Arctic Drilling Filibustered
Senator Ted Stevens' (R-Alaska) ploy to sneak a provision into the defense appropriations bill allowing for the drilling of oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has, thankfully, been thwarted. Democrats (along with a few GOP defectors) threatened to filibuster the bill and Republicans were not able to secure the 60 votes needed to end the debate.
The AP article contains the following graf:
If this is a matter of national security, maybe Stevens and Murkowski can just bypass the legislative branch altogether. They should ask the President to invoke his "inherent authority" to violate the law. Or perhaps they can argue that the 2001 Congressional authorization of force impliedly repealed the laws preventing drilling in ANWR. If these arguments sound strange to you, it's because 1) you weren't born yesterday and 2) you haven't been following the NSA domestic spying story very closely. To get up to speed, read my previous post.
The AP article contains the following graf:
"We need ... to open up the small area of the
coastal plain (of the refuge) for oil
exploration and development," said Sen. Lisa
Murkowski (news, bio, voting record),
R-Alaska. She called making the oil available
a matter of national security by reducing U.S.
reliance on oil imports.
If this is a matter of national security, maybe Stevens and Murkowski can just bypass the legislative branch altogether. They should ask the President to invoke his "inherent authority" to violate the law. Or perhaps they can argue that the 2001 Congressional authorization of force impliedly repealed the laws preventing drilling in ANWR. If these arguments sound strange to you, it's because 1) you weren't born yesterday and 2) you haven't been following the NSA domestic spying story very closely. To get up to speed, read my previous post.
posted by A.L. at 3:26 PM
7 Comments:
"If this is a matter of national security, maybe Stevens and Murkowski can just bypass the legislative branch altogether."
or they could just have a simple vote on the Senate floor. What are you afraid of, a majority victory?
A fair point. Your point would be a lot stronger, though, if Stevens wasn't trying to slip the ANWR provision into a totally unrelated bill. I don't think it's clear at all that ANWR drilling--all by itself--would be approved in a straight up and down vote.
In addtion, the last time I checked, Stevens' job is to fight for what the people in his state want. Alaskan's overwhelmingly want ANWR devleoped, but hey, whoo cares what they think.
The point of my post wasn't to criticize Stevens, but to poke some fun at Bush's legal position regarding domestic spying.
I have no problem with Stevens or Murkowski pushing hard for drilling in ANWR. As you say, their job is to represent their constituents. I think that sneaking ANWR into the defense appropriations bill was a somewhat devious move, but it wasn't totally unprecedented either. Like I said, the post was less about Stevens (or even ANWR) and more about Bush and spying.
It is also the job of the senators who represent people who oppose oil drilling in a very sensitive NATIONAL wildlife refuge to stop the sneaky amendment from passing.
Anonymous you lost again. Deal with it.
"Anonymous you lost again. Deal with it."
Only a lib would consider a fillabuster a victory.
AL:
Point well made. I'm beginning to see how Bush defenders on the NSA story are operating on two fundamental principles: (1) they are scared of being killed by terrorists and (2) they truly trust George Bush.
The problem is that the legal logic that Bush and his lawyers have invoked to justify their secret domestic spying program has no logical stopping point.
If the President has plenary wartime authority to do whatever he wants/needs to advance the war effort; and he alone gets to define "the war"; and he alone has the decisionmaking authority to determine who "the enemy" is; and the enemy can unilaterally be defined by the President as constituting, in part, U.S. citizens; then we live in a dictatorship, pure and simple.
Their logic is completely unsupportable. They just simply trust Bush uber alles, and that's a dangerous position -- not necessarily because Bush is going abuse his power (although I wouldn't put it past him, personally) but because a future President might, nay, will.
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