Searches of Congressional Offices by the FBI
One of the few times that F. James Sensenbrenner did step in to complain about a Justice Department action, was when the FBI raided Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s office and confiscated his computer to investigate him on bribery charges. Sensenbrenner claimed that this was unconstitutional, but it is more likely that he just wanted to avoid having other Congressional offices from being searched.
Senator Bill Frist, then Republican Senate Majority Leader stated that he was satisfied that the search was constitutional.
Voting Irregularities in Ohio
In 2004 when members of the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State, to investigate the many instances of election irregularities, including a lack of voting machines in Democratic districts and waiting lines of more than eight hours long, (predominantly in areas where blacks were the majority), and flyers which were deceiving people to go to the wrong polling places, so they were given provisional ballots. Election officials, including Blackwell ordered that those votes not be counted. Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner did not sign the letter.
HOLD SENSENBRENNER ACCOUNTABLE AT HIS TOWN HALL MEETINGS
I’ve been thinking about ways we can use Sensenbrenner’s Town Hall meetings to our advantage.
First, Sensenbrenner has some very standard pat answers for certain questions, and they come up again and again at a number of his town hall meetings. For those of you who haven’t seen him in action, he is very slick in how he phrases things, and is obviously well versed in Rovian Framing, despite his claim that he and Karl Rove aren’t friendly (he claims that Rove ran the campaign of his primary opponent in his first run for Congress, which Rove’s candidate lost).
The other thing is that he will answer questions in a way that, very strictly speaking, it appears he is speaking the truth, but only with a very narrow perspective, because it only holds true when you define it within those very narrow terms that he’s outlined. Once you get outside the specifics that he outlines in his answers, it’s really all about lying through omission.
But when you press him for details and call into question those specifics and force him to answer beyond those narrow limitations, he has to start digging to find an answer. Then he will go to very obscure and old legal references, (or something similar, that he will cite that not too many people other than historical scholars might recognize), just to act like he knows much more about the subject than you do. If you can call him on those, and he continues to get stymied, then you know you’ve got him, because he will get really ticked off, and shout you down, interrupt you repeatedly, and call on someone else, preventing you from continuing to press him.
I’ve been collecting tape recordings and video tapes of several of his town hall meetings to catch him in his repeated responses and even in variances based on the demographics and the political leanings of his audience.
The labor groups had hit him pretty hard with high turnout in Wauwatosa prior to the Easter break, and the Grassroots group hit him hard with high turnout in Shorewood as well. I didn’t make it to the Wauwatosa town hall meeting, so anyone with recordings or transcripts or notes of that, I’d be interested in seeing them. Turnouts in town hall meetings since them seem to have fallen off, unfortunately.
I would suggest that we get better organized in attending these meetings and getting not only large numbers of people to continue to attend them throughout the district, but also to hit him repeatedly with questions on specific areas that are not only current interest, but also areas where he is weak because he has contradicted himself on them. We need to gather that information (video taped preferably), and gather his varied responses so we know how he might respond during debates. We also need to know what questions to ask, (and how to frame them), and know how they will elicit specific responses – like getting red faced, and losing his temper. For people who are willing to attend, but don’t know how to frame or ask a question, provide them with questions to ask.
If we can collect this information into a library, and categorize the information, and send some of this out via the internet throughout the district and the country to put him under increased pressure (not just transcripts and comments, but media clips as well), we can get him to slip up more often and catch him on tape more often. We can also design a strategy to use his own words and phraseology against him to show how he is being inconsistent and going counter to his own “principles” when it suits him and show how he covers up his lies when trying to defend his actions to his constituents.
(A recent example of this, is how he and other Republicans had claimed that they were against oil drilling in ANWR, but didn’t prevent that provision from being included in the Energy Bill which he voted FOR. Interestingly, they also didn’t prevent MTBE from being banned, and didn’t vote for keeping a provision requiring higher energy efficiency for larger SUVs either. I think that that was precisely why they included ANWR drilling in the proposal to begin with, so that the “holdouts” could save face and claim that “voting for passage of an imperfect compromise bill, was better than getting nothing at all.” (Past inclusions of such divisive issues into larger packages that also prevent their removal from the larger bills, show that this is not uncommon.) Sensenbrenner’s response to the higher energy efficiency was that that would require that manufacturers would need to build the large SUVs lighter and less resistant to impact which would make occupants less likely to survive crashes. But since he refuses to allow anyone to respond to HIS responses, other than occasionally the questioner, (whom he will cut off if they are on their toes), no one can question him about how requiring the SUVs to become hybrid electric and gas, or electric and diesel, COULD make them more energy efficient without having to reduce their crashworthiness. Just another example of how he “wins” the argument by phrasing it only in a narrow perspective and preventing discussion and other options from being put on the table.)
