Congress puts off acting upon commission report.

I still don't think that Congress "gets it". Yes, there IS a lot to think about. The changes that were envisioned by the Commission will take lots of thought and planning. But they can't wait. What do they want, another 9/11 to get people off their duffs???

They want to reelect the bush so that when they get around to the 9/11 report they can get the
agreed upon result.....that's the agenda right now....

Bi- You may be right.

I don't think that the terrorists will do anything before the election. I think that they don't want Bush to win, and an attack now would rally the people around the incumbent.

I am more worried about the time either right after the election, if Bush wins, or the beginning of 2005, if Kerry wins.

Phoenix32890

I think the terrorists want Bush to win. He is their best recruiting tool. As well as the lightening rod to continue their terrorism. Based on the latest reports all eyes are now on Iran as aiding and abetting AlQaeda. Who is more likely to attack Iran? Bush. That act will immediately bring more converts to their side.

au1929 - I see your point, but I am not so sure. One thing that terrorists know, is that Bush is intransigent in his stance on terrorism. Kerry is an unknown.

Bottom line, no matter WHO wins, the US is in the middle of a world war. I don't think that the flavor of the US admnistration will deter the terrorists from what they ultimately want to do............take out the U.S. And the guy who wins will have to deal with it.

(USA readers)
Call your Rep today and your two Senators and tell them you expect action on the recommendations of the 9/11 report before the election. We are at war. Get them to confirm that their every waking moment is being spent on finding ways to combat the threat. There ought not to be any (further) delays in strengthening our intelligence capabilities.

Joe

Joe- Good idea! The public needs to show that they back the suggestions of the commission!

An intelligent thought and suggestion....but nothing will be done to jeopardize the election...then if bush wins there will be another pre emptive strike.... that's the bottom line.....

You should be clear when you say "congress" because thus far the only ones in "congress" who are saying nothing can be done right now are Republicans.

Kerry came out in full support, even Republican buddy Liberman said that congress should hold a special session to address these issues.

So will the Republican lead congress put the welfare of America above Bush's re-election?

Don't hold your breath that they will. The party of accountability, values and morals are too busy sending out attack machines to actually call a special session to deal with a possible attack. EVEN though Ridge has touted a possible attack before elections.

If we are attacked again before Nov. and Bush doesn't act on anything from the report what are the chances that Americans will buy the same story he gave us why he did nothing prior to 9.11?

This is one issue Americans will stand together on. Look for the Republicans to "change their minds" not flip flop mind you, on calling a special session to address this so their political ass's don't end up getting burned.

I do not believe so....

Hey, Red, I know the esteemed Senator from Connecticut Mr. Lieberman seems to be a Republican, especially when he hooks up with John McCain on campaign reform, but he is still a member, and former Vice Presidential candidate, of the Democratic Party.

It's a very good thing that someone as conservative as Senator L is speaking so strongly on this.

Have you called your Congressional Representatives yet?

Joe

I don't have to call them since they all ready support the commissions advice.

I know who Liberman is, and I stand by my post.

The republicans have a consistent position on terrorism-close your eyes and hope it all goes away. The Bush administration has yet to be able to tell us with any clarity exactly what their anti-terror policy was before 911. And, after briefly invading Afghanistan, their anti-terroism position, other than Bush declaring bin Laden irrelevant, has been to invade Iraq, a country that never did anything to us.

Prior to 911 the Bushies specifically disregarded the findings of the Gore Commission on airline safety that may well have prevented the attacks. They essentially gave up on the investigation of the USS Cole bombing because "it happened on someone else's watch."

Redheat is correct, the ones who arer sweeping the 911 commission's report under the rug seem to be republicans. You know, the guys who claim to have made us safer, though not really safe.

