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As for Steny Hoyer, it seems that a few people have their sights set on him:

As of today, Hoyer has stopped falsely denying that he engineered this deal. He has also stopped falsely denying that it contains telecom amnesty. Instead, he is now offering the excuse that he had no choice but to negotiate it because "conservative" Democrats were threatening to support the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill and Hoyer was thus forced to negotiate the best deal he could.

...

This predictable excuse makes no sense whatsoever, for all the reasons which Daily Kos' Kagro, a true expert in Congressional procedure, explains here. House Leaders control what gets to the floor for a vote. Did this ever happen to Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert? Beyond that, the Democratic caucus unified in March to vote in favor of the House bill and refused to provide amnesty. At best for Hoyer, even if he is telling the truth, then it means, as Kagro says, that Hoyer has no control over the caucus he supposedly "leads."

More to the point, even if some "conservative" Democrats were suddenly agitating to vote for amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, it is completely irrational for Hoyer to then go and engineer a bill which does exactly that. He calls himself the "Democratic Leader" -- if he really believed anything he said back in March, he would speak out against those members of his caucus pushing a bill that he himself said was corrupt, unreasonable and irresponsible. Plainly, Hoyer -- who spent the last week emphatically (and falsely) denying he had negotiated a bill with telecom amnesty -- engineered this bill because he wanted to, and as was indicated here yesterday, now that negotiations are complete and this campaign against him has begun, he's trying to distance himself from it and pretend that it wasn't his doing.

As a result, our campaign will be unveiled in two phases, with Phase I to entail an immediate ad campaign aimed at three key Democratic enablers of this bill -- Hoyer, Chris Carney, and Blue Dog Rep. John Barrow of Georgia. The reasons for targeting Hoyer are self-evident and were set forth yesterday, and the campaign against Carney -- who has long been one of the Blue Dogs spearheading the effort behind this bill -- is already underway and will continue.

Glenn Greenwald.

Also from Greenwald:

Just in the first three months of 2008, recent lobbyist disclosure statements reveal that AT&T spent $5.2 million in lobbyist fees (putting it well ahead of its 2007 pace, when it spent just over $17 million). In the first quarter of 2008, Verizon spent $4.8 million on lobbyist fees, while Comcast spent $2.6 million. So in the first three months of this year, those three telecoms -- which would be among the biggest beneficiaries of telecom amnesty (right after the White House) -- spent a combined total of almost $13 million on lobbyists. They're on pace to spend more than $50 million on lobbying this year -- just those three companies.

Uh yeah, let's not make comments such as those.

Could you edit your post or I'm going to.

bratboy wrote:

Tallgeese wrote:

What, the majority party can't stop the minority party from passing their legislation! The Democrats aren't spineless! This isn't their fault!

Many Democrats have been on board with this one from the beginning (especially in the Senate).  The Telecoms dump plenty of money on Washington.

Looks like the trial lawyers need to get out there and spend some more then

So the telecoms have officially joined the military-industrial-complex?

Maybe the threat of lawsuits was just a noobie head-rub.

So the administration is above the law.

Does this also mean you can commit war atrocities on the government's say so?

Cool! So does that mean we were wrong to hang all those Nazis?

"I was only following orders."

Last edited by sturner (2008-06-20 1:06 pm)

So a typical bipartisan vote, eh?

...and Hoyer, for that matter.

bratboy wrote:

On the vote:

The roll call vote is here. Of the Republicans: 188 voted YES, and a grand total of 1 -- a single lone soul (Rep. Tim Johnson of Illinois) -- voted NO (Ron Paul wasn't present). For the Democrats: 105 voted YES and 128 voted NO.

He's my Rep.

My Rep also voted against (Doggett).

Here's the tally.