Oh Boy ! BOHICA alert!
Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf
Don Surber comments about something I'd missed.
AP reported tonight that Harry Reid's first act as the Senate leader next year will be to hold a closed-door meeting of the Senate. Such a move is illegal in West Virginia, where two county commissioners cannot get on the same elevator under the state's Open Meeting law.
Read the rest here.
Can anyone visualize how this is a good thing? From the AP: ...
Oh, When They Get Behind Closed Doors ... Watch Out
Ed Morrissey
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors ...
I'm old enough to remember the old Charlie Rich ballad when it was a huge crossover hit. While the song talked about private love, the new session of the Senate may need the same reference to talk about its new approach to public policy. Harry Reid has called for a closed-door session of the entire Senate to kick off the 110th Congress, excluding the press and the public:
Senate Democrats, who campaigned on a pledge of more openness in government, will kick off the 110th Congress with a closed meeting of all 100 senators in the Capitol.
Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who will be the majority leader when the new Congress convenes Jan. 4, announced yesterday "a joint caucus meeting" for senators only, to be held that morning in the old Senate chamber, a cozy, seldom-used room. ...
It's interesting that the party that ran on openness and clean government thinks that its first priority is to meet out of sight of the people who elected them. Reid himself talked about the need for sunlight shortly after winning the majority, ironically on Face The Nation. He said it meant "finding out what government is doing."
So why the closed-door session, if we need to find out what government is doing? Reid's spokesman says the session is meant to foster dialogue between the two parties. I'd say that Charlie Rich had a better bead on it: ...
Senators to Gather in Closed Meeting
James Joyner
Charles Babington reports, “Senate Democrats, who campaigned on a pledge of more openness in government, will kick off the 110th Congress with a closed meeting of all 100 senators in the Capitol.”
Tim Chapman and Ed Morrissey express concern about the kinds of shenanigans Senators might commit hidden from the sunshine, the latter with a clever allusion to an old Charlie Rich tune. While I’m naturally pretty skeptical of politicians in general and Reid in particular, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. ...
