when she went all out for Joe Lieberman when he was running against Ned Lamont she lost every ounce of respect I used to have for her.

I'd just say to Sen. Boxer that if Dick Cheney and the Republicans were willing to blow up the Senate rules for what they wanted passed, the Democrats ought to think about threatening it if the screaming banshees on the other side don't want to calm down a bit. They were ready for it with Cheney as their deciding vote. I say turn around is fair play.

February 03, 2009 C-SPAN
Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer and other members talked about their principles for climate change legislation. They focused on ways in which the proposed legislative initiatives would improve the economy. They also answered questions from reporters. Speakers include Senators, Whitehouse, Boxer, Sanders, Klobuchar and more. See more CSPANJunkie videos here.

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Nobody does wounded indignation quite like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and this was quite entertaining. I saw it on Hardball right after Lindsey was all red and sputtering, saying Republicans had been "shut out of the process." (Didn't Obama offer you any cookies, Lindsey?)

Imagine. After six years of Democrats being shut out of conference committee meetings, Lindsey has the audacity to clasp his bosom and clutch his pearls. (Here's the smelling salts, Lindsey!)

On Hardball, he was also crying to Tweety that the American people were opposed to this bill - as if, you know, the right-wing talk radio demigods didn't whip people up into a frenzy for that specific purpose.

So I really enjoyed watching Barbara Boxer call him "theatrical" and remind him of how few objections he had when George Bush sent enormous bills to the Senate, calling for a same-day vote.

"I will put my ability to speak my mind to my party up against anybody," Lindsey retorted, "including you, Senator. I have been up on this floor many times about policies I disagreed with."

Well, here's the thing. Much like my own Senator, Arlen Specter (R-Self Interest), Graham is most famous for his posturing on the floor, his principled indignation in front of the TV cameras - and his very reliable vote for the very legislation that seemingly so troubled him.

Painting himself as a "moderate, reasonable" Republican is his schtick!

So yes, Barbara Boxer is right when she calls his tactics "theatrical." That's the Republican game. It's never because they're obstructionists, it's that the Democratic bills are always without merit. They're not opportunists, it just so happens that they'd love to work on legislation with the Democrats - as long as they don't include anything that isn't a tax cut.

No cojones, that Repug bunch. They're so afraid of the Club for Growth coming after them, they all practically wet themselves at the very thought of supporting anything a Democrat proposes.

The silver lining in that massive coal waste spill is that at least something will finally be done:

WASHINGTON — Federal regulations are needed to make sure that ash from coal-fired power plants is stored safely, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said on Thursday as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on the spill of 1 billion gallons of toxic sludge in East Tennessee.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers promised to make sure that the Tennessee Valley Authority helps the region recover from one of the nation's worst spill and looks for ways to prevent other spills and leaks.

[...] It's not entirely clear how much ash is stored around the country or where. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn't track the number or have a breakdown for the states, said spokeswoman Tisha Petteway.

According to the American Coal Ash Association's latest survey, in 2007, coal-fired plants generated 131 million tons of coal ash.

The nation's hundreds of coal ash dumps contain millions of pounds of toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury and chromium, which can cause cancer or damage the nervous system and lungs and other organs if people ingest them. The EPA has left regulation up to the states, but it's been debating whether to set national standards.

"For nearly three decades, EPA has been looking the issue of how to regulate combustion waste," Boxer said. "The federal government has the power to regulate these wastes, and inaction has allowed this enormous volume of toxic material to go largely unregulated."

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Bob Melendez (D-NJ) castigate the Republican policies of the Bush administration that have brought us to this point and how a John McCain presidency will be just more of the same.   Senate Democrats:

Refusing to police lenders and neglecting to protect consumers enabled the subprime crisis that has brought first the American economy and now Wall Street to its knees. Bush-McCain Republicans' "anything goes" approach to governing cost Americans jobs and hurts the American taxpayer. With the economic news only getting worse each day, Democrats believe that we must urgently pass another economic recovery package. 

But Bob Geiger got the best statement on the state of the economy and John McCain from Sen. Bernie Sanders:

"One does try to get a handle on understanding what world Senator McCain and President Bush are living in when they would suggest that ``the fundamentals of our economy are strong.' Clearly, they have not been talking to working families around the United States of America.

"My perception of the economy is if you get off of the country club circuit, you stop talking to the millionaires and the billionaires and the large campaign contributors, and you talk to ordinary working people, people who own small businesses, what you find, in fact, is that the middle class in our country is under more assault than has been the case since before the Great Depression."

Well said.