Redstate

Or it sure seems, as he's speaking now.

Not repeal. We'll see.

Bad, bad.

They just killed off the Independent Counsel investigation of Henry Cisneros.  At least I think that is what just happenned.

This Coburn thing might snowball.

Glenn Reynolds reacts to the  defeat of Tom Coburn's amendment: "So what's a Republican Senate for, exactly?"

I feel deserted, but I have company.  Its name is reality.

...is Stevens insane?

This guy is a Sen.?  I take it with debate going on that Coburn's amendment is still on the table?

disappointing.

Coburn actually introduced a large number of amendments, only one of which was the "Bridge to Nowhere" repeal.  Others attempted to defund similarly meritorious projects in other states.  Some were across-the-board funding cuts ("every item in this bill gets funded 1% less").

What Coburn is doing is tantamount to a line-item veto; he is insisting that these various pork projects be subject to a floor vote, one at a time, rather than simply being approved as part of an omnibus bill where everybody gets something.  I don't know the basis on which he picked out the specfic items he's objecting to, but it seems like a good concept in general.

As noted in the update - despite what Tapscott writes-not all three are as of yet defeated, this is just the vote for the FIRST of Coburn's pork-cutting amendments.

According to the Club for Growth blog, the defeat mentioned in the main post is not the Bridge to Nowhere amemdment. The vote on that is still to take place.

The Club for Growth blog in general is providing excellent updates on this.

[Sung to the tune of Rawhide!]

Coburn, Coburn, Coburn

Spending cuts with Coburn

Keep amendment moving!

Rawhide!  Rawhide!

Don't wan't no bridge to nowhere

Our spending should be slow there

Keep amendments moving!

Rawhide!

RAWHIDE!

I thought the "wounded bull" as he described himself was going to pass out during his speech. :-)

Coburn, Coburn, Coburn,

Blazing a trail, Coburn,

Red is Steven's face turnin,

Rawhide!

Pork is on the defense

Stevens is howlin & screamin

Lead the way Senator Coburn

Rawhide

Sometimes, I think it would be really, really cool to to have a button on my desk, which when depressed, would cause a trap door to open and lead to a tank of sharks with frickin lasers attached to their frickin heads.

Murkowski, blather on....

Sorry for the cursing, but politicians, supposedly on my side, of late cause me great frustration.

Kudos to Coburn, though.

She insists that the bridge is critical for the community of Ketchikan, where she was born, and how people from the Lower 48 don't understand Alaska's need for basic infrastructure.

I am inspired by her passion, but will anyone point out that Alaska has no income tax and no sales tax?  In fact, thanks to the Permanent Fund, Alaska actually pays YOU to live there.  Will anyone ask why, if this bridge is so critical, the State of Alaska is making no effort to build it themselves?

...are on the side of the politicians. Keep that in mind at all times.

for each of those 50 folks and be done with it.

is making no sense at all.  The people of Louisiana will lose if they get the "bridge to nowhere" funds?

Now she's saying the town of Ketchican can't grow without the bridge, do we should pony up 200M so they can develop over to the island.

OH-its gets better-if someone on a cruise ship gets sick, they would have to go to the airport by ferry instead of bridge if they need to be "medivaced out".  This stuff is too funny.

Here is the Ketchikan earth cam.

Whoa.

Yeah, positively Churchillian, that chica.

This Coburn thing will only snowball if we, the taxpayers, make it snowball. And the blogosphere - or whatever it is called - is a pretty good soapbox to shout from; in addition, of course, to contacting the spineless, pandering, big-money donor lackeys we call representatives.

(Note to self - chill out.)

I really hope that everyone interested in fiscal sanity, of whatever political stripe, will join forces and get vocal about these Coburn amendments.

I am convinced nothing is going to change in D.C. unless the taxpayers as a whole rise up and demand it.

If I hear that one more time, I will throw up.  Really.

The point is that this island with 50 people is the only available land for the larger community of Ketchikan to grow, and a ferry isn't going to cut it.

Look, it could be the most important bridge in the world, I won't argue the point with her.  My point is that a state which refuses to tax its residents one penny shouldn't be demanding that the other 49 states chip in to build its infrastructure.  Or am I wrong?

Though I don't understand the 'highway use' argument.  If that's the case, make it a toll bridge.

Time to revisit this idea.

I wonder what the re-sale value would be....

Is now reading from the Bible.  So that means the Coburn amendment is going to fail.  

perhaps there is still hope......

just threatened to resign.  Guess he doesn't like his pork being snatched.

