Slap and Tickle

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid invoked Rule 21 of the Senate Rules and requested a closed session ostensibly to get answers as to why senator Pat Roberts (R-Ks) has not started his promised investigation of the White House involvement in massaging intelligence surrounding claims of Iraq WMD. You may recall that Roberts, along with the feckless Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), performed their dog and pony show, aka, Senate Intelligence committee investigation, and only investigated the CIA's production of Iraq intelligence, promising to investigate White House involvement "after the election." Well, that was sometime ago and the senate intelligence committee has been notably unoccupied with any such task.

As expected, Senate leader, Bill Frist (R-Tn), lost his shit when Reid pulled this move, calling it a "political stunt," and with full partisan bluster said that

the United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership. They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.

Hijacked! This from a man who fully participated in the Terri Schiavo histrionics with his videotape diagnosis of that ailing woman; a man who led the Senate in passing a bill in the dark of night in what appeared to most as blatant Christian-base grandstanding.
As much as I might agree with the latter part of Frist's assessment of the Dems, the notion that the senate has been "hijacked" by Democrats because they want to know what is going on with the damn investigation is risible. According to Frist's list of Democrat do-nothingness, the Dems will hijack the senate so that they can exact their devious strategy of ... nothing? How does a group of hapless Democratic politcos with no convictions hijack the Senate from the passionate and principled Republicans? Damn them and those senate RULES!

That the move is a bit of stunt, there can be no doubt. Democrats should be taking this issue to the GOP leadership since those minions obviously won't hold Bush to his word and Bush sure as hell balked on his promise to "get to the bottom of this," a promise we knew, all too well, was utterly empty. Who cannot recall the jackass sniggering in front of the White House press corps when he said that, hey, y'all do a pretty good job a protectin' yer sources? That was something Bush was no doubt counting on. At least until Fitzgerald showed up on the scene.

And, as though he just bumbled in from weeks of fishin' for crawdaddies in the Mississippi bayou, Trent Lott had to pipe in and claim that Reid, and Reid alone, was working up

some sort of stink about Scooter Libby and the CIA leak.

Good god, someone get that man up to speed.