Riiiicolllllaaaa!
Friday January 30, 2006
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I swear. If John Kerry didn't exist, Karl Rove would have to invent him.
To review the bidding: Senator Kerry is not a member of the Judiciary Committee and, therefore, has not had any role in the Punch & Judy play named: The Sam Alito Hearings.
His colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Edward Kennedy, made such a corned beef hash of things with his questioning of Alito on his membership in some Princeton alumni association, that Alito's nomination wasn't damaged nearly as much as Kennedy's fading reputation was.
Led by Ted Kennedy, the Senate Democrats hoped to trip Judge Alito up in the Judiciary Committee hearings. Instead, they ended up tripping over each other like Larry, Moe & Curley in the pie-throwing scene.
Rather than taking their lumps and getting Alito off the agenda as quickly as possible, the Democratic leadership responded to the MoveOn.org/George Soros/National Abortion Rights Action League wing of the Democratic Party by (a) holding up the committee vote by a week; then, (b) demanding three full days of floor debate to renew their now-childish carping about Judge Alito.
All though this, nary a word was heard from the once and future Democratic Presidential hopeful, John Heinz Kerry.
Which brings us to today's mini-filibuster.
I have written before that members of the United States Senate take their title, "Senator," very seriously. If they thought they could get away with it, they would wear togas.
John Kerry, not being involved in the Alito deal, must have been told by his crack political advisors that drinking champagne with globalization-crazed-mega-corporate CEOs was probably not going to earn him any points with the gals from NOW or NARAL.
Senator Kerry is renowned for being a man o' the people when he is not skeet shooting, piloting his twin engine plane, wind surfing or - as he was last week - hobbing and nobbing with the rich and famous in Davos, Switzerland singing the Ricola cough drop song.
So, Kerry got into the story by calling for a filibuster. Problem was, he was in Switzerland and filibusters are generally conducted on the floor of the Senate.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan got off a pretty good line: "I think even for a Senator, it takes some pretty serious yodeling to call for a filibuster from a five-star ski resort in the Swiss Alps."
Rather than getting the Alito story off the front pages last Friday, so Alito would be old news by now, here's what John Kerry has handed the President:
The Senate will take up the Alito matter today. There will be a motion to cut off debate ("cloture") which will pass easily.
On Tuesday morning, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to be an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court which will be approved by a comfortable margin.
On Tuesday afternoon Judge Alito will be sworn in.
On Tuesday evening, at his State of the Union Address, the President will point to Justice Alito sitting with his brethren in the front row of the House chamber and, one suspects, to Mrs. Alito sitting in the Lenny Skutnik seat in the gallery next to the First Lady.
The Republicans in the Chamber will rise to their feet, hooting and hollering.
The Democrats will, most of them, pat their hands together politely.
The hard-Left Democrats will be scowling and thinking very Un-senatorial thoughts about Kerry and Kennedy.
Look for Chuck Schumer, equally vexed to have been pushed out of the story, to do something equally worthless over the next 36 hours.
New - and very serious - Topic
ABC News Anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were injured covering the war in Iraq over the weekend after the vehicle in which they were riding was attacked using an Improvised Explosive Devise (IED).
Covering a war is a dangerous business. Covering this war is more so because of the nature of the attacks and the attackers.
Reporters do not spend their days dawdling in the Green Zone. Most of them have lived and worked in the very dangerous areas outside of the Green Zone and outside of Baghdad.
I hope you will join me in praying for Woodruff and Vogt as well as for every other civilian and every member of the military injured or killed in this war.
On a the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A quick look at Ricola; a long look at the Lenny Skutnik reference; a reminder about the dangers of IEDs and silly Mullfoto and a snarky Catchy Caption of the Day featuring the Very, Very, Kerrys.
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Copyright © 2006 Richard A. Galen
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