Cheating By Reflex

by digby

If they aren’t plagiarising, they’re lying. If they aren’t lying they’re cooking the record. If they can’t win, they cheat.

And anyone who ever believes a word of anything coming out of the mouth of that unctuous phony Huckleberry Graham is just looking to get punked. Get a load of this, from Anonymous Liberal:

Today the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The Court will be called upon to determine–among other things–whether a provision in last year’s Detainee Treatment Act (“DTA”) effectively strips the Court of jurisdiction to hear Hamdan’s case. The Government contends that it does and in support of this position, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kyl have filed an amicus brief with the Court.

This amicus brief argues that the legislative history of the DTA supports the Government’s position. Specifically, the brief cites a lengthy colloquy between Senators Kyl and Graham themselves which purportly took place during a Senate floor debate just prior to passage of the bill. In the exchange, both Kyl and Graham suggest that the bill will strip the courts of jurisdiction over pending detainee cases such as Hamdan. But here’s where the story gets interesting.

Apparently this entire 8 page colloquy–which is scripted to read as if it were delivered live on the floor of the Senate, complete with random interruptions from other Senators–never took place. It was inserted into the Congressional Record in written form just prior to passage of the bill.

They even went to the trouble of making it appear to be a “real” debate with conversational asides and colloquial language. The very, very pious and godly Sam Brownback lied outright and said he’d participated in the debate when it never actually happened. (He’s got a bit part in the script.) This article in Slate leads me to believe that there may have been some collusion between the Justice Department and Graham.

They knew that the entire Senate did not intend that the court be stripped of jurisdiction in pending cases. It probably wouldn’t have passed if that had been the case. So they cheated. This has been the story over and over and over again with this rubber stamp Eunuch Caucus. If they can’t deliver for their Dear Leader by following the rules — even with a majority — they ignore them. They are the outlaw party.

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