Closed Session
I’m sure that everyone remembers when, with great regret, Harry Reid had to invoke Rule 21 to take the Senate into closed session to find out why Senator Pat Roberts hadn’t seemed to moved forward on “Phase Two” of the investigation of the pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
Well, it’s nearly February and there is still no report. While I realize that the Alito nomination is important, and there needs to be an investigation into the illegal wiretapping, maybe it’s time for the Senate to go into closed session to clean up old business and find out when Senator Roberts is going to schedule oversight hearings in the Intelligence Committee over the activities of NSA.
With the Republicans in charge of Congress and the Presidency one would think that these matters could be handled in an expeditious fashion. There’s entirely too lollygagging going on and there are too many issues waiting to be looked at by the major committees in the Senate.
Sooner or later they are going to have to start looking for the billions of dollars the Coalition Provisional Authority lost track of while it was in charge of Iraq.
Since Justice O’Connor has been gracious enough to remain on the court while the approval process is pending, I think there are other issues that really are more pressing than the Alito confirmation. Senator Frist doesn’t seem to have much in the way of organizational skills as he keeps letting things slip behind.
Knowing Senator Reid’s preference for the collegial approach, I hesitate to bring this up, but the Senate really does need to get some real work done, and there do seem to be a number of Senators who want to talk on Mr. Alito, so it may be time for the Senate to review its priorities.
