Here's Bush preparing to sign the bill to gut the 4th amendment and grant telecomms immunity:
Caption from the White House website: President George W. Bush delivers remarks prior to the signing of H.R. 6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act of 2008, Thursday, July 10, 2008, in the Rose Garden of the White House. Joining President Bush at the signing ceremony are from left, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.; Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.; U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey; Director of National Intelligence Admiral Michael McConnell; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.; Rep.Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Vice President Dick Cheney; Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman; Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, Rep. John Boehner, R- Ohio; Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R- Mich.; Missouri Senator Kit Bond, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas; Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas; and West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
It's been a while, but time for another tallying up of gutless politicians. At least my hope with regard to the first one came to pass (that the Military Commission Act would be declared unconstitutional -- ok, the whole thing wasn't declared unconstitutional, but at least the part eliminating habeas corpus was declared unconstitutional).
Today's disaster is a senate vote (80-15) to invoke cloture on the House's odious FISA cave (293-129; Reps 188-1 and Dems 105-128, the spineless Dem leadership, scheduling the bill and voting for it and the Dem caucus able to vote against it because the Reps were 99% for it) -- giving the president not one, but two, things he wanted -- for no reason at all!!! Telecomm immunity AND gutting of the 4th amendment (allowing blanket searches and essentially warrentless searches). Allowing corporations to break the law for 5 years AND stripping hundred year old protections all in one bill -- hard to imagine the Democratic Party could do that -- especially when they are in such a politically powerful position, given how unpopular the president is. Argh!!!!
So, once again, we have the Good, the Bad and the Ugly:
The GOOD (NAYs --15)
Biden (D-DE) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cantwell (D-WA) Dodd (D-CT)
The Ugly -- (Not Voting - 5, Kennedy and Byrd are sick, the others have no excuse, running for President is not an excuse and Clinton isn't even running any more and made a big show yesterday of being back in DC)
Byrd (D-WV) Clinton (D-NY)
Kennedy (D-MA) McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)
In theory, it's not over. This was just cloture on moving to debate. In theory they can filibuster at many others steps. Hopefully the amendment to be offered by Dodd and Feingold to strip Telecomm immunity will be voted on (although, out of spite -- or fear, I could see opponents filibustering it, rather than allowing a vote -- a similar amendment failed 31-67 Feb 12, 2008, but Obama voted for it then -- maybe he can bring himself to vote for it again). Make them vote on that!!! Dodd gave what everyone is saying was a great speech last night -- but maybe he shot everything last night because he knew the fix was in. Agh!!
I tried -- I wrote, I called, I e-mailed and contributed. I hope the Act Blue organization (currently has $322,223 from 5,596 donors, I think raised in just the last week) set up by Glenn Greenwald (manygoodposts) does what it was set up to do -- go after (and more importantly, frighten) those who take the wrong position on this issue.
Last time we played this game we memorialized the 65 Senators who voted for the military commissions act (a.k.a. "the torture bill"). Today we memorialize the 53 Senators who affirmatively voted for a man for Attorney General who could not define waterboarding as torture and the 7 Senators (5 of them presidential candidates!!) who did not vote on the issue. Leaving us with a suspiciously round 40 votes against Mukasey (so the Dems can say -- we tried -- but we just didn't have the votes -- hey, if you'd gotten Hillary, Barack, Joe or Chris out of bed for the oh so late 11:04pm vote maybe we could have had a filibuster -- Reid's only forced the Reps to actually show up for one filibuster).
It would be nice if the Democrats, for once, could control the narrative. I know its a pretty minor story -- but if it could actually stick, it starts the slow process of re-branding the Republicans.
Big Blowback for 'Small Price'
The fallout over Minority Leader John Boehner's "small price" comment about the Iraq War continues. Two House Democratic leaders have raised their objections to the comment, and CNN has picked up the story, or more precisely, returned to it. Boehner's remarks were made earlier in the week in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer but gained attention after being flagged by TPM's Greg Sargent.
Two of the seven soldiers who wrote the editorial describing the real situation in Iraq have been killed. Yance Gray was killed in Baghdad on Monday when the vehicle he was driving flipped over. Omar Mora was also killed in a vehicle rollover accident in Baghdad on Monday. Both of them are survived by a wife and one child.
The Republicans are imploding, their brand is disintegrating. The Democratic Party needs to put something in its place, otherwise the Republicans will be right back with some new cover story for why you should vote against your own interests.
