TPM Cafe
By Ed Kilgore
Dec 19, 2005 -- 10:24:35 PM EST

The brazen we-make-the-rules-around-here attitude reflected in the Bush administration's domestic spying ukase, and its let's-punish-the-leakers reaction to its exposure, is certainly not just an executive branch phenomenon. Last night's House Republican maneuvers on budget and defense appropriations measures exhibit the same mentality, especially in the strategem that made it possible: a rules change that basically abolished all the rules.

The House's adoption, on a party-line vote, of so-called "martial law,"

http://www.cbpp.org/12-18-05bud.htm

suspending, among other items, the normal requirement that Members have at least 24 hours to read major legislation before they vote on it, was authoritarian even by House GOP standards.

Thanks to martial law, the incredibly convoluted series of decisions made totally behind close doors on the budget bill, turned into a simple loyalty test for partisans. There was a grand total of 40 minutes of debate, which was probably about right since nobody had the chance to read the bill in the first place. [...] Read the rest, including comments to the article, at http://tinyurl.com/9todz


© Virginia Metze