Burnt Orange Report

U.S. Senate (Done) Meeting in Closed Session

By Phillip Martin

Update: The Senate is back, and there will be a Task Force of 6 United States Senators (3 from each party) to study "Phase 2" of the Intelligence Committee's investigation into the question of prewar intelligence -- who knew what, when they knew it, and if anything was hidden. The task force will report to the Senate leadership by November 14. The Democrat line seems to be that this investigation has been going on for 1 1/2 years, and it's time to see answers. The Republican line seems to be that they've been doing their job, and all of this was simply a stunt.

Well, anyone who ever complains that Democrats never stand up for what they believe in are going to have to get some new talking points.

Democrats in the United States Senate have shut down the U.S. Senate, accusing the Republican leadership and the Senate Intelligence Committee of putting politics ahead of the American people. The Democrats in minority want to talk about Iraq, the reasons we went to war, and how the White House may have manipulated information to sell the war to the American people.

The U.S. Senate is meeting in a closed door session -- no press, no cell phones, no blackberries, no pagers, no nothing -- and talking about why there has been no serious investigations into the corruption in the White House.

Here's what CNN is reporting:

Democrats forced the Republican-controlled Senate into an unusual closed session Tuesday, questioning intelligence that led to the Iraq war and deriding a lack of congressional inquiry.

"I demand on behalf of the America people that we understand why these investigations aren't being conducted," Democratic leader Harry Reid said.

Taken by surprise, Republicans derided the move as a political stunt.

"The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," said Majority Leader Bill Frist. "They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas," the Republican leader said.

This comes out on a day when President Bush had announced his plan to address the bird pandemic, and a day after he announced Alito as his newest nomination for the Supreme Court. Looks like the White House can't chance the subject that eaisly, as Democrats are hell bent on not letting the issue of what the White House knew before the war slip into the back pages of the newspapers.

There's lots of arguments for and against this. Sen. Frist, the Senate Majority Leaders, is accusing Democrats of "hijacking" the Senate and using a "publicity stunt" to shut down democracy.

At first blush, this seems a lot like what Texas Democrats did when they went to Ardmore, Oklahoma and New Mexico during the redistricting battles -- an extreme, admittedly risky move to draw the public's attention to problems they see with the Republican leadership...

Updates as I continue to get them...