Since the Democrats control Congress now they should put together legislation on those things that people want -- end the war in Iraq (by refusing funding), make clear attacking Iran is off the table, pass healthcare now (before the lobbyists get a hold of it), pass a new energy bill that undoes the Cheney disaster and starts to address global warming -- and bring back protection for unions. Don't do this as a laundry list, tell each issue as compelling emotional stories (from the mine disaster to the cost to our soldiers and the civilians in Iraq). Take these five points and have the leadership get behind making them happen. It's irrelevant that Bush will veto them -- what matters is building up a brand for the 2008 election so the Democrats will win the Presidency, have a stronger hold on Congress and then pass the legislation Bush vetoes.
Like the man says, nothing from nothing leaves nothing...
(the youtube squib says this video of Billy Preston shows him as the first musical guest on SNL)
Update: This seems to be a popular meme these days (kos, with a fancy graph and an exhortation):
Many Democrats seem content to sit around and wait for demographic trends to make them the majority party. But a warning -- these voters won't be inspired to work and vote for a party that is unsure of its convictions and afraid to stand strong for what it believes. Or for Democrats who insist on sticking with the status quo in that corrupt cesspool that is Washington D.C. Or Democrats that continue to enable Bush's disastrous war in Iraq.
Both parties have seen their brands in the gutter. People have given up on Republicans, but they want to see Democrats rehabilitate theirs. It remains to be seen whether we can make that happen.
This editorial by the seven soldiers who are ending their tour in Iraq is quite a compelling statement of why we must commit to leaving now. This is just a small part of the many telling points they make:
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
I hope for the best for Sgt. Murphy (one of the authors who was shot in the head and being attended to in the course of writing this article) and all seven soldiers (Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.). The way to honor them is to bring them home. It will be brutal for Iraq when we leave, but each day we stay makes the brutality that will occur when we leave that much worse.
If I was very clever I would try to figure out how to combine these two, but I can't think of a way to do that right now. The recent FISA amendment is an ugly rip in the constitution. Still, I am hopeful that there will be push back, if not now, at least in 2009.
The market is more in the here and now. This long post has a number of interesting points. One of which is a description of something I hadn't heard of before:
One focal point in the current credit market meltdown is a sector of the market known as Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP). This paper is issued by legal entities called conduits or Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) set up by the largest banks to purchase mortgage securities, auto loans, credit card receivables and all sorts of other debt that these banks want to issue but do not want to keep on their own balance sheet. To finance these assets, the conduits issue short term commercial paper, and the investors who buy this ABCP know it is not an obligation of the bank, but only of the conduit. Theoretically, if the conduit fails the investors may lose all their investment, because they cannot turn to the bank for help.
Because of this legal independence, conduits have an array of credit protections, often including an emergency loan facility from the bank to provide liquidity if the conduit is having trouble selling its commercial paper. Investors cannot always be sure if the ABCP they are buying is going to be collateralized by mortgage assets, auto loans, etc., so in the current crisis many are assuming that sub-prime mortgages are involved and they are refusing to buy the paper. The conduits are now facing potentially dire circumstances because they survive only on the steady reissuance of their commercial paper. Many are beginning to turn to their bank sponsors to take down emergency loans from the bank. There is an estimated $1.2 trillion of ABCP currently in the market, so we are talking about multi-billions of dollars of emergency liquidity being required from the banks.
The ABCP business sprung up to help Wall Street move a growing number of mortgages from the balance sheets of the banks to the hands of investors through securitization. But this business also showed banks that the credit creation machine didn’t have to stop at mortgages, but could include other forms of retail debt. And if this could be done, why not apply the concept of securitization to corporate debt?
Numerian's argument is basically that this process of securitization created debt upon debt for all sorts of things -- setting up a process of credit creation parallel and eventually larger and more important than banks' traditional credit creation process. It started with ABCP's then spread to mortgages and eventually was used to fund huge leveraged buyouts and became the engine for hedge fund's wild growth
Rearing it's head again from the Enron debacle is "mark to market accounting", the securitization process counted everything from the newly created security at once -- big bonuses all around -- rather than traditional pokey 'ole bank loans -- where the income from a loan is counted in interest that will come in slowly over time. Banks giving over their credit assessing responsibility to credit rating agencies that failed dismally also hurt, hopefully Frank's hearings in the fall will be illuminating.
Rather than the world being "awash in liquidity", Numerian argues the world is really awash in debt. People have used this securitization process to leverage lots of money into existence. Fiat money, but not backed by the government. And likely to go away, unless the rich people that hold it can convince the government to bail them out -- the question is -- will rich people's desire for secrecy over come their desire not to take a bath in the current tailspin?