WASHINGTON Maureen Dowd WASHINGTON The capital has plunged into satire. There's the bizarre investigation of Sandy Burglar, as the respected former national security adviser has now been dubbed, pulling a Fawn Hall and smuggling stuff out of the National Archives in his fine washables..
And, just when you thought the Bush foreign policy couldn't sound more chuckleheaded, revelations in the 9/11 commission report being released Thursday elevated the Bush doctrine to an Ali G skit..
The most astute prophet of the administration's Middle East muddle is Sacha Baron Cohen, the hilarious British comedian whose Ali G character is an uninformed gangsta rapper interviewing unwitting VIPs..
This Sunday, HBO will run Ali G's interview with Pat Buchanan, in which he presses the broadcaster about why no "BLTs" were found in Iraq. Buchanan plays along, but it's not clear if he actually thinks there were BLTs in Saddam's arsenal. (Cohen speculated in The Times later that Buchanan might have thought it was argot for "ballistic long-range-trajectory missiles.").
Last year, Ali G asked James Baker, the Bush I secretary of state, if it was wise for Iraq and Iran to have such similar names. "Isn't there a real danger," the faux rapper wondered, "that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying 'Bomb Ira-' and the geezer doesn't heard it properly" and bombs the wrong one?.
"No danger," Baker replied..
Well, as it turns out, the United States did bomb the wrong Ira-..
President George W. Bush says he's now investigating Al Qaeda-Iran ties, and whether Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers..
Whoops. Right axis. Wrong evil..
It's like Emily Litella - "What's all this fuss I hear about making Puerto Rico a steak?" - except the U.S. can't simply shrug "Never mind" because 900 American troops are dead..
The Bush administration had no good intelligence, so it decided to invade the Ira- that was weaker..
The war was based on phony WMD analyses and fallacious welcome scenarios drummed up by the neocon Chihuahua Ahmad Chalabi..
Bush should have worried about the Axis of Evil in the order of the threat posed: North Korea, which has nukes; Iran, which almost has nukes; Iraq, which wanted nukes..
Now American forces are so depleted that the Pentagon is pulling forces out of South Korea to go to Iraq. And, given the huge National Guard deployment in Iraq, states say they don't have enough manpower to guard prisoners, fight wildfires or police the streets..
Besides excoriating the CIA and FBI and chronicling as many as 10 missed opportunities to pick up on the 9/11 plot - in the Bush years and in the Clinton era - the 9/11 commission report has new evidence that Iran may have helped up to 10 of the hijackers with safe passage from Osama's Afghan training camps..
"Grimly, what the new 9/11 report makes clear is that nearly three years into the war on terror, America is still not close to understanding the enemy," Michael Isikoff and Michael Hersh report in Newsweek. "And Washington seems less able to force Tehran to change its ways, especially since Bush has removed one of the chief threats to the mullah regime, Saddam Hussein, and is now bogged down in Iraq..
As one intel official said before the Iraq war: 'The Iranians are tickled by our focus on Iraq."'.
Just as the invasion of Iraq was a "Christmas gift" to Osama, as the CIA official who wrote a book as "Anonymous" put it, in terms of recruiting in the Muslim world and diverting the U.S., so it may be a gift to Iran. U.S. military officials say Iranian agents have been helping Iraqi insurgents as a way to shape Iraq into a Shiite fundamentalist satellite..
Though the 9/11 panel found no "collaborative" relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it found one between Iran and Al Qaeda - though no evidence that Iranian officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks..
The report concludes that "Al Qaeda's relationship with Iran and its client, the Hezbollah militant group, was far deeper and more longstanding than its links with Iraq," according to The Washington Post..
Bush vowed to deal harshly with any country that harbors terrorists or assisted the 9/11 plot. But our military is so overextended from invading Ira-, we'd be hard pressed to go after Ira-.

This is an example of the important and earth shaking legislation that congress must deal with. It of course takes presidence over our security.



Marriage Protection Act Passes
House Bill Strips Federal Courts of Power Over Same-Sex Cases By Mary Fitzgerald and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 23, 2004; Page A04



The House approved a bill yesterday to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over same-sex marriage cases, despite warnings by opponents that the measure is unconstitutional and would open the floodgates for efforts to prevent judges from ruling on other issues, from gun control to abortion.
With strong backing from the Bush administration, the Marriage Protection Act was adopted 233 to 194. However, the bill is likely to face strong opposition in the Senate, where some Republicans joined with Democrats last week to block a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

GOP sponsors described the bill as a fallback measure that would prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex marriages that are permitted by other states. The bill, drafted by Rep. John N. Hostettler (R-Ind.), would prevent such a ruling by denying all federal courts, including the Supreme Court, jurisdiction to rule on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 federal law that says that no state has to recognize same-sex unions established in any other state.

