Dirty Tricks

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will use a cherry-picking amendment trick to cut off debate on the Shamnesty Bill (Part 2). Michelle Malkin has posted a copy of a letter sent to Reid by five Senators (Cornyn, Dole, DeMint, Vitter, and Sessions) asking him not to use the tactic, saying it would be the first time in the history of the Senate to use the measure (called a "clay pigeon") to silence amendments rather than facilitate their debate.

In effect, it would allow Reid to select only the amendments he wants to be included on this bill.

Reid's response is to pass the buck - he maintains the White House and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have asked him to use it. Nice.

The problem here is that several of the fence-sitter Senators have adopted a wait-and-see attitude about the cloture vote in regard to their own amendments. If their amendments were to be passed, they'd vote in favor of cloture and the bill; if their amendments were not passed, they'd vote no. If Reid uses this measure, none of these Senators will know whether or not their amendments would be included before the cloture vote took place.

While this maneuver is pretty low-life, the silver lining is that without knowing the status of their own amendments, some of the fence-sitters could be persuaded (with continued lobbying from their constituents) to simply vote no on cloture and be done with it.

This is where you come in! Get in touch with your Senators and tell them to vote no on cloture!

There's my two cents.