On the one hand we have the Democrats declaring themselves, against all evidence, strong on security with their grade school caliber, powerpoint-presentation quality plan for “Real Security“.

On the other hand we have Chuck Schumer introducing a bill (S. 2468) designed to give legal standing to people, who have not been wronged, that want to sue the government for upholding it’s Constitutional duties by undertaking a lawful program of terrorist surveillance.

I can tell already this Democratic plan for “Real Security” is going to be a big winner.

Ron Wyden (D-OR):

If you walk the streets of this country and ask someone what a hold is in the Senate, I don’t think you will get 1 out of 100 people who will have any idea what you are talking about. But the fact of the matter is, a hold in the Senate is the ability to block a piece of legislation, block a nomination from being even discussed in the Senate. As a result of a hold, the Senate will not even get a peek at a topic that may involve millions of our citizens, billions of dollars, and affect the quality of life of citizens in every corner of the land.

It would be one thing if the Senator who exercises this extraordinary tool–this tool that carries so much power with it–if that Senator would exercise the tool in public and could be held accountable. Unfortunately, holds are now placed in secret. They are done behind closed doors. The sponsor of a piece of legislation will not even know about it. It seems to me a Senate that is serious about lobbying reform absolutely must stop doing so much of its important business in secret, behind closed doors.

I will offer later in the day, I hope, with Senator Grassley, Senator Inhofe, and Senator Salazar, an amendment to bring a bit of sunshine to the Senate. It is an amendment that would not abolish the hold. Senators’ rights would be fully protected. Senator Collins is in the Senate, and as a result of the colloquy we had several weeks ago, this legislation also protects the Senator’s right to be consulted on a piece of legislation. Certainly, that is something all Members feel is important. If there are bills that affect a Senator’s State or that they have a great interest in, that Senator would have an opportunity to study the legislation and to reflect on what it means.

What we say in this bipartisan amendment is when a Senator digs in, when a Senator plans to exercise this extraordinary power, the power to block a bill or a nomination from ever being heard, we are saying that Senator has got to be held publicly accountable. What we require is that a Senator who exercises a hold would have to so state in the Congressional Record. They could still use their procedural rights to make sure they have a chance to oppose the legislation and to oppose it strongly, but they would be identified as the person who was so objecting.

The intelligence reauthorization bill is now being prevented from coming to this Senate as a result of a secret hold. A lot of Senators give lengthy and eloquent speeches about fighting terrorism, but now a bill that is vital to national security is being held up in secret. It has been held up for months and months as a result of this secret hold. That ought to change…

The amendment was agreed to by 84-13 vote.

Candice Miller (R-MI):

The first amendment guarantees freedom of the press, and with that freedom comes responsibility. But we all remember the 60 Minutes II report during the last campaign which used partisan sources and forged documents to assert that the President of the United States had not fulfilled his duty in the National Guard, a report that was proven to be false.

Well, here we go again. Recently I saw a 60 Minutes segment in which a scientist claimed that his views on global warming were being censored by the administration. Of course, they did not report that this man had received a $250,000 grant from the foundation controlled by Theresa Heinz Kerry. They did not report that this man had endorsed John Kerry. They did not report that he has served as a consultant for Al Gore nor that he had made similar claims against President Bush’s father in 1989.

The first amendment gives freedom of the press, but the truth is the foundation for credibility.

60 Minutes should tell both sides of the story in a fair and balanced way, or they should simply air this disclaimer: “60 Minutes brought to you by the National Democratic Committee.”

Representative Keller (R-FL):

I rise today to discuss the impact illegal immigration has on taxpayers. Today, we have 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. Last year, our Border Patrol agents arrested 1.2 million illegal aliens attempting to enter the U.S. from Mexico.

Illegal aliens continue to enter the U.S. from the Mexican border at the rate of 8,000 per day, and I saw that firsthand on a recent trip to the Mexican border. The economic impact of illegal immigration on taxpayers is catastrophic.

Illegal immigration costs taxpayers $45 billion a year in health care, identification, and incarceration expenses. The cost of the estimated 630,000 illegal aliens in my home State of Florida is about $2 billion a year, meaning every family in my congressional district pays a hidden tax of $315 each year, yet they still face artificially depressed wages because of illegal immigration.

The House has recently passed a tough border security bill to address this problem, and I urge the Senate to act now to protect taxpayers.

Representative Poe (R-TX) has a plan for the unused FEMA trailors in Arkansas.

Rita was her name. She was mad and took it out on southeast Texas. Her winds blew, the water rose, the trees fell, and the homes collapsed. To the rescue was FEMA.

FEMA said, we have house trailers to help the homeless. Well, Mr. Speaker, it has been 6 months since Hurricane Rita hit, and we are still on the lookout for those house trailers. Has anybody seen them?

Yes, Mr. Speaker, they have been located. All 10,000 of them have been found in the remote hills of Arkansas. But why are they there? Because I have heard Federal bureaucrats have some comical regulation that states no trailers in flood-prone areas, like the hurricane gulf coast. So the taxpayers have bought themselves 10,000 trailers with millions of dollars of taxpayer money, and they are hidden in Arkansas, I guess for safekeeping.

Since Homeland Security’s FEMA isn’t using them, I suggest we take them down to the Texas-Mexico border, where there is not a whole lot of rain and we don’t have enough detention facilities for illegals, so that when border agents capture illegals, they can house them there in these trailers until they are deported back to their homes.

We got illegals, FEMA’s got trailers, let’s match them up together.

That’s just the way it is.

Representative Pence (R-IN):

Madam Speaker, with record deficits and a national debt at nearly $8 trillion, it is time to level with the American people: we are not living within our means here in Washington, D.C.