Numerian concludes:
The global economy cannot survive for long on the traditional credit creation process, and unless Wall Street can revive confidence in its securitization process almost immediately, a global recession starting later this year is a high likelihood. Wall Street might have a chance if it could make public very soon the nature and extent of the problems with its credit creation process. But this is one of the key differences between the two processes – problems in the commercial banking system are quicker to surface, and there are regulators ready to intervene. Not so with the complex, sprawling, opaque, and unmanaged Wall Street process, whose raison d’etre seemed to be to generate fat bonuses for many involved, with little thought to the systemic and economic risks being created.
We shall see what good the Fed and other regulators can do with interest rate cuts and any other interventions they can think of, but the problems are so large and unwieldy that no one should hold out much hope. The implosion of the Wall Street credit creation process is unprecedented in its depth and international scope, and the global economy will be fortunate indeed to avoid severe and prolonged damage.
It's a battle between the very-very-very rich (who already have gotten out to the newest secret spot to hide their money) and the only very-very rich (who may actually take a teeny tiny loss). But if this is an insolvency crisis rather than a liquidity crisis there's a hole in the boat and all the bailing in the world just puts off the inevitable.
The captain and crew abandon ship and leave the passengers in the hands of the musicians, who call in helicopter Ben to save the day, but that's easy compared to what we face today.
Looseheadprop gives the super-cliff notes version (and many good links) on what Congress can do if it really wants to. Congress can hold an inherent contempt trial of Harriet Miers -- the Sgt. at Arms of the House arrests her, beings her to the DC jails (which Congress, not the Executive branch controls) and then Congress finds her in contempt and holds her until she is willing to testify or the term of Congress expires. Of course, if Congress even started to put this in motion, all sorts of odd things would happen -- the most likely of which (I hope) is that she would testify (even if it would be a typical AGAG non-responsive testimony). Just making the threat and getting her to show up would at least go some of the way to reasserting Congress' powers.
But it would be sort of fun if it came down to the down and dirty...
This post by LowerManhattanite makes it clear Rudy is not just play-acting the authoritarian racist to follow in GWB's footsteps. It's who he is.
Leading a rally of 9-10k NYPD cops against the elected Mayor. Another guy who leads from his gut. And his gut is full of the worst racist sentiments and supports force by "his" kind over anyone else.
Looks like someone had a similar thought. What a surprise to agree with an ex-admin, now military-industrial Rep (ok, Comey is "special", even if he mostly allowed illegal wire-tapping) about putting a Republican in a top position in a Democratic administration -- but that's the type of bipartisanship that I think any Dem could get behind.
Fitzgerald Deserves Top U.S. Law Post, Comey Says (Update1) By Patricia Hurtado and David Voreacos (Bloomberg)
``I think he would make a spectacular attorney general,'' said former Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey, now general counsel at Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp., the world's largest defense contractor. ``He certainly is one of the very best federal prosecutors in America.'' ...
Fitzgerald, who has held his job for almost six years, declined to be interviewed by Bloomberg News. His spokesman, Randall Samborn, wouldn't discuss Fitzgerald's career plans. ...
Fitzgerald, who is single, is the son of Irish immigrants. He grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and attended Catholic elementary school before going to Regis High School in Manhattan. During summers, he worked as a doorman, like his dad. ...
He spent years pursuing mobsters and terrorists before focusing on al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, long before Sept. 11, 2001. Four months before the attacks, he won terrorism convictions of four bin Laden associates for embassy bombings in Africa that killed 224 people.
``This is a guy who's spent time in small rooms in a lot of countries around the world with people who've killed a lot of people,'' Comey said. ``He's not intimidated by pressure.'' ...
Former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Comey, who got to know Fitzgerald as a law student when they shared a summer house in Spring Lake, New Jersey, said his friend once competed fiercely in rugby and darts.
``He drank a lot of beer without paying for it,'' Comey added with a laugh.
Fitzgerald now enjoys traveling, exploring caves in New Zealand, going white-water rafting, and visiting relatives in Ireland, Comey said.
Fitzgerald may return to New York, said Chicago attorney and best-selling novelist Scott Turow.
``Pat is deeply committed to public service,'' Turow said in an e-mail. ``But I never heard anyone say that he'd like to stay on'' as U.S. attorney in Chicago.
Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor who worked as a prosecutor with Fitzgerald, disagreed.
``I think that something that's gotten lost in the focus of his role in the Libby investigation is how committed and excited he's been to be working in Chicago,'' Richman said. ``And he certainly seems to be in a target-rich environment.''
