Lahood backs vote inquiry

Lahood backs vote inquiry

Outgoing Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) has agreed to sign onto a letter with Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) asking the ethics committee to determine whether House rules were broken during a vote earlier this year.

The bipartisan pair planned to send the missive to the committee Tuesday evening. House rules require the ethics committee to act when any member lodges a complaint or a request.

{mosads}“I don’t know if there’s another Republican who chaired the House more than I did,” LaHood said. “I thought the vote was wrong and someone should look into it.”  

LaHood is considered an expert in parliamentary procedure and was often asked to chair the House during high-profile votes, including during President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings. He said he would have signed the letter even if he weren’t retiring at the end of this session.

Abercrombie and LaHood want the ethics committee to determine whether a new Democratic House rule against holding votes open for the purpose of changing their outcome was broken.

In March, House leaders held open a vote in order to pass a bill creating an outside ethics office. The day after the vote, Abercrombie was vowing revenge against his leaders.

The outside ethics office measure passed, 229-182, but in order to move the bill, Democratic leaders held open a procedural vote that preceded it for more than 10 minutes while they pressed several Democratic members to change their votes from no to yes.

If that vote had failed, opponents of the ethics office could have wrested control of the floor, offered alternatives or other amendments, and potentially killed the outside ethics office altogether.

Abercrombie said he has sent a note to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), letting her know that the ethics committee request is not an attack on her leadership tenure. He simply wants to know if the new vote rule is feasible.

“I’m not trying to play games,” he remarked.

Susan Crabtree

Gitmo closure at ‘standstill’

The Pentagon is “stuck” in its efforts to close Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates has said for months he wants to close the Guantanamo facility, where the United States holds terrorism suspects. Last year, he appointed a task force to examine the issue.

But on Wednesday, when asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) during a defense appropriations hearing, Gates told the panel that there has been no progress with the shuttering of Guantanamo.

“I think the brutally frank answer is that we’re stuck, and we’re stuck in several ways,” said Gates.

Among the Pentagon quandaries is how to handle about 70 detainees who are ready to return to their home countries.

The problem, Gates said, is that their governments won’t accept them — or that, if they do, the Pentagon is concerned they will be let loose.

The Pentagon also does not know what to do with another 70 to 80 detainees who can’t be sent home but also will not be charged with any crimes.

With regard to moving these detainees to prisons within the United States, Gates said he has encountered “a serious ënot in my backyard’ problem.”

“I haven’t found anybody who wants these terrorists to be placed in a prison in their home state,” he told Feinstein.

“So those three problems, I think, really have brought us to a standstill in trying to work [through] this problem.”

Feinstein countered Gates by saying that there are several maximum-security facilities in isolated areas across the country.

“It seems to me that nothing that you’ve said absolves the enormous loss of credibility we have in the eyes of the world by being called hypocrites,” said Feinstein.

She added that it will take “some innovation” to close Guantanamo. “There are many of us in this Congress that would like to work with you on it,” Feinstein said.

Roxana Tiron