Today, House conservatives will unveil our budget proposal for 2007. We are calling it Contract With America Renewed. Contract With America Renewed is a balanced Federal budget based on the budget passed by the House of Representatives in 1995 and was part of the Contract With America.

Now, while not every Member of the Republican Study Committee endorses every proposal in this budget, House conservatives believe that this Republican Congress should return to our 1994 roots of fiscal discipline and reform.

By enacting the Contract With America Renewed, we will balance the Federal budget, cut wasteful government spending, end outdated programs, while we protect Social Security and the President’s tax cuts and provide for the national defense. We will do all of this while we actually reform entitlements to meet those obligations for future generations.

The American people know that unbridled government spending threatens our future and our freedom. They long for leaders who tell it like it is and are honest about the choices we face. The men and women of the Republican Study Committee who will unveil the Contract With America Renewed today are such leaders and these are such choices.

Representative Cleaver (D-MO) may have set a record for distortions in a one minute speech:

the Bush-Dubai ports contract was a bad deal for national security when it involved six American seaports. Now it turns out the company would operate 22 U.S. ports for far more than the President said were included in the deal.

The “Bush-Dubai ports contract”? There is no such thing. Bush did not call up Dubai and tell them to purchase P&O. They decided to do so and the U.S. has no say in that sale whatsoever. The only thing we have control over is who leases terminals in our ports. The legislature set the proceedures and rules for approving such leases and the Bush administration followed it. That they now turn around and complain about that process is entirely their problem.

He then makes the absurdly false claim that “the company would operate 22 U.S. ports “. False. The actual number of ports to be operated by Dubai: Zero. Ports are operated by state government port authorities. Saying that a terminal operator would operate an entire port is like claiming Pakistan operates Dulles International because they lease a terminal there. He then goes on to claim that Bush made a false claim to the number of ports to be “operated”. Mr. Cleaver seems to be confusing the President with the press.

He then finished his tirade of stupidity with the incredibly obvious, yet utterly irrelevent, “American security should not be outsourced.” Of course, when one knows the actual facts involved and isn’t an opportunistic hack like most members of Congress, one knows that who does security was never at issue here.

Representative Scott (D-VA) told a whopper on the floor recently,

This chart shows the deficit over the years, how President Clinton took a $290 billion deficit and converted it into a $238 billion surplus, and as soon as this President came in, there has been a complete collapse.

The only thing President Clinton ever converted was the coloring of Monica’s dress. Clinton fought against every effort to balance the budget. It wasn’t until the Republicans shut down the government and forced him to the table that anything was accomplished. While Republicans were fighting to reign in government spending, liberal democrats like Max Sandlin (D-TX), who is still at this time a U.S. Representative, used the same old, worn out liberal playbook in his attack of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

I voted to protect seniors, children, low income workers, and Texas. While I strongly support the goal of the legislation to balance the Federal budget…I could not support this legislation.

“I support spending less, even when I don’t actually vote to do so! Please believe me!” Keep this in mind when Democrats complain about government spending. Another Bill Clinton will not reign in spending, the first one certainly made no effort to do so until a massive Republican takeover forced him too. Only true conservatism will solve this problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as tired as the next guy of having our economy continually downplayed by the left and their media enablers. But when you see comments like these below from Mrs Blackburn (R-TN) and Ms Foxx (R-NC), repectively,

Mr. Speaker, there are some days that it probably is a little depressing to be a mainstream media reporter.

In their world, our economy is sinking and the war on terrorism is absolutely hopeless.

Thankfully, in the real world, Americans know that we have drastically impacted al Qaeda’s ability to attack us, and our economy is booming. Yes, it is booming.

We are expecting growth this quarter somewhere around 4 percent or more, and that means jobs. We have created almost 5 million new jobs and had 3 years of strong, solid economic growth.

When you compare our economy to Europe, to most nations, we are in an amazing era. Unemployment is below 5 percent. That is outstanding, and it is a shame that the mainstream reporters just cannot get the story right.

Our tax policies reduced the burden of taxation on Americans, and they have responded as they always do, by creating new jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I am getting a bit tired of hearing some of my colleagues in the Democrat Party mislead the American people into thinking our economy is in poor shape. Here are the facts, plain and simple.

Our economy has been growing for 17 straight quarters. The National Association for Business Economics predicts the economy will grow at a 4.5 percent rate in the first quarter of 2006. After inflation, disposable incomes increased 2.2 percent in the last 12 months. The Federal Reserve reported that the median net worth of U.S. households increased 1.5 percent between 2001 and 2004. January’s unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent, which is the lowest monthly rate since 2001 and lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. There have been 29 consecutive months of job gains.

Mr. Speaker, no amount of spin from the left can change the fact that our economy is growing stronger every day under Republican leadership.

…you can’t help but wonder if Republicans are lacking in things to brag about? Ok, I’m happy you cut taxes and fought off the Clinton recession. But enough already of yesterday’s problems, let’s deal with tommorrow’s. You can start with border security and then education.

Reuters:

China hit back at U.S. criticism of its human rights record on Thursday, unveiling its own report detailing what it said were rights abuses in the United States, involving everything from racial discrimination to crime.

The Chinese report, issued by the State Council, or Cabinet, takes aim at U.S. democracy — calling it “a game for the rich” — the high murder rate, domestic wire tapping and detention of Iraqi reporters by U.S. forces in Iraq.

…

Other abuses involved “secret snooping, police abuse, wrong convictions and the highest ratio of people behind bars”, it said.

…

The United States was also a country plagued by murder and the private ownership of guns was widespread, the China report said.

“The unchecked spread of guns has caused incessant murders,” it said, detailing a series of gruesome incidents where people had killed their grandparents, school pupils or church goers.

Woah, forget about Gorbasms. With rhetoric like this we’ll soon be having some serious Jintaogasms on our hands.