Posted on 12/08/2004 2:23:27 PM PST by AuntB
Today in the Senate, the Intelligence reform bill, S2845, passed with a vote of 89 to 2 .
Senator James Inhofe (R) Oklahoma stated on the floor his reasons for not supporting the bill, which left out effective immigration/border control provisions passed by the House of Representatives in their HB 10.
I first became familiar with Mr. Inhofe around 1993, when he was a member of the House of Representatives. One very late night, during special orders of the house, Inhofe gave a speech about something known as “The Discharge Petition”. This practice had been in the house for about 60 years. Your representatives could come home and proclaim support of a bill, usually one their constituents wished support on. However, back in the chamber they would sign the discharge petition if they truly did support the bill. This petition was kept in secret. Members could not even see other members names for support of a bill. If enough signatures were not obtained, the bill would go to the floor for a vote.
Stunned by such a practice, Inhofe introduced legislation to stop this deceptive practice. His bill was one line, hard to imagine, isn’t it? It simply stated that the practice of the discharge petition would be done away with and he faced a mighty uphill battle with his colleagues. One democrat senior representative stated on the floor that it was none of the publics business. Others in the leadership told Inhofe he would be thrown out of congress.
That night Mr. Inhofe informed congress that the names opposing his bill would be published in the Wall St. Journal. And they were.
Inhofe managed, after a lot of work by many of us, to get the word out and pass the bill. It was difficult pre-internet. Today, you are able to know what legislation the members of the House of Representatives are actually supporting because of the fortitude of Jim Inhofe.
Today, the senate has passed a bill that their members haven’t even read. The final version had been out only 24 hours. But Inhofe intends to represent this country, whether it’s popular or not with his “club of 100” and voted “Nay”. One other in the senate voting no was Robert Bird, because passage of the bill was not preceded by it being read and that it lacked vital immigration reforms for this nation’s security, and concerns of abuse of power by an unelected “intelligence Czar”.
Someone asked me a few days ago, who I would support for president in 2008. I can think of one brave man, James Inhofe
Thank you.
Mr. Inhofe is doing some good work to expose the enviromental extremists:
PARTISAN ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS
Monday, October 4, 2004
Mr./Madam President, I rise today to shed some light on a subject that is very important to me in my oversight duties as Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Earlier this year, the Environment and Public Works Committee held an oversight hearing where the Committee heard testimony from the General Accounting Office and the EPA Inspector General regarding a ten year history of numerous problems with the management of grant dollars at the Environmental Protection Agency. Some of the problems included EPA not requiring grant recipients to demonstrate real environmental benefits from grants, EPA not requiring competition in its grant awards, and a general lack of oversight of EPA grant officers and recipients. In fact, the EPA Inspector General released an audit only two days before the hearing finding that a particular non-profit grantee had violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act with nearly $5 million of EPA grant funding.
Over the last few months my staff has done considerable research into EPA grants management and has confirmed many of these problems and also found that EPA has a long history of awarding grant dollars without competition to some well-known non-profit environmental groups that regularly engage in political activity. My staff has compiled some of these findings in this thirty page Report to the Chairman. I ask unanimous consent to have this report inserted into the record at the conclusion of my remarks.
In examining how the environmental groups receive and spend their federal funds, it quickly became apparent that these groups receive funding from numerous sources including large foundations. With these organizations’ political and grass-roots efforts it quickly became difficult differentiating the sources of their funds and how they spend them. Therefore I instructed my staff to examine the funding and expenditures records of these organizations which has resulted in a second report, which is the focus of my remarks today. My staff has compiled this information into a fifteen page Report for the Chairman to provide some preliminary examples describing five of the most widely politically active environmental groups, a description of their activity, the foundations that provide the financial support for those groups, and the interconnected web among all those organizations. At this time, I ask unanimous consent to have the report inserted to the record at the conclusion of my remarks.
Interestingly, these environmental groups are all tax-exempt IRS registered 501(c)(3) charitable organizations meaning that contributions to these groups are tax deductible. (CHART 1). These groups profess to be the greatest stewards of the environment and solicit contributions from a variety of sources by that claim. But they demonstrate more interest in hyping apocalyptic environmental scenarios to raise money for raw political purposes rather than working together to improve our environment for the benefit of all Americans. All these non-profit groups are also closely associated and fund their affiliated 501(c)(4) lobbying organizations and 527 political organizations. This report could not be more timely, as the Washington Post as recently as September 27, 2004 published an article demonstrating that IRS 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), and 527 organizations are all engaged in political activity this election cycle with expenditures designed to circumvent the prohibitions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, otherwise known as McCain-Feingold. snip.....
http://inhofe.senate.gov/preleases.htm
Thank you, sweetface!
NEW POLL UP!
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/
Do you support legislation that would secure our borders and reform immigration law?
Yes 96% 3151 votes
No 4% 141 votes
Total: 3292 votes
Rohrbacher too, he was on Michael Savage's program tonight. Dana's coming down hard against this bill.
Wow! I was thinking of exactly the same team. Except I was going to mention it NOT as an interrogative statement, but as a declarative one.
Inhofe/Tancredo 2008, 2012.
Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
Whoever the nominee is, he better have a good immigration stance or we will be saying President Hillary in January 2009, because she's already on that bandwagon.
Overall, besides these two I like Mark Sanford of SC, he has a good fiscal stance and has good marks from pro life groups and Gun Owners of America. I don't know about his immigration stance, however. Maybe even run him with Inhofe or Tancredo as a Veep.
BTTT!!!!!!!!
I've always liked Inhofe a lot, since his 1999 floor speech on China, all about Clinton giving away our nuclear secrets.
Interestingly, very shortly after that, he lost a propeller on his private plane while he was flying it and the FBI investigated. Here's an old FR thread about it.
Rohrbacher was on radio last night. He talked about the 44,000 OTM's (other than Mexican) that were detained at the borders last year, dressed like Mexicans. He was busy feeding one of his young children while on the radio and said he just couldn't leave this incoming invasion for them to deal with.
Yes, that's what I was listening to also. I hope Rohrbacher and the others who are on this issue can make a dent in it.
Michelle Malkin ~ Bump!
I sure do remember the plane near accident. It sounded like someone unbolted his propeller, but being an experienced pilot, Inhofe landed it safely. And he was about the only senator that bothered to try to expose Clinton.
NEW POLL UP!
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/
Do you support legislation that would secure our borders and reform immigration law?
Yes 96% 3151 votes
No 4% 141 votes
Total: 3292 votes
Fs and F minues are given out like candy, though. .....and not only to Democrats.
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