Bully for you

The big news of the week, of course, was the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision making medical marijuana a federal offense. Leaving only three of the nine justices eligible to be called members of the High Court.

That decision helped make it a good week for Tom DeLay. There was even better news for him Friday-- he was outdistanced for the title of biggest embarrassment on Capitol Hill by the new leader and likely champion in that area, Jim Sensenbrenner. For those who don't follow the ins and outs of Washington, Sensenbrenner is the tall, round-faced chair of the House Judiciary Committee. He is also obdurate, nasty and a bully.

I dealt with him directly on the issues surrounding the continuity of government-- the attempt to find was to make sure that, in the event of another terrorist attack on Washington, we could quickly reconstitute a working and representative Congress to avoid reliance on martial law. Sensenbrenner opposed the approach I took, which was the recommendation of the Continuity of Government Commission, co-chaired by the late, great Lloyd Cutler and former Senator Alan Simpson.

Sensenbrenner was directly nasty to me-- not that I didn't give back as good as I got, at least in print-- but more important, he took an issue with has no partisan coloration to it-- the position I took is supported by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Tom Foley, Donna Shalala and John Cornyn, to name a few-- and for no good reason made it a harshly partisan one, alienating every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee on the way, before alienating virtually all the Democrats in the House and not a few Republicans.

Still, that issue was small potatoes compared to what was to come. A few weeks back, the House Judiciary Committee passed out a bill to make it a federal offense to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion, with the goal being to violate the home state's parental notification law. Several Democrats on the committee offered amendments, including one to exempt grandparents, and another to exempt taxi or bus drivers. The amendments were rejected on party-line votes. But when the official committee report was put together, the amendments were described as ones to exempt sexual predators from the bill-- the first time I have ever seen amendments to bills described in a fashion different from what the authors intended, and with no notice to them. When the amendments' drafters objected to Sensenbrenner, be refused to change the report. When the ranking Democrat on the committee, John Conyers, took a privileged resolution to the floor to demand an apology and a change, Sensenbrenner coldly, and rudely, refused-- and got the House Republicans to back him up. When it became clear that Democrats would bring up resolutions every day, a number of Republicans backed off, forcing Sensenbrenner to yield. But the gratuitous humiliation he blithely handed out to lawmakers Jerry Nadler and Bobby Scott-- not bombthrowers, but serious legislators, with serious amendments-- made many of his colleagues cringe, especially since he had beaten back the amendments to begin with!

Could he top this? Yes, indeed, just yesterday. Under the committee rules, Democrats can demand a hearing on any subject. They asked for one on the Patriot Act-- after a series of hearings tilted outrageously toward supporters of the Act as it is. Sensenbrenner grudgingly went along-- then scheduled the hearing for 8:30 am on Friday, warning Democrats that if they were not there promptly on time, the hearing would be cancelled. The ungodly hour was obviously chosen to minimize the attention given to the hearing. But when the witnesses began to bash the Patriot Act, and Republicans on the committee got angry-- one excoriated a representative from Amnesty International, and Sensenbrenner gaveled him down without allowing a response-- Sensenbrenner decided he had had enough. He gavelled the hearing adjourned in the middle of it, ordered the microphones turned off, and stalked out, creating a cause celebre the early hour had been intended to prevent.

If Tom DeLay is the poster child for ethical insensitivity in Congress, Jim Sensenbrenner is the new poster child for the arrogance of power run amok. The Speaker of the House and other Republican leaders have been intimidated by his in-your-face style and obduracy. They had better reconsider their approach.