He also used bogus Supreme Court ruling interpretations to support his contentions that it was unconstitutional for the Federal Government to tax earnings to put into the Social Security, or to increase the income limits that the Government currently uses to collect the funds for Social Security. The claim that he made was based on a very old Supreme Ruling where the U.S. Government was sued for instituting Social Security, when it first began, and the individual suing, was claiming that the U.S. Government didn't have any right to collect Social Security as a tax. Sensenbrenner claimed that this Supreme Court ruling showed that increasing the amount of Social Security taxes to include a larger and larger percentage of income as taxable, was unconstitutional. In fact, that Supreme Court ruling did nothing of the sort.
What it did do, was to rule that the U.S. Government DID have the power to tax for Social Security under the Constitution.
In addition, Sensenbrenner's claim that raising the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes was unconstitutional, was also false. Not only was this issue not part of the Supreme Court case that he cited, but there is precedence for the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes increasing or being based on the total amount of income as opposed to being limited as it is today.
First of all, there is a sliding scale of the upper limit of income that is taxed for Social Security purposes. At the time of our debate on the subject, the upper limit that the Federal Government could tax for Social Security was around $93,000. That upper limit has increased to be now a little over $100,000, if memory serves me correctly, because of adjustments for inflation, (even though the adjustments fall far short of what the contributions would be if adjusted for what the rate used at the inception of Social Security were actually being used today).
Secondly, Medicare taxes you based on a percentage of your entire income, not just a portion of it which has been arbitrarily selected. So there IS precedence for taxation for a Government run program based on a percentage of your entire income. It is already being done. So there is absolutely no support for Sensenbrenner's claim that Social Security taxes as a whole, or an increase in the rate of those taxes as a percentage of income, are unconstitutional.
Everything that he points towards as "documentation" comes up with a completely opposite conclusion than what Sensenbrenner claims is true.
You'll note that this similar strategy is now being used in the debate on National Healthcare Reform, as Senator Charles Grassley ( R ) has now claimed that there is a question as to whether or not collecting taxes, or creating a National Healthcare Public Option, are allowed under the Constitution. Yet, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly states:
Section 8- Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;,,,
The only thing that is unconstitutional, in the collection of taxes for Social Security, is that the collection of those taxes is not uniform throughout the United States. While the method may be uniform, the percentage of tax imposed on individuals based on their income IS NOT. The poor and middle income pay taxes on essentially ALL of their income for Social Security, while the extremely high income individuals only pay taxes on a very small fraction of their income towards Social Security. The bulk of the wealthiest Americans' incomes are EXEMPT.
Studies have shown that if the very high income earners were taxes on their full income for Social Security purposes, that Social Security would not only be solvent, but would have more than enough money to exist indefinitely, and pay off all of its obligations under current terms and conditions.
Of course, Republicans have long wanted to kill Social Security, so any changes in tax collection that would be more fair and equitable, and insure Social Security's survival, are being fought tooth and nail by them. Former Republican Dick Armey, who founded the right wing attack organization "Freedom Works" has also gone on record as wanting to eliminate Medicare. Given that so many Americans have lost their retirement pensions and insurance benefits as a result of the recent financial debacle, the elimination of Medicare, as Republicans have proposed, would pull out the safety net of many retired Americans. And, far from destroying Medicare, by pulling back $500 Billion in subsidies that the Bush Administration and Republican Congress gave to the Pharmaceutical Companies and Healthcare companies (to increase their profits when they were in power), and re-allocating this money to the people who actually need the help, as the Democrats Healthcare Reform Bills propose, this would lower our healthcare costs dramatically, because the subsidies would then actually be going to pay for healthcare costs, rather than be paid out as profits and bonuses to pharmaceutical and healthcare industry shareholders and executives.