Stevens just threatened to resign if the amendment is passed.  Somehow I doubt that will happen.

Instead, the WaPo is going to run this headline:

"Republicans Vote To Increase Deficit."

Wow, he just made another enemy... of course if Stevens resigns, then Coburn wins.

I'm quite happy with my Senator right now.  He's willing to make his own party unhappy when they get too comfortable with their power.  Keep it up, Senator C.

I will gladly eat my hat.

What was Inhofe thinking?

""We have the smallest allocation per area of any state in the union.""

what a goofy statement. How about we calculate allocation per capita instead?

    "I have never seen this suggested, to single out a state and say, `You pay! You pay for a disaster 5,000 miles away. You shoulder the burden!'"

hello, actually WE pay. He talks about the money as if it was Alaska's. What was the original source, Senator?

    "We need bridges so we can get from one private area to anoth private area."

sounds like a great use of public funds.

    "It's not taxpayer money. It's highway-user money."

would that make it highway roberry?

    "It's wrong to put us into a position where we have to explain why -- why! -- this is being done, something that has never been done before -- NEVER!"

why, next we will be calling for accountability in government, or something. Outrageous!

Of course, we should TOTALLY give more money to Montana than Massachusetts.  I mean, look how frickin BIG Montana is?

at the thought that Stevens would resign over this that I can't stop singing and dancing (and drinking) :-)

Is there something about being elected to the Congress of the United States that causes otherwise rational human beings to become stupid?

"Amen...send our bridge money to New Orleans."

- Bobbie McCreary, Ketchikan, Stories in the News, Sept. 6, 2005

Those are great.  I guess being Approp Chair makes you forget a few things.

Thank you Senator Coburn for shining the light on these blemishes in the Senate... and shaking up the status-quo.

a very medieval land owner-centric view. You'd think democratically elected representatives would count people, not acres.

goes to teh club for growth blog, i just copied em..

Not that it didn't pass, but that Stevens would get up there and defend with such zeal what is so obviously a barrel of pork.

If ever there were a good example of how our current system is FUBAR, Stevens' "Passion of the Gravina" is it.

we call it grasping at straws.

is apt.

Governor Frank Murkowski's wife, 2nd cousin, personal lawyer, accountant, next door neighbor, and family dog.

"I have never seen this suggested, to single out a state and say, `You pay! You pay for a disaster 5,000 miles away. You shoulder the burden!'"

How sad.  It wasn't just some disaster 5,000 miles away.  It was a disaster on American soil that affected millions of American citizens.  It's going to take lots of American taxpayer dollars to help get the area back up and running.  Americans from every state should be thinking about how to help shoulder the burden.  That's what we do when disaster strikes.  Alaska can do without these silly bridges.

I was there on a cruise once.  Rains 330 days out of the year there, at least that's what the sign says.

I have a question for Senator Stevens.  Before building a bridge to virtually deserted island how bout you build a bridge to the MAINLAND?  Ketchikan is completely cut off from the mainlain, as is Juneau for that matter, IIRC.  

Good to see at least ONE democrat voted against this.  

This is pretty pathetic.  

drinkin' kool-aid?

Take power away from one who is elected and place it in the hands of one who is not?

Sounds good, but not really applicable here.

to pay for it if each family on the island made a $5 round-tripper every day.

Thats my boy.

Gregg is a joke.

I think its time to make up some flyers!

What a joke!

of the cost-benefit analysis of building a Bridge to Nowhere.

Next Majority Leader, nice

First he throws Toomey under the bus, and now he jumps ship on a true conservative cause.

I hope he gets crushed.

Well, now we know which Senators care about America, and which are politicians.

Let the campaigning begin...for Senators who understand the term "fiscal restraint!"

'true conservative cause'?

Both parties.  I'm not lifting a finger, or sending a penny to anyone that votes no on this.  It is time to clean house, both parties.

Crapo no

Lott no

Santorum no

@#$@#$@#$

How can you be the Budget Chairman and ask Members to cut spending and be worried about your own pork?

send emails of encouragement to all the AYE voters.

I know I'm just one voice, and I'm not a constituent, but heck, they DESERVE praise for standing up for America.

Just the part about how pork was bad under the former Old Testament adminstration but is now OK under the New.

AYE

Little surprise.

Coleman:  No

That will save me some political donation money in a couple of years.

BIG disappointment.

I mis-read.

but I think I belong to a political party of those who talk from both sides of their mouth.

Conservative my arse!