Target-rich, indeed!
And, finally here's Berube's brief nod to his high school time at Regis with Fitzgerald that for some reason always sticks in my mind. Something about that elite Jesuit thing seems to turn out such fascinating people (Fitzgerald, Berube and no doubt many others).
People have been writing about how movement conservatives are trying to distance themselves from George Bush. Here's a video from yesterday's Republican debate showing this in action:
Drifty explains it well. I especially like the "lone gunman" metaphor for explaining how the movement conservatives are dumping Bush.
I never read anything like what Steve wrote -- direct, forthright -- sometimes polemical, but committed to the truth and backing up what he said with facts -- even when he was doing the impossible -- making predictions about the future. I've always thought I was the kind of person that would never have heroes, but people like Steve and Molly Ivins are changing me.
Jane showed us the softer side I think we all knew was there. He was so righteous and indignant because he cared. And TRex provided the sound track.
The money will be spent on the military -- one way or the other.
The US is not about to defund its standing army or eliminate the national guard -- that is an inane red-herring.
The question is whether the funds will be used to bring the troops home or whether the funds will be used to keep them in Iraq. The obvious answer is to extract the troops from the middle of a civil war.
Just threatening to start the process of repositioning the troops will change things on the ground.
The long term interest of the US is damaged by another Vietnam and that is exactly what this is. The sooner we get out the better. By getting out we show that the US is a rational actor that can actually pursue its national interest, rather than being captured by a small cabal that sends the US incompetently off to war. As long as the US is perceived to be a loose cannon the worse our situation will be (Kissinger's madman theory to the contrary notwithstanding -- it worked soooooo well in Vietnam).
With regard to the defunding myth Glenn Greenwald makes it very clear here:
It is difficult to overstate how irrational this theme is, and yet it is equally difficult to overstate what a decisive role it just played in ensuring the continuation of the war. Polls consistently demonstrate that Americans overwhelmingly favor compelled withdrawal [emphasis in the original] of the troops from Iraq. Other than defunding, they overwhelmingly favor every legislative mechanism for achieving that goal -- from a straightforward bill setting a mandatory time deadline to a rescission of the resolution authorizing military force to compulsory benchmarks. Yet polls are equally uniform in showing that a solid majority of Americans oppose de-funding.
Yet, rationally speaking, this makes absolutely no sense. De-funding is nothing more than a legislative instrument for ending the war, and is substantively indistinguishable in every way from the other war-ending legislative means which Americans favor. Congress has used de-funding or the threat of de-funding multiple times in the past to compel the President to cease military action, and to invoke it, Congress simply consults with the military, determines how much time is needed to effectuate a safe withdrawal, and then de-funds the war accordingly [emphasis added].
The obvious conclusion here is that, once again, Republicans won the framing game (especially by getting Dems like Obama and Levin to buy into the Rep frame). Greenwald is rather pessimistic, arguing that the Democrats are unlikely to be able to push back now. I wish he was wrong, I wish I knew what I could do about it.
Back under Clinton, we were working toward getting universal health care AND free public junior-college education.
Six years later, under Bush, we're hoping we can hold on to habeus corpus.
And I also liked this post about the difference between liberals and conservatives -- for liberals ideas and politics are viewed and explored abstractly, for conservatives its part of their identity.
At some point Rove is going to be presented with a choice: be loyal to Bush and take the fall for all the corruption -- or -- throw Bush under the bus. I think there is a relatively high chance that he'll throw Bush under the bus.
If you want to understand Harry Reid, think back to another Harry who was also feisty and blunt – President Harry Truman. Running in 1948, Truman was ridiculed by major newspapers as a hopeless loser. But voters picked up the beat and they gave him a surprise victory.
On the campaign trail, Truman would encounter voices from the crowd shouting, "Give ‘em hell, Harry." The president would respond, "I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's hell."
One thing that makes me optimistic about Pelosi is that I think she'll do a great job of multitasking -- you know, end the Iraq war, impeach Gonzalez on the fly while investigating Katrina, Haliburton, U.S. Attorneys and other frauds too numerous to name. All while keeping her eye on the big picture of keeping chimpy in line. A new day.
What the founding father's feared -- that a devious cabal would somehow circumvent democracy and we would end up ruled by a cabal. When an administration drafts documents like this, you know we are confronted by a cabal.
The key thing in the U.S. Attorney scandal is to follow all the way through. In other words, don't just get Gonzoles to resign and Rove to start running -- get the fired U.S. Attys re-instated!!!