Republicans claim that by reducing the subsidies to the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industries, the costs would go up for consumers because these companies would have to make up their losses in profits by raising their rates. Which is exactly why a National Public Healthcare Option is absolutely necessary - To provide healthcare service at low cost, to insure that Pharmaceutical and Healthcare companies don't continue to raise their rates to insure greater and greater profits at the expense of the policy holders, who receive fewer and fewer benefits as a result.
When posed with the suggestion to tax the super rich on their full income for Social Security, Sensenbrenner claimed that this would be impossible because they would then be able to claim a much higher benefit rate. But the benefits are limited to a small percentage of what you actually had earned before, and a small percentage of what you actually put in NOW, so his claims are baseless. And, since the number of future taxpayers are increasing, as opposed to how many were paying into the fund decades ago and currently collecting from the fund now, you have an increasing pool of income to pay for previous payees and current beneficiaries.
The only way that Sensenbrenner's scenario of Social Security not having enough funds to pay its obligations would come to pass, are if Congress continues to limit the amount being taxed for Social Security, or if Congress continues to allow businesses to ship their businesses and jobs overseas, as has been done over the last several decades while Congress has been under Republican congrol.
I’d like to see labor groups and other grassroots organizations get involved in this information gathering so that Sensenbrenner isn’t seeing the same faces over and over again.
Suggestions, comments, questions? Anyone interested in further organizing this so that we can get other organizations involved in moving this concept forward into a real strategy?
The Stakeholder Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Weblog
http://www.dccc.org/stakeholder/archives/002954.html
Sensenbrenner
Posted by jesselee
Monday, June 13, 2005 at 10:12 AM
Democrats Slam Sensenbrenner [Roll Call]
For the second time in a month, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) has outraged Democrats on his panel with what they described as heavy-handed tactics, but GOP aides countered that the minority was deliberately distorting the facts.
On Friday morning, Sensenbrenner suddenly ended a Democratic-called hearing on reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act, an anti-terrorism law enacted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. President Bush and GOP leaders have made permanent reauthorization of the legislation a top priority.
Some House Democrats, led by Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), ranking member on Judiciary, have complained that they have not been allowed to present witnesses who have concerns about reauthorizing expiring provisions of the act. Conyers used committee rules to force a hearing last week, but Sensenbrenner gave the minority just two days to put it together.
But after less than two hours of testimony on Friday morning, Sensenbrenner declared the hearing over. Several Democrats continued talking, however, and GOP staffers on the committee retaliated by turning off their microphones. When the Democrats still wouldn’t give up, the TV feed to C-SPAN was cut off, and then at least some of the lights in the hearing room were turned off.
James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, one of the witnesses at the hearing, said he was stunned by the display of partisan rancor.
"I have never seen anything like this happen," said Zogby. Zogby claimed that "it was obvious that [Sensenbrenner] didn't like any of the Democratic Members" on Judiciary, and clearly wasn't pleased the hearing was taking place at all.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slammed Sensenbrenner for his handling of the hearing in a statement released Friday. She urged Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to make Sensenbrenner apologize to Democrats for his "shameful behavior" on Friday.
"This incident is the latest in a series of disgraceful conduct by Mr. Sensenbrenner," Pelosi said. "Last month, he misused an official committee report to mischaracterize in a derogatory manner amendments offered by three Democrats. As a result, the House was required to authorize the filing of a supplemental report, which contained significant changes, to correct the record."
Pelosi was referring to language used recently by Judiciary Committee majority staff to describe two amendments offered by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. The committee report described the amendments as an exemption for "sexual predators" from the bill. After Democrats and some Republicans complained, the language was revised.
Pelosi added that she was going to seek Hastert's help in reining in Sensenbrenner: "As House Democratic Leader, I expect all Members to be treated by the majority with dignity and respect. I will ask Speaker Hastert to order Mr. Sensenbrenner to apologize for his behavior to the witnesses at the hearing today, and to promise this will never happen again."
Comments on F. James Sensenbrenner's histrionics as played out on C-Span (when he shut down the hearings on the USA Patriot Act) and for when he ordered descriptions of Democratic Amendments offered during the Committee Markup of H.R. 748 the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), fraudulently rewritten so that it would make Democrats appear to be supporting criminal behavior by child predators.