That was painful.

The Club for Growth reports:

Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Russ Feingold (D-WI)

Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

Jim DeMint (R-SC)

David Vitter (R-LA)

Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

John Sununu (R-NH)

Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Richard Burr (R-NC)

Wayne Allard (R-CO)

Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Evan Bayh (D-IN)

Mike DeWine (R-OH)

Kent Conrad (D-ND)

George Allen (R-VA)

It's a little different than the one above, note Vitter+, DeWine+, Hagel- among the R.

Final vote should be on the US Senate site shortly.

Actually, Juneau is on the mainland, which gets to another boondoggle altogether, building a highway around a mountain (IIRC) to connect with the mainland highway system, which eventually hooks up through Canada.

I don't have the cite handy, but it's another project buried in the highway bill. One justification is to enable the citizenry to drive to the state capitol. Which goes to another controversy, namely, why not move the state capitol to the location where most of the citizens live - somewhere around Anchorage.

If it's not one thing, it's another. And in Alaska, there's a whole lot of anothers.

resigning... I called his office a few minutes ago and offered him a job.  "Doing what?" asked the person.  "Shoveling out horse stalls." I replied.  Click.

At the parallel DailyKos post, there are pretty much exactly the same comments as you all have made.  There is frustration at the Democrats for preserving pork and universal praise to Russ Feingold for voting to cut it.  For once, the Left and Right and united, and the Senate frustrates us both.

both voted for the amendment.

Unless he changed his vote after the total was announced.

Most of the people at DKos are just as angry as you guys.

It seems that there aren't any politicians who are interested in fiscal responsiblity anymore.

... after all, Alaska is bigger than d*mned Jupiter for cryin' out loud. Who ever heard of allocating tax dollars on the basis or surface area. Are they putting something in the water in the Senate Cloak Room again?

The prospects of Allen as a presidental candidate in '08 are looking better and better.

Feingold also voted yes on Roberts. Once the Kossacks remember that vote, they'll withdraw their current Feingold praise.

That one has been fought enough times (he voted yes on Ashcroft too) that it's become parody to bring up "What about Roberts?" on a Feingold thread.

I'm a bit surprised, but he along with Corzine and Schumer must have had something better to do.

I'm surprised because the one area he has been consistently more conservative than Bush, Frist, Allen, and every other '08 contender is fighting pork.  This was another chance to highlight that reputation.  He was the only one who called the Transportation Bill "pork" in the Senate.  And this would have been a good chance to be a maverick on the right while doing a press-pleasing think (shout down a fellow R - Stevens and "fight corruption").

A Coburn/McCain anti-pork tag team would be quite beneficial for both of them wrt their goals.

I may think Roberts' politics are loathesome, but I don't hold a yay vote against any Dem. The man was qualified for the position to which he was nominated.

One of the reasons I love him is that he believes that presidents deserve the cabinet/justices they appoint... and he doesn't let political considersations get in the way of a truly qualified candidate.

The man is consistent.  Liberals who rag on him for approving Ashcroft or being against gun control just tire me out.  The man votes his beliefs, and no one else's.  Some of us on the left appreciate the heck out of that, and today's vote is a great example.

I also noticed MY MAN George Allen just voted for the amendment!!!  Too bad it didn't pass.  

I hope my email contributed to his vote.  

It is becoming very clear who the real conservatives are.

I ran a phone bank for the candidates, including Coleman in 2002.

Never again.

Really, somebody is going to explain this to po' little ol' me someday, right?

To which I say, "BONUS!"  

Kremp, you're so bad.

As much as I hate to admit it, the Republicans are not much different than the Democrats when it comes to spending.  Rather than the Republicans taking a leadership role in cutting spending (as they all promise when they are campaigning) they prefer to continue to spend our money recklessly.

I wish some conservative Republican would put in legistlation to actually cut spending by 2% per year for the next 10 years or until the national debt is paid off.

Once again we have a President who cut taxes and Government revnues boom and what does the Congress do?  The same as they did under Reagan, spend, spend spend.

We Conservatives need to call these wayward Congressmen into accountablility by calling them or sending them email.

This spending insanity has got to stop.

It seems these days, the only bipartisan agreement is that Washington should spend whatever it has, or does not have. (regardless of the consequences)

I moved there just as the primary campaign was really getting under way.  I knew nothing about WI politics at the time, but Feingold was the relatively unknown outsider running against the 2 bigwigs with tons of money.  He ran a clean, smart, funny campaign while the other 2 spent tons destroying each other.  His campaign also taught me basic WI geography.  He cruised to victory in that primary then the main.

