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Sen. Joe Lieberman

December 18, 2010
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Repeal Celebrated as Victory for Civil Rights, Country
Longtime opponents of the law that bars lesbians and gay men from serving openly in the military hailed the Senate's passage of a bill repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," as a civil rights victory.
"We are on the brink of making history," said Rea Carey, executive director of the Nati onal Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "An end to ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' cannot happen soon enough. This arcane and costly policy has destroyed thousands of careers, wasted much-needed dollars, and failed to enhance our nation's security."
The Senate passed the repeal bill by a vote of 65 to 31 earlier today. TPM reports, "It's all quite anticlimactic to the drama fans, but for the proponents of DADT repeal, this afternoon's vote is one that really matters."
TPM also reported that Sen. Joe Manchin, the only Democrat to join with Republicans last week to defeat an effort to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," remained opposed to ending the law. He skipped the vote altogether, TPM reports, to attend a Christmas Party.
The bill now goes to President Obama, who urged the Senate to pass the repeal measure, and has promised to sign it. TPM says that's likely to happen next week.
Obama applauded the vote, saying in a press statement, "the Senate has taken an historic step toward ending a policy that undermines our national security while violating the very ideals that our brave men and women in uniform risk their lives to defend."
The Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, a longtime opponent of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which was signed into law by former President Bill Clinton, lauded Obama's deliberate efforts to ensure that the repeal came out of Congress.
"Without the Pentagon study, it wouldn't have passed," Sullivan, wrote. "Without keeping Lieberman [Sen. Joe Lieberman] inside the tent, it wouldn't have passed. Without the critical relationship between Bob Gates and Obama, it wouldn't have happened. It worked our last nerve; we faced at one point a true nightmare of nothing ... for years. And then we pulled behind this president, making it his victory and the country's victory, as well as ours."
Tags:
LGBT issues, Andrew Sullivan, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, equality, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. Joe Manchin
May 7, 2010
Critics of Miranda Persist
Although Faisal Shahzad was detained just over two days after he allegedly attempted a car-bombing in Times Square, criticisms of the investigation persist.

Emily Bazelon summarizes critics' protests:

Miranda worked! Law enforcement officials can invoke a public safety exception and delay reading a suspect his rights to get information that would save lives. In Shahzad's case, the FBI invoked the public safety exception. The agency called in its crack interrogation team, asked Shahzad questions with no Miranda warning, and reaped what the FBI says was "valuable intelligence and evidence." Then Shahzad was read his rights. And lo and behold, he waived them and kept talking.

But none of this has stopped Sens. John McCain, who once sponsored laws to prevent torture, and Christopher Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, from railing against Miranda. "We've got to be far less interested in protecting the privacy rights of these terrorists than in collecting information that may lead us to details of broader schemes to carry out attacks in the United States," Bond said. "When we detain terrorism suspects, our top priority should be finding out what intelligence they have that could prevent future attacks and save American lives," McCain said. "Our priority should not be telling them they have a right to remain silent."
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Tags:
Separation of Powers and Federalism, Faisal Shahzad, Miranda v. Arizona, Sen. Christopher Bond, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. John McCain
January 12, 2010
Taking the Filibuster's Pulse
After ACSblog published "The Abuse of the Filibuster," by Derek Duarte, a slew of columnists spilled ink on the Senate rules that have proven fertile ground for legislative gridlock. And one idea is being floated on Capitol Hill that may change the way that Washington works.

The modern filibuster was born in 1975, with a revision to Senate Rule 22. This week, Attorney Thomas Geoghegan outlined the filibuster's evolution in The New York Times:

As revised in 1975, Senate Rule 22 seemed to be an improvement: it required 60 senators, not 67, to stop floor debate. But there also came a significant change in de facto Senate practice: to maintain a filibuster, senators no longer had to keep talking. Nowadays, they don't even have to start; they just say they will, and that's enough. Senators need not be on the floor at all. They can be at home watching ["Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"] on cable. Senate Rule 22 now exists to cut off what are ghost filibusters, disembodied debates.

One proposal for changing this state of affairs graced the pages of The New Republic last month: Act now to end the filibuster in, say, 2017. Since changing Senate rules requires a two-thirds vote, and considering that no minority party is going to forfeit their power to block enactment of the majority's will -- the argument goes -- Senators should be amenable to curing the body's dysfunctional rules of operation at a date when the majority party is unknown.

Sen. Tom Harkin has another idea.

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Tags:
Democracy and Voting, Brian Beutler, Derek Duarte, Ezra Klein, Filibusters, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. Tom Harkin, Senate Rule 22, Thomas Geoghegan
December 14, 2009
Discussing Fate of Senate’s Filibuster
Sen. Joe Lieberman's threat to kill health care reform with a filibuster has promoted Sen. Tom Harkin to consider pushing legislation to end the obstructive tactic. Harkin, TPM reports, said, "I think there's a reason for slowing things down ... and getting the public aware of what's happening and maybe even to change public sentiment, but not to just absolutely stop something." TPM notes, however, that altering Senate rules, especially the filibuster, "would be a Herculean feat."
But Washington, D.C. attorney Nicholas Stephanopoulos writes for The New Republic that senators might be able to seriously discuss the filibuster's fate if they did so in the context of ending it at a future date. Citing famed philosopher John Rawls, Stephanopoulos, a board member of the ACS Washington, D.C. Chapter, writes that lawmakers could tackle this debate if they did so "behind a ‘veil of ignorance.'" Senators are far too self-interested to dump the filibuster now, says Stephanopoulos, but they would likely be more objective if they debated the issue for future generations.

Stephanopoulos writes:

A debate now on whether to eliminate the filibuster in the future would transform senators' decision-making calculus. The key question would no longer be whether they enjoy the personal clout conferred by the filibuster, or whether it advances or threatens their parties' agendas. The issues, instead, would be whether it makes sense for almost all Senate business to require a supermajority, whether 40 senators representing as little as 10 percent of the population should be able to block a bill, and whether the Constitution's many checks and balances should be supplemented by yet another procedural obstacle. Many more senators likely would say no if self-interest and partisan advantage were, for the most part, removed from the equation.

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Tags:
Democracy and Voting, filibuster, Health Care Reform, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. Tom Harkin

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