Some social conservatives contend that it is only a matter of time before a federal court attempts to force the federal government or the other 49 states to recognize the same-sex marriages that Massachusetts began sanctioning in mid-May.

Republican House members argued on the floor that individual states should be allowed to defend their own marriage laws against unbridled judicial power.

"Lifetime-appointed federal judges must not be allowed to rewrite marriage policy for the states," Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) said.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) declared that marriage "is under attack," referring to the Massachusetts state court decision permitting same-sex marriage. Sensenbrenner said the legislation is needed to prevent Massachusetts law from being imposed throughout the country.

"People who objected to the constitutional amendment said the definition of marriage is a matter that should be left up to the states. That's exactly what this bill does," said Hostettler's spokesman, Michael Jahr. "It means that Massachusetts can do what it wants, but what Massachusetts does cannot be imposed by a federal court on Texas or Indiana or California."

But the bill's congressional opponents, several constitutional scholars and a wide array of civil liberties groups called it a nearly unprecedented attack on the constitutional separation of powers among the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government.

Democrats accused the bill's sponsors of using the issue as a smoke screen before the national conventions and the run-up to the November election. "This bill is a mean-spirited, unconstitutional, dangerous distraction," said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass).

"Instead of addressing the real concerns faced by American families, the leadership of this house has decided to throw its political base some red meat.

"They couldn't amend the Constitution last week, so they're trying to desecrate and circumvent the Constitution this week," he added.

In a letter to lawmakers this week, Chai Feldblum, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said the last time that Congress passed a law stripping the Supreme Court of authority to hear a constitutional challenge was in 1868, when it feared that the court might invalidate the military Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War.

"When legislators rail that 'unelected judges' are finding legislative acts unconstitutional, they are attacking the very structure of our democracy," Feldblum wrote.

In recent decades, there have been calls for Congress to strip the courts of jurisdiction over numerous issues, including school desegregation, abortion and public displays of the Ten Commandments. But none has passed. Whether the Supreme Court would agree that Congress has power to wall off such areas is unclear, because the question has not been tested, scholars said.

Twenty-seven Democrats joined with 206 Republicans to pass the bill. Both Maryland Republican House members voted for the bill, and all the state's Democrats voted against it, while all Virginia Republicans and Democrat Rick Boucher voted for it, and the other Democrats voted no.

The American Civil Liberties Union noted that the vote fell well short of the two-thirds majority that would be required in the House to approve a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. "It's time for the Republican leadership to stop messing around with the Constitution and get back to addressing the real problems that face real Americans," said Christopher Anders, ACLU legislative counsel.

GOP leadership will take go-slow approach toward reforms
This attitude by Republicans is the same pattern that got them into trouble prior to the 9/11 attack when the Bush adminstration took their sweet time into confronting the terrorist threat by bin Laden. They apparently have not learned their lesson. Maybe it is due to Bush's famous short attention span (which runs in the Bush family) and increases the amount of time to focus and get something done. ---BBB

Posted on Thu, Jul. 22, 2004
GOP leadership will take go-slow approach toward reforms
By Sumana Chatterjee
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - As copies of the Sept. 11 commission's report landed on every lawmaker's desk Thursday, the Republican leadership of Congress said they would move slowly and deliberately before enacting any sweeping legislative changes.

The report gives Congress and the executive branch a chance for "strong self-examination" and a roadmap for possible changes, said Senate Armed Services Chairman Sen. John Warner, R-Va. He added that he hopes the resulting action, however, is a "carefully thought through, not rushed, deliberative process."

The Speaker of House of Representatives, Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he will hold hearings this fall and ask committee chairmen to consider the proposals. Hastert dampened expectations of rapid legislation. "We are not going to rush through anything," he said.

