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• Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:49 AM

  Update on supplemental & detainee photos

  Supplemental action on the House floor

  The House will shortly reconvene (there's a problem with the voting machines -- shock!) to vote on a Republican motion to instruct conferees, directing them agree to include the Lieberman FOIA amendment (exempting detainee photographs from the Freedom of Information Act) in the conference report. Democratic House leaders, of course, have pretty much settled, at least for the time being, on the position that the provision needs to come out in order to get enough votes to pass this bill in the House. That's because Republicans are now balking at supporting the supplemental...Democratic defections can make or break the bill, and many Democrats are balking at either the IMF provisions, the Lieberman FOIA amendment, or both.

  The White House, which actually supports the Lieberman amendment, is trying to mitigate these defections with various sweeteners in the bill, such as the addition of the "cash for clunkers" legislation, various defense procurement projects (targeted, of course, for the districts of wavering Members), etc. It looks like they'll succeed in rounding up enough votes to get the bill through with the IMF provisions, but only if the Lieberman amendment comes out.

  http://www.congressmatters.com/story/2009/6/11/1110/-Supplemental-action-on-the-House-floor

  The motion passed (conferees can follow or ignore it), with 95 Democrats voting YES: http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2009&rollnumber=329

  Also see: Jane Hamsher's

  Rahm’s Game Plan: Blackmail Progressives With “Cash For Clunkers”

  Sources on the Hill say they've never seen anything like it coming out of the White House. Rahm is dealing as furiously as he did during NAFTA, and will stuff everyone with so much pork that they have to vote for the supplemental.

  http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2009/06/11/rahms-game-plan-blackmail-progressives-with-cash-for-clunkers/

  McCain would go all unitary-executive on the photos...

  McCain urges Obama to classify detainee photos

  Republican Senator John McCain urged President Barack Obama on Thursday to classify photographs said to depict the abuse of terrorism suspects to ensure they do not become public.

  Obama is fighting release of the photos in the courts but has not declared them secret.

  "All he has to do today is use an executive order to declare these photos classified material," said McCain who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama.

  "That's all he has to do," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

  http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11508907.htm

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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