June 13, 2005
F. James Sensenbrenner. And I mean that.
by Kagro X
It's not something I feel about Murray Abraham, Scott Fitzgerald, or even Lee Bailey. But when it comes to Sensenbrenner, I'm certain. F. James Sensenbrenner, Junior. And you, too, Dad. F. James Sensenbrenner, because he's already trying to F. you.
At the end of last week, liberal talk radio and the blogosphere exploded with outrage over the nearly unbelievable scene that unfolded live on C-SPAN, when House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner abruptly gaveled the minority-called hearing on the USA PATRIOT Act to a close and stormed out, ordering the witnesses dismissed, the microphones turned off, the record closed, and even had the official stenographer threatened for continuing to take notes on what the stunned Democrats he left behind were saying.
Or rather, liberal talk radio did. The blogosphere was still tearing its hair out over Howard Dean and those who would have him watch his mouth. And so we mostly missed the strange saga of F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. and his "tactical nuclear option."
Many of you will recall that Sensenbrenner just last month was forced to correct House Report 109-51, in which he ordered rewritten the descriptions of Democratic amendments that had been offered during the Committee markup of H.R. 748, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA). For those of you who don't remember, a sampling:
The author's description:
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)
Which Sensenbrenner changed to read:
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.
Judiciary Committee Democrats, not surprisingly, demanded a retraction of the report and an apology frmo Sensenbrenner. The Chairman refused, and Democrats took to the floor in a series of "points of personal privilege," under which any Member may claim an hour of time when he or she feels she has been personally wronged and wishes to offer a defense or correction. Sensenbrenner eventually had to back down and correct the report.
Now we find ourselves, barely a month later, with Chairman Sensenbrenner once again out of control, flouting House rules, and robbing the minority of its right to be heard. The hearing he shut down was properly demanded under Rule XI, clause 2(j)(1) -- demanded because he had refused otherwise to permit Committee Democrats to call their own witnesses on the PATRIOT Act. Reminded that the Rules of the House entitle the minority to that right, he called the hearing for 8:30 am on Friday -- a day when the House was out of session and most other Members had returned home to their districts. So, with barely a half day's notice, witnesses were flown in from all across the country, Judiciary Committee Democrats rejiggered their schedules, and all were told by the Chairman that the hearing would be cancelled if anyone were late.
Running an extraordinarily tight ship, Sensenbrenner held close (after his own fashion) to the five minute rule. Normally, Members are given five minutes in which to pose questions to witnesses and receive their answers. Commonly, so long as they are mindful of time restrictions, witnesses are permitted to complete their answers even if they run over on time. But Sensenbrenner was having none of it that morning. Witnesses were gaveled down and cut off in mid-sentence, at five minutes on the dot. In one case, a Republican Member reportedly posed a five minute "question" to a witness, the representative of Amnesty International, which consisted of little more than a rant and berating of the witness and the organization he represented. At the end of the five minute tirade, time being up, Sensenbrenner moved on, refusing all requests that he be permitted to reply, until Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was able to needle him into allowing a brief response.
In the end, though, Sensenbrenner had his way. In this video of the end of the hearing, available from Dembloggers.com, the Chairman is seen melting down, gaveling the hearing to a close unilaterally (as opposed to say, making a motion to adjourn in regular order), and storming out. In the minutes that followed, the video documents that Democrats soldiered on, though Committee staff turned off the microphones, and even allegedly attempted to insist that C-SPAN camera crews be removed. Perhaps even more informative were the interviews conducted by Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes with Judiciary Committee Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jerry Nadler, audio of which is available here. In these interviews, the Members give us details not visible on the C-SPAN video. I recommend giving them a listen. And so, in his attempt to bury objections to the PATRIOT Act with an 8:30 hearing on a Friday, Sensenbrenner in fact created a sensation.
So what's next?
Well, Nancy Pelosi has already called for an apology, but Democrats shouldn't even consider stopping there.