I disagree with him on 99% of things political.  But I respect him (except for McCain-Feingold, he of all people should know better, considering how he won).

Democrats and Republicans who voted against fiscal sanity would be ashamed.   They are ruining this country.

Thank you for voting for this amendment, Senator Dewine.  I will continue voting for you as long as I live in Ohio and you keep voting for fiscal sanity.

There are many people who seemed very confident there were enough votes for the nuclear option if a Brown, Estrada were nominated.

After this showing I think that logic comes into doubt. If the senate Republicans were unable to stand up to Ted Stevens than why should we expect them to support the President and stand up to the constant media attacks.

I still think the President should have taken the fight. But there is no doubt that the president and his staff must have concluded there was less than a 50% chance to have Brown or Estrada type judge clear the Senate. Did they want to subject that person to the weakness of the Senate Republicans. And maybe a few of the potential nominees removed their name from consideration knowing the likely outcome.

Bush has a huge spine as seen with his constant support of Miers and others like Bolton, Brown, Owen, Pryor and others.

The senate Republicans are another story.      

I have already sent "thank you" e-mails to BOTH of my Senators, DeMint and Graham.

Other than Louisiana, South Carolina was the only state to provide two "yea" votes on this amendment.

When my wife met Senator DeMint a few weeks ago, she told him that he ought to run for the White House. Something to think about.

I just wrote my Senators Hutchison and Cornyn to give them hell about voting against this amendment.

Between this and their dogged support of Harriet Miers, I'm thinking that Texas needs better representation in Washington. I'm so steamed at them!!!

If you send thank you notes to senators in other states, that's well and good, but they may never get read by those senators. I have the impression that senators pay little attention to people from other states. Note Senator McCain's outrage when he discovered that no one in Mother Sheehan's little group that he met with was from Arizona.

I have one anecdote to support that impression. My parents settled in the town of Mason, Ohio (part of Deerfield Township) in 1960. My mother still lives in the same house. When my father passed away last year, my mother had to buy a cemetery plot. We took her to Rose Hill Cemetery, which is in Mason, but is administered by Deerfield Township. She decided to buy a double plot, so that she might eventually be laid to rest next to her husband.

When the cemetery worker totalled the invoice, he used the non-resident rate ($1600 higher), stating that my mother was not a resident of Deerfield  Township. It seems that in 1998, the city of Mason voted to no longer be a part of the township, so the non-resident rate applied, in spite of the fact that she had been a resident for 38 years, and had never moved.

My mother is an elderly widow living on Social Security, and had lost nearly half of her income when my father died. I sent letters to both Senators DeWine and Voinovich, asking if they could do something to help. I am not their constituent, but my mother is.

One senator ignored me completely, and another sent my mother a short note about how he couldn't get involved in local matters like that. Neither one of them gave me the courtesy of a response.

I've told this on here before, but in the Congressional office I used to work in, we matched zip codes to the zip codes in our district and just threw away any letters that didn't match without even opening them. Maybe senators with inflated egos work a little differently...I don't know.

I think you are generally right but I no one case where something worked otherwise.

My sister grew up in KY, but currently lives in MD.  When my nephew was born, my sister recieved a congratulatory card in the hospital from Sen McConnell.  The fact that my sister's mother-in-law worked with McConnell's wife may have had something to do with it.  

said he was not in Washington for the vote.  The person I spoke to didn't know where he was.  As an aside, he voted against the Transportation Bill (as did Kyl) when it was originally passed.  Pork was his rationale at the time so I expect he would have voted for the Coburn amendment.

I hate to tell the old timer, but welcome to reality.  

People are dying in New Orleans, Texas and there is a war going on.  We don't need more crappy infrastructure expenditures.  

And why the heck does old man Stevens make everything so personal...he did the same thing with the ANWAR oil drilling...

"Today, you voted against me and I won't forget it!"

Who the heck cares!  

Senators aren't the best for individual problems; congressmen are much better.  Your mother's is John Boehner.  SAG Betty Montgomery's office might be helpful as well.

But it is not Boehner. It would have been Rob Portman at the time, now it is Jean Schmidt. Mom lives just south of Tylersville Road, a short portion of which forms the northern boundary of district 2, and just east of Butler Warren Road, which forms the western boundary of that part of the district.

It has been 1½ years since this happened, but I guess it is worth a try. And based on what asf6 posted above, maybe I should use Mom's address as the return address.