aww. Times funny.

[sisyphusshrugged]

gotta love the Washington coverage in the Times. Always good for a giggle.

Fresh from election gains, House Republicans moved Tuesday to consider a change in party rules that would prevent their majority leader, Tom DeLay, from having to step down from his leadership position should he be indicted in an investigation in Texas.

As House and Senate members returned to finish remaining business for this year and organize for 2005, an aide to Representative Henry Bonilla, Republican of Texas, said Mr. Bonilla had filed a proposal to overturn a Republican rule that requires a member of the leadership to step down temporarily if facing a felony indictment.

Party lawmakers could take up the proposal on Wednesday.

Republicans adopted the rule in the 1990's, when they were in the minority and were trying to put the focus on investigations of prominent Democrats. They say a rule change is justified because the investigation involving Mr. DeLay, who was re-elected majority leader on Tuesday, is politically inspired.

The Republicans say they want to eliminate the chance for a prosecutor to be able to force Mr. DeLay from his post by obtaining an indictment.

"Congressman Bonilla's rule change is designed to prevent political manipulation of the legislative process," Taryn Fritz Walpole, a spokeswoman for the lawmaker, said.

...

Leaders of conservative groups who have been clamoring for the Senate leadership to block Mr. Specter said they would continue their campaign against him until the formal selection of the chairman in January. They added that their differences with Mr. Specter extended well beyond abortion to opposition to same-sex marriage and changes in the legal system, school vouchers and tax cuts.

"Why would we want someone on board who does not share the president's judicial philosophy or his own party's?" asked Patrick Mahoney, the director of the Christian Defense Coalition and a protest organizer.

See, we don't need politically inspired prosecutions any more. They've served their purpose. It's a judicial philosophy thing. You wouldn't understand.

Speaking of things we don't need any more, remember the much-ballyhooed announcement from last week that (coincidentally, in the wake of the elections) the extra anti-terror precautions in DC (which were put in place, coincidentally, in the runup to the elections) were being removed because we didn't need them anymore because, well, because?

Well, it turns out that we don't need to not need extra safety precautions at the current time.

U.S. Capitol Police reinstated 14 traffic checkpoints yesterday and announced that police posts will be deployed intermittently around Capitol Hill for the foreseeable future to deter potential terrorists.

Capitol officials said there was no new intelligence driving the changes. The checkpoints first appeared in August and were disbanded just six days ago as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security lowered the terrorist threat level around financial centers in Washington, New York and New Jersey. At the time, officials warned that they could return suddenly.

The move drew a new round of protests from Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who said federal police ignored the views of District leaders and failed again to consult with city agencies before making the decision.

"I hope that a new form of military-type checkpoint security around the Capitol is not creeping permanently into place," Norton said, calling for a House Administration Committee hearing into "primitive" police tactics. She decried "security measures that bear no relationship to alerts, intelligence or calculations of risk and that appear to have little effectiveness as a deterrent to attacks on the Capitol complex."

The changes indicate that security will continue to tighten in the region and that congressional and administrative efforts to coordinate actions among federal, District, Maryland and Virginia officials remain incomplete.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer had said last week that the checkpoints were part of a broader law enforcement strategy and that he would resurrect them at random to adjust to threats and throw would-be terrorists off balance. The quick return took commuters by surprise yesterday and created traffic bottlenecks.

Capitol Police could change the location and number of checkpoints in the future and without any public notice, Gainer said. He acknowledged that motorists will encounter different traffic patterns on different days.

"Counter-terrorism requires some cloak and dagger," he said. "We aim to discombobulate our adversaries. I think we do that by being vigilant but unpredictable."

Happy trails, Washington insiders.

Comments

Fucking Republicans.

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Well, here we go.
No one gets punished or removed from office while under suspicion.

[phenyx.livejournal.com]

Am I alone in suspecting that "judicial philosophy" is the new cover buzzword for appointing biased judges? Call it second-order judicial activism - rather than the judges being activist, let's be activist in picking the judges. %P

[celeloriel.livejournal.com]

I live in DC and I work in the Golden Triangle (literally seven city blocks away from OFL's residence). This Capitol Police thing?

It made a normally 30 minute commute into an hour and a half. It's bullshit. I'm beyond words at the stupidity of this. All it does is hold up people on their way to jobs, because that has SO MUCH to do with WH security. My train full of commuters is clearly directly linked to that poor SOB that ignited himself.

Thank God I'm on the Maryland side. Sigh.

/rant

(sorry. I just get triggered by this stuff.)

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, vent away. Apparently we don't want anyone asking questions about how on earth they managed to lose that guy.

And of course, lots of people will cooperate with us in the future when we renege on our promises of residency and safety for their families.