Man The Phones

by digby

This looks like a week for action, which is always a good thing. It’s difficult getting our representatives to move on the things we care about but it can be done.

First of all, Move-On is working to push our representatives to restore habeas corpus. (I can hardly believe I have to write that.) If you have a few minutes, make a phone call or two. Christy at FDL has all the particulars. (And here’s a YouTube of Chris Dodd giving a rousing speech at the ACLU Rally today.)

Second, while you are dialing your congressman, give a thought to calling the members of the Financial Services Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, who will be deciding whether to pass out Rahm’s proposal to cut off fund for Cheney. This is a very nice moment to make a statement about Cheney’s nonsense, and with Sally Quinn reporting that the sycophantic courtier phone tree is ready to toss Dick overboard, this is a propitious time to keep this in the press.

Todd Gitlin made the case for pushing this yesterday over at TPM Cafe:

Rahm Emanuel has introduced a bill to delete spending for Cheney’s office on the ground that Cheney claims, when convenient, that the vice-president’s office is not “an entity within the executive branch.” Rep. Emanuel, who’s taken a beating from the liberal wing of the Democrats for refusing to stand up, is standing way up. The House is supposed to vote later this week.

Is this not one of those extraordinary moments when the people’s representatives will actually vote on whether to fund the horrific farce that is this administration?

The Republicans keep daring the Dem majority to stop funding the things they object to and the Democrats keep getting tied up in knots over it. I don’t know if this is constitutional or if it is p[ractical, but I do know that a debate on the floor of the House over Vice President Cheney’s assertion that he answers to no one is the kind of thing that might be able to compete with Paris Hilton and some roid-raged killer wrestler on the evening news and bring home the fact that our government has gone completely batshit crazy.

Here are the names of the committee members and you can find your representative’s numbers here:

Chair: José E. Serrano (NY)
Carolyn C. Kilpatrick (MI)
C.A “Dutch” Ruppersberger (MD)
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL)
Peter J. Visclosky (IN)
Robert E. “Bud” Cramer, Jr. (AL)
Maurice D. Hinchey (NY)
Adam Schiff (CA)
Dave Obey (WI), Ex Officio

The Republicans are:

Ralph Regula (OH)
Mark Steven Kirk (IL)
Dennis R. Rehberg (MT)
Rodney Alexander (LA)
Ken Calvert (CA)
Jerry Lewis (CA), Ex Officio

And lest you think that this is solely for political theatre, consider this letter from Henry Waxman to the White House Counsel today. The people who thought nothing of spreading Valerie Plame’s name all over the press have been treating classified information like it’s back fence gossip, something everyone should have realized when some flunky dropped Karl Rove’s super-duper top secret 2004 strategy memo in a DC park.

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