Hastert's comments came hours after the Sept. 11 commission released its report, which is highly critical of Congress for not taking an active role in setting the national security agenda against terrorism. It also called congressional oversight over intelligence "dysfunctional" and proposed a major overhaul in how Congress conducts oversight.

The 567-page report is full of recommendations to better combat terrorist threats against the United States. The panel's major proposals would require congressional action to be implemented, but Republican leaders say they have few legislative days left before the fall elections in which to enact sweeping changes that would cut across political turfs of powerful committee chairmen.

Hastert's go-slow approach did not sit well with panel members, families of the terrorist attack victims or other lawmakers who think changes are needed.

"The longer we delay, the more danger we are in," the panel's chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, told Knight Ridder.

Mary Fetchet, who lost her son in the World Trade Towers, said, "It is unacceptable not to act quickly."

To make sure Congress acts, a bipartisan coalition of senators announced that they would be spearheading an effort to enact the recommendations. The group includes Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.; Evan Bayh, D-Ind.; Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.; and John McCain, R-Ariz.

McCain called on Congress to hold a lame duck session after the elections to get the needed reforms passed. McCain said Congress should begin scheduling hearings now to clear the way for possible action as early as next year. "The sooner we act on this commission's recommendations, the better off we are going to be," he said.

Legislation to establish an intelligence czar that mirrors one of the panel's key recommendations has had little support in Congress. Some lawmakers want the new intelligence chief to be independent, while others want him to be a presidential appointee.

Plus, officials in the Defense Department oppose giving up control of their budgets and authority over intelligence, and they have friends on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, where the lawmakers are also turf conscious and reluctant to give up their jurisdiction to the intelligence committees. Defense spends 80 percent of all intelligence funds.

The report says Congress failed to push the executive branch to look at terrorism, al-Qaida and broader strategic ways to deal with international terrorist organizations. Among other things, it calls for the formation of a joint House and Senate intelligence committee, like the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that was created in the 1950s.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, urged Republican leaders to bring to the Senate floor legislation to fund homeland security and improve security at ports, railways, transit lines and chemical plants. But Republicans, who control the Senate calendar, have not moved on the measures.

Some lawmakers hope political pressure from the Sept. 11 report and the public will change the dynamics of enacting legislation.

New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer said lawmakers need to fight institutional inertia. Implementing the reforms recommended by the panel "will be a real test of this place," he said.

And if they aren't enacted, panel member James R. Thompson said, elected officials may feel the price at election time.

"If these reforms are not the best that can be done for the American people, then the Congress and the president need to tell us what's better. But if there is nothing better, they need to be enacted, and enacted speedily, because if something bad happens while these recommendations are sitting there, the American people will quickly fix political responsibility for failure, and that responsibility may last for generations," Thompson said.

It's a fig neuton of the imagination that somehow because you think a politician agrees with you on an issue that he or she will actually do something about the issue. I assure you, unless they hear from you personally, they will do nothing. Or the wrong thing.

Is there a Liberman in the Republican Party?

Yeah, I call my elected officials about everything, even though I already know they usually vote the way I want! (I live in MA and I know these guys pretty well)! They appreciate the backing, nonetheless.
They always say "thanks, the senator/congressman plans to do that", etc).
If they don't know how the constituency feels, they're gonna stop caring, figuring YOU DON'T.
And always say "Thanks!"
That being said, I have not yet called my reps on this issue! I don't know yet what all the recommendations are, how can I ask them to back them until I do? Should I just trust that they make sense? Perhaps I will ask that once they've thoroughly reviewed the 500 pages, (within the next several days) they promise to get busy on the implementation of those that they feel are truly best for us, and workable. We need to take action ASAP, but I'm not real comfortable with rushing to enact a huge new bureocracy. Am I wrong?

I'm with Suzy on this one. To just rush and adopt all 600 pages of the report/recommendations without considering all the ramifications would be incompetent at best, negligent at worst. For instance, there are legitimate concerns that it may not be the best policy for the sole authority of intelligence operations to rest with one director who may or may not be an expert on every issue.

I will be very interested to hear what our state elected officials have to say about it once they've had a chance to read and fully digest the content. I've just started reading it myself.