Like any employee with an attitude problem, Jim Sensenbrenner has simply run out of chances. It was only a month ago that he was called out on his last ridiculous temper tantrum, and he got away with a warning. Now, though, it's time for probation. House Democrats must demand his formal censure, and stake out the position that another such abuse will result in demands for his removal as Judiciary Chairman.
Just as they did in calling attention to Sensenbrenner's last breach of decorum, Democrats should exercise their right to points of personal privilege on the House floor to make their demands, and Leader Pelosi should offer another question of the privileges of the House as a vehicle for moving for Sensenbrenner's formal censure.
This has gone on long enough. At a time when Congressional Republicans are already at a low ebb in terms of how the public views their mismangagement of power (see also: Terri Schiavo, the nuclear option, etc.), Sensenbrenner's continued misbehavior is an embarrassment now beyond a simple collegial intervention.
June 13, 2005 at 10:29 in Congress, Contributor--Kagro X, Public Policy Process, Republicans | Permalink
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Democrats Slam Sensenbrenner [Roll Call] For the second time in a month, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) has outraged Democrats on his panel with what they described as heavy-handed tactics, but GOP aides countered that the minority... [Read More]
Tracked on June 13, 2005 at 10:34
Comments
did anyone else notice that this was on Drudge? What does THAT mean?
Posted by: bluesteel | June 13, 2005 at 10:35
It means that the groundwork for "Sensenbrenner's come undone, and even Republicans know he needs some 'time out at the farm'" is already laid.
Democrats were able to extract an ounce of flesh last time Sensenbrenner went off the deep end, simply by keeping up the pressure and using their points of personal privilege to embarrass Republicans. They ought to do the same this time, but get the rest of the pound they were owed from last time.
Posted by: Kagro X | June 13, 2005 at 11:08
Thank God for C-Span!
Regarding Drudge, I also noticed that he mentioned it. He knows he needs to maintain his relevance. And there's an amusing bit on Drudge this morning. The headline is Hillary hysterics, but right below it, first column, is this interesting juxtiposition:
Dem Chair Dean: 'FOXNEWS Is A Propaganda Outlet For The Republican Party'...
Cheney: Dean 'over the top'...
For stating the obvious?
-- Rick Robinson
Posted by: al-Fubar | June 13, 2005 at 11:55
Remember this is the guy who held up the intelligence bill in order to get some restrictive measures against immigrants. His anti-immigrant stand is on a par with Tom Tancredo. He is truly an embarrassment to the Congress and to his home state, although in his case it is hard to tell if it is ideology or chemical imbalance or something else entirely.
Posted by: Mimikatz | June 13, 2005 at 12:00
Oh, I won't forget. He held up emergency appropriations for Iraq, as well. He's been as much an embarrassment to Congress as a whole as he has been a problem child for his own party. They ought to be glad to be rid of him.
Posted by: Kagro X | June 13, 2005 at 12:30
If only he could be censured but we could continue to have him throw his temper tantrums for the cameras. One thing Democrats need these days is the best of both worlds.
Posted by: Meteor Blades | June 13, 2005 at 13:50
Sensenbrenner travel = almost $177,000
http://nytimes.com/2005/06/13/politics/13travel.html?pagewanted=all
"Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican elected in 1978, has accepted more money in privately financed trips than any other member of Congress since 2000, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.
Interest groups have spent almost $177,000 on Mr. Sensenbrenner's travels, including trips to Japan, Thailand,
France, Germany, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Bahrain and Dubai."
Posted by: fnord | June 13, 2005 at 18:48
Lots to learn in Liechtenstein.
Posted by: Kagro X | June 13, 2005 at 19:04
Lichtenstein ...?
Kazakhstan was actually the one that caught my eye.
Some interesting details from
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/congtravel/member_report.php?member=411
"Sponsor - Youth Movement for the Future of KazKHATn
Purpose - To meet with officials from the Kazakhstan government and to view the launch of a rocket"
And from the same site, here's another fun one:
"Sponsor - Recording Industry Association of America
Dates - January 10, 2003 - January 17, 2003 (8 days)
Location - Taipei, Taiwan - Bangkok, Thailand
Purpose - judiciary committee fact-finding trip
Notes - spouse, Cheryl W. Sensen
Total Cost - $11,685.09
Additional family members - Yes"
Posted by: fnord | June 13, 2005 at 20:41