A number of people have commented and it makes a lot of sense to me that the idea that the "war on terror" is analogous to the cold war is just silly. I'm pretty sure in the future it will be looked back on like the over-reaction associated with the Palmer Raids. A little more technology, but in the grand scheme of things, not much more than the anarchism of the early 20th century or the red brigades of the 1970's.
Digby has a nice summary of the argument using a long quote from Paul Kennedy (I'm not sure if I've got the way to link to digby correct here -- it was 2/18/07 4:15pm).
"We just had an election where Americans repudiated this war and made clear that they want to withdraw. Yet somehow, within a matter of weeks, Washington power circles were able to shoo that election result away like the annoying mosquito that it is and supplant their own pro-war judgment as the "mainstream" view to which all serious people, by definition, pledge their allegiance.
"When 2008 comes around and we still have between 130,000-150,000 troops occupying Iraq (at the cost of $8 billion per month) -- and another 20,000 or 30,000 American soldiers are dead or maimed and a few hundred thousand or so more Iraqi civilians are dead -- we can look back at this moment when the Washington Establishment, yet again, blocked the path of withdrawal."
If the Democrats are not willing to make this their national security position they will fail. If the Dems try to be Rep-light one more time (through the item in the 100-hour plan to supposedly finally implement the 911 commission's recommendations) they will miss what a majority of the people thought they were voting for.
At some point you have to trust that the people really are annoyed with the war, see no point in it and will support which ever party ends it. Then the party has to get behind the idea that this will NOT be the end of Pax Americana -- that the US really can survive competing on the world market for oil and the alternatives that will be developed. If it's sold as an optimistic can-do belief in what America can be then the Dems will roll the Reps like they've never seen.
Democracy will work, in the end, whether the rulers want it or not. If the people don't support the war, the war will not succeed. The question is whether the Dems can get behind it in time.
== From FDL, the Chuck Schumer quote is just too good to pass up:
While traditional media sources are focusing on what a cranky bastard Jim Webb is for not responding with cheerful bootlicking when Bush asked about his son (stationed in Iraq), it seems there may be more to the story. From Not Larry Sabato:
As President Bush is well aware, a couple of weeks before this dinner the tank riding next to Jimmy's in Iraq was under fire and three marines died.
My sources are telling me that the way President Bush approached Webb with his tone, it appeared he was asking the question of how Jimmy was doing in a mocking manner, while he was certainly aware of the tragedy that had hit his unit a few weeks earlier.
It sounds entirely consistent with President AWOL's chummy, condescending frat-boy manner of intimidating conversational banter. The Washington Post, however, is quick to quote those on the Hill who conclude from this outburst that Webb is not made of The Right Senatorial Stuff ("I think he's going to be a total pain").
And Chuck Schumer adds helpfully:
"He's not a typical politician. He really has deep convictions," said Schumer, who headed the Senate Democrats' campaign arm.
From this we infer that Schumer believes that typically, most politicians have no deep convictions. Whether you want to file this under projection or just simple self-awareness is a matter of personal choice, I suppose.
On a more serious note, Dems need to be ready next week for the Budget reconciliation. It needs to be done by Nov. 17 -- choose the majority leader (my preference is Murtha) ASAP and then get ready to kill whatever the Reps put out and force them to pass another continuing resolution through Jan. 9 when the Dems will be locked and loaded.
If they want to play chicken -- let'm. Anvils baby!
On the off chance that they actually roll over -- then be prepared with an alternative budget with Dem priorities.
Caption from the White House website: President George W. Bush delivers remarks prior to the signing of H.R. 6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act of 2008, Thursday, July 10, 2008, in the Rose Garden of the White House. Joining President Bush at the signing ceremony are from left, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.; Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.; U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey; Director of National Intelligence Admiral Michael McConnell; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.; Rep.Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Vice President Dick Cheney; Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman; Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, Rep. John Boehner, R- Ohio; Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R- Mich.; Missouri Senator Kit Bond, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas; Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas; and West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
Caption from the White House website: President George W. Bush delivers remarks prior to the signing of H.R. 6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act of 2008, Thursday, July 10, 2008, in the Rose Garden of the White House. Joining President Bush at the signing ceremony are from left, Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.; Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.; U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey; Director of National Intelligence Admiral Michael McConnell; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.; Rep.Darrell Issa, R-Calif.; Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, Vice President Dick Cheney; Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman; Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, Rep. John Boehner, R- Ohio; Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R- Mich.; Missouri Senator Kit Bond, Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas; Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas; and West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller. White House photo by Chris Greenberg
