[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

How is the Reid letter not a de facto Bill of Attainder?

I agree that this has the smell of such a bill, but let's remember what a Bill of Attainder actually is. It is a piece of legislation which finds one or more individuals guilty of a crime (generally a capital crime), and asseses the penalty, without any participation of a court of law. This penalty was frequently a beheading of a nobleman, or, even more frequently, the drawing and quartering of a commoner.

Whatever this smear campaign is I doubt that we are going to see anyone drawn and quartered (for anyone who doesn't know what that is, it is what they did to William Wallace at the end of Braveheart).

[bill1952]

All that I see missing is the official sentence - and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that it was done just that way to achieve plausible deniability - and, perhaps, the actual floor vote, but it still seems about as close as it can get in this system.

It was done by Senators speaking on the Senate floor.

I agree that if it had been done in a non official capacity, then it would be fairly protected, but this has the color of the authority of the US Senate, and that is what it seems to be.

[Rembrandt]

“Whatever this smear campaign is I doubt that we are going to see anyone drawn and quartered (for anyone who doesn’t know what that is, it is what they did to William Wallace at the end of Braveheart).”
—
Gee, not even Billary or Hillary? Not even Turbin Durbin? Aw, please, just Waxman, throw me a crumb, bro.