Friday, January 19, 2007

Senator Webb's first truly dissappointing vote.

There were a couple of votes so far where Webb actually voted correctly against his fellow democrats, and for Virginia. The best example was voting against Harry Reid to keep him from blocking a common-sense addition to the ethics reform bill.

But on that same bill today, James Webb voted against bloggers and free speech, siding with all but 7 democrats against a vote stripping an odious rule requiring anybody who pays money to try to get people to call their representatives to file paperwork and track expenditures.

Most other democrat from conservative states voted with the the republicans. Baucus, Bayh, Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, Ben Nelson, and Salazar all voted with for free speech. It would be fascinating to hear Webb explain why he felt a blogger who received money from an advocacy ad who also supported the same cause should have to be regulated by the government.

But frankly, it would be fun to hear Webb explain anything he's done so far. Maybe Tuesday.

The senate also rejected a provision to set up an independent office for ethics. I hate independent committees. If we can't trust a representative to do the right thing, we should throw them out of office, not pass off their jobs to some unelected board.

Story is here, but doesn't include the votes on the amendment -- you need to go to Thomas.gov for that information.

Update: Commenter notes links are our friends.

The vote on the Leiberman amendment to establish independent ethics office (#30) can be found HERE.

The vote on the Bennett amendment removing the grassroots reporting provisions (#20) can be found HERE.

2 comments:

Alice said...

Link please? name of the bill, name of the amendment? Look it up on Thomas.gov doesn't really tell us anything.

Charles said...

Good point.

The bill is S-1. The section that was deleted by the Bennett amendment was section 220, the amendment was #20. The Lieberman public integrity amendment was #30.

I updated the post to include links to the votes from the senate web site.