Rep. Sensenbrenner made it very clear that he would not support any legislation that came from a conference committee that included an award of legal status to illegal aliens, as well as a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. Has was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Was this agreement made without his knowledge? Was it made without his consent?
In light of the opinions he expressed about a conference bill not including any path to citizenship, why did leadership appoint him to the conference committee?
It is entirely possible(or maybe even likely) that the GOP thought that they could get around the dems/water down the bill by stacking the conference committee.
If so, that was a foolish assumption because the dems had fallen for that one to many times already. In fact, we see that Reid killed the Senate bill the first time around and refused to let it come up again until Frist named who would be representing the Senate in the Conference committee.
BTW, now that the dems are in charge, it is likely that they will be doing some retaliating and stacking a few conference committees.