Anonymous Republican senator puts hold on bill unsealing presidential papers

Anonymous senator puts hold on bill unsealing presidential papers

Senate Republican has anonymous hold on reversal of Bush order

10:28 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
tgillman@dallasnews.com

"WASHINGTON – A fight over White House secrecy has taken a new twist, with Senate officials confirming Wednesday that a Republican senator is secretly blocking a bill that would reverse President Bush's 2001 executive order allowing ex-presidents to seal their records indefinitely.

"We need to smoke out whoever it is. Maybe somebody at the White House called a Republican senator and said put a hold on it," said Lee White, executive director of the National Coalition for History, a leading advocate of the legislation.

The anonymous hold adds an ironic chapter to a fight that has pitted an administration with a penchant for secrecy against historians, archivists and librarians.

The White House has threatened a veto to protect Mr. Bush's executive order, arguing that the bill to overturn it encroaches on legitimate executive authority.

Open government advocates say the order will let Mr. Bush and other former presidents hide embarrassing or revealing documents that belong to the public without explanation. They say it undermines the potential value of the Bush library planned at Southern Methodist University in Dallas..."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/092007dnnatlibraryhold.32e1044.html

of successfully stopping bills, but democrats can't ever seem to even slow down republican sponsored bills?

Is there special rules that only republicans are allowed to use? Or are our democratic representatives just too chicken shit to do their damned jobs?
:wtf:

that just seems wrong. that is saying that a president can make his own laws and it takes a supermajority to stop him.

now he's just trying to make it all legal (for very small values of 'legal').

(1) Whoever has put the hold is then obliged (under the Senate rules) to reveal who he as. As though nobody knows.

(2) Then there's a debate and a cloture vote. Any "implied" filibuster attempt is immediately no longer applied; there is then a filibuster or there isn't, no need to worry about the ambiguity. If cloture passes, they can vote on the bill. If it doesn't, they're certainly no worse off for having presented the bill for a vote.

It would take time. Not much. But some.

What we cannot know says so much about our democracy.

Let them spend two months in filibuster.

long enough to go do this. No surprise here.