This article just posted on the New York Times features a few really amazing dick moves from Bill Frist.
Four cabinet secretaries, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an Army general and the secretary of the Army were supposed to testify Tuesday morning at hearings on matters including Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration’s proposed budget for foreign affairs.
But their invitations were rescinded and the hearings canceled when the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, scheduled a marathon series of 16 votes on amendments to a pending tax bill–all of them, both parties agree, intended more to score political points than to make policy.
Ultimately, most of those votes were canceled.
Bill Frist is getting it done to the max! By it, of course, I am not referring to the business of governing our great nation, but instead to subverting the people’s house to serve the ends of his political party. It gets better though. Those cancelled votes? Well
They could have been held Monday night, but that did not work for Mr. Frist. He was holding a fund-raiser at his Washington home, with President Bush as the featured guest and some of his Republican colleagues on the guest list, including the Senate whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The event raised $3.5 million for Republican Senate candidates.
Oh, I see. He had a prior commitment. Perfectly understandable. Not.
One Senator had this to say:
“The Senate continues to fiddle while Rome burns,” he said in a long speech on Monday afternoon on the Senate floor. He complained that the Senate had previously voted on similar Democratic amendments and urged Republican leaders to “get a grip on this situation.”
Who was that? Why it was Trent Fucking Lott! If he thinks you’re doing a shitty job running things, you are really doing a shitty job running things!
The article goes on to say that things more or less got back on track eventually, and that both parties were at fault (aren’t they always?).(No). Ahh, balance.
A nice money quote to finish the article, though:
Still, the changes created confusion. Mr. Reid was asked if a business could be run like the Senate is. “Yeah,” he replied, “but not very well.”