Tuesday Roundup: Republicans Don't Like Laws

And thus it begins. The Senate has successfully brought debate on the immigration reform bill that's been taking up all of the non-scandal news cycle these days.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threw Republicans a bone by announcing when the bill was brought to the floor that he'd extend debate on it an extra week, and word is that there has been and will be a good deal of bipartisan camaraderie on this along with continuous input from the White House in the hopes of ending up with a compromise that can pass muster with everyone. Hopefully the bipartisan support will be strong enough to curb the opposition from the Republican far right without watering down the bill too much. After all, it's not like the far-righters are making any overtures of being reasonable. The Washington Times reports that a number of business groups criticizing the immigration bill on the grounds that — get this — "verifying that workers are legal places a bureaucratic and financial burden on them." They're against the bill because they don't want to have to deal with enforcement of legal worker laws that were passed years ago. It must be nice to live in a world where you don't have to deal with those pesky laws that cost you money.

As if the Justice Department didn't have enough mud on its face, one of its lawyers — who happens to be one of the more vocal proponents of voter fraud legislation — is being investigated by the House Administration Committee for having his finger in a number of voter suppression pies, including overriding lawyers involved in state voter ID laws in Georgia and Arizona, trying to rewrite the conclusions of the federal Election Assistance Commission regarding the little evidence available to suggest any widespread voter fraud, and pressuring commissioners into replacing the commission chairman for being "insufficiently partisan." Hans von Spakovsky had previously written a diatribe railing against voter fraud in a law journal article under the pseudonym "Publius." I honestly wish this would come as more of a surprise. Perhaps this is actually all a clever Republican ploy — the systematic desensitization of the American public to lawmakers undermining our civil rights. "Well, yeah, he's trying to suppress the minority vote, but at least he's not withholding rights to habeas corpus, right?" Okay, so it's probably not intentional, but I couldn't help thinking that this is a serious issue which will likely barely make a blip in the media compared to all the other scandals going on.

But hey — our Democrats in Texas are doing a pretty bang-up job of trying to defend those rights that are being put at risk under the radar. Did you know that SB 11, a homeland security bill which has already cleared the Senate and is now in the House, included a provision to expand the state government's domestic wiretapping authority? Hey, you're an astute reader, and a regular visitor to the Blue, right? So I bet you did. But the attack on personal privacy rights sure hasn't gotten much media play in the state. No worries, though — Lon Burnam's got your back. He got that provision removed by threatening to kill the entire bill on a technical objection he caught. Rep. Burnam is hands down my favorite Representative for the day. (My favorite Senator for the day, in case you're wondering, is and will be Sen. Mario Gallegos, right up until — and probably for a little while after — the Voter ID bill dies in the Senate. If you somehow haven't caught the story in the past few days, you should. People like these make me proud to be a Democrat.)

Rep. Burnam's move made for a nice counter-story to the other "bill fails on a technicality" story on my radar: Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) killed the Free Flow of Information Act, which would have finally established journalistic immunity in Texas. The bill didn't address Internet news sources, but nevertheless it would have been a great first step, and one I didn't want to see die due to a comma placed where a semicolon should have been.

The line of people waiting to challenge Craddick for the Speaker's chair next session is already three long. To Rep. Jim Keffer's pledge to run two days ago, you can add Rep. Jim Pitts and Rep. Brian McCall. I suppose seeing those two names is pretty anti-climatic, considering that they've run against him before. Call me paranoid, but I still can't get rid of a voice in the back of my head that Keffer's early announcement of a bid for Speaker was either an attempt to curb talk of motions to vacate in the hopes that people would settle for waiting until the next session, or a ploy to try and redefine Texas Republicans' image by detaching it from the highly unpopular Craddick. That notwithstanding, it will be interesting to see who, if anyone, House Democrats put up to run.

And finally today, a WaPo op-ed discusses how much fun Gore is having since he's not running for President. (You do know he's not running for President, right?) E.J. Dionne, Jr. discusses Gore's new book, The Assault On Reason, and also talks more broadly about how Gore is getting to say what he wants to say, both in this book and on the global warming debate, and how much he's enjoying that freedom. Small wonder he's not running. (Did I mention he's not...? oh, never mind.)