Either Mitch McConnell is completely incompetent or he is setting his own conference up for a fall to prove a point to them so he can take back control. Either way, he shouldn’t be in charge of governing anything. That seems pretty clear at this point.
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Yeah sure the Democrats knew about it all along and now they’re just objecting to it? Doubtful. The Republicans are trying to be sneaky about it and they got caught. I’ll take extra butter on my popcorn.
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Called me cynical and jaded, but she’s The Black Woman who going to be as powerful as the Black Man she’ll replace and the Black Man who’ll be in place for two more years. They’ve gotta put a stop to those kinds of power grabs no matter how talented and brilliant she may be. No one tried stopping her nomination from moving ahead, but now they have the chance on the flimsiest of reasons. P.S. I really hate seeing Turtle’s bulging eyes and shiny skin at the top of a story which I knew would happen when he replaced Harry.
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Well, if Mitch is going to lead by restoring regular order and Senate Conventions, and this a clear destruction of another Senate Norm (as NC Steve points out above), it would be good to know if he has his hands in it as an indication of what to expect from him further down the line in his attempt to ‘govern’.
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So, TPM, who is the GOP staffer who lied by omission or at least, who does that staffer work for?
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I think she’s better. At least she likes to go to trial!
Never forget what is going on here: the anti-choicers are saying that a victim of sex trafficking who finds herself pregnant should be forced to bear her rapist’s child.
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The entangling of Loretta Lynch’s confirmation with this bill is particularly weird to me. If there’s anyone who conservatives believe is the Subsidiary Satan of the Obama administration it’s Eric Holder (just take a sampling on any conservative website of the commentary on the DOJ’s Ferguson report). Yet the longer the confirmation of Lynch is put off, the longer Holder stays in office. Just bizarre.
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“Hiding behind a log” or “ambush” are the legal terms used for this childish prank by the Confederacy.
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Heard Senator Grassley on local radio KNIA KRLS yesterday claim he is the person managing this bill on the floor. If this is so why have we heard nothing from him on the national media? Incidentally, he also defended his signing of " the letter" with irrational, illogical reasoning. So much for “the farmer from Iowa with no legal training” as the head of the Judiciary Committee.
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Hostage taking., It is who the right is. They are basically kidnapping Lynch and holding her ransom for their sick agenda. This is in lieu of actually governing.
Why would anyone vote for criminals?
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This is the actual, rather obscure, language:
Limitations.–Amounts in the Fund, or otherwise
transferred from the Fund, shall be subject to the limitations
on the use or expending of amounts described in sections 506
and 507 of division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act,
2014 (Public Law 113-76; 128 Stat. 409) to the same extent as
if amounts in the Fund were funds appropriated under division H
of such Act.
As is mentioned in other responses, it expands the Hyde Amendment beyond the tax code to the funds gained from fines and fees directly related to human trafficking intended to help the victims.
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Is there a reason why the Democrats, from top federal elected officials down to local elected officials, are not in front of the media calling out McConnell and his fellow Republicans for their ineptitude? There is no reason to be nice to them as they do the same thing all the time.
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This is the language that was slipped into the bill without informing the Democrats.
The word “abortion” does not appear in the trafficking bill, but there is language specifying that the victims’ fund “shall be subject to the limitations on the use or expending of amounts described in sections 506 and 507 of division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 … to the same extent as if amounts in the Fund were funds appropriated under division H of such Act.”
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I didn’t see yours before I posted. Sorry.
It could force underage victims of human trafficking, in other words rape victims, to carry their pregnancies to term.
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Thanks, both of you. I was trying to find that text (which I’d seen who knows where). Really, including it in the reporting on this issue would go a long way to explaining how this happened. A simple keyword search, or just “reading the bill” is not going to catch this kind of subterfuge.
And it’s not like little easter eggs haven’t found their way into legislation before, but as SteveNC explained elsewhere in this thread, the GOP’s duplicitous behaviour here is an outrageous breach of faith.
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Expecting the GOP to actually govern is ridiculous. It’s like expecting a nursery school full of spiteful, not very bright tots to run the Senate. This is what happens when you let bad seed be the majority.
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Read the exact offending language (see above comments) and tell me how with your eagle eyes you would immediately see the perverse and inhumane effects of the language. Another commenter above has pointed out the real problem here…in the very recent past there was honor and professionalism amongst the staffs in doing the work of government that could be relied upon. A code of conduct and honor existed. Sneaking legislation was only left to the leadership with concur rance of the opposition as the last minute sauce ( a dam here, a post office there) needed to get the work done. Not with today’s GOP. Them days are gone.
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Next up, the Teabaggers will debate the “You Kids Get Off My Lawn Bill”
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