Harry Reid At Work Ramming His Bill Through...

At National Review Online's The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez posts an e-mail she received from Brian Darling, director of Senate relations at the Heritage Foundation:

Someone once said not to watch how sausage or legislation are made. Today especially I prefer to be at the sausage factory.

As if the Senate floor situation could get any worse, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's staff is now rewriting the Clay Pigeon amendment behind closed doors. It is the intent of the Majority Leader to bring this new unread Amendment up without the Republicans seeing the language. Yesterday Senator Reid did not have his massive 373 page amendment ready when he started debate on it and mistakes were made in the initial drafting. This fact was not discovered until Republicans objected to waiving the reading of the bill, and the Senate Clerk had nothing to read. Shockingly, Reid scrambled around, put the floor in morning business for a few hours, and then allowed Kennedy's staff make final changes to the amendment. The language was finally made available around 5:30 pm and Reid "graciously" gave Republicans the night to go through it before moving to it this morning.

This morning Republicans announced that Reid's amendment did not include the Sessions EITC provision in the touchback section, despite the fact that all previously passed amendments were supposed to be incorporated in the bill and the Clay Pigeon amendment. This oversight is the only mistake so far found, yet there may be other mistakes and intentional omissions in the 373 page amendment. This morning Reid put the floor back in morning business and sent his staff off to rewrite the mega amendment once again. Today, "the most deliberative body in the world," is left to debate legislation that they do not have a copy of. When Republicans asked if the amendment could be read once it was written, Reid objected because "it would take up too much time." Reid is promising the changes in the new amendment to be minimal, yet he has yet to allow Republicans to see the amendment, much less to check the changes.

This is a true outrage and shows the extreme measures the proponents of Amnesty will use to pass this bill, without any significant debate, nor any time to read.

This is not unexpected, but it should be shocking to watch it happen. This is a gross violation of the Senate's processes, and Reid should be called to account for it. The immediate issue, of course, is to keep up the pressure on your Senators to vote NO on cloture, killing the bill for good.

There's my two cents.