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Thursday, September 28, 2006
Predict November’s outcome now
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By the end of the week, Congress will largely have finished its work for the year. The House on Wednesday gave President Bush the authority his administration needed to interrogate and prosecute terrorists. It’s expected that the Senate will agree to similar language today — after voting down an amendment offered by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania that would extend habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants, thereby opening the door for them to challenge in courts everything about their incarceration and interrogation. The fight among Republicans was whether to, as U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said, make clear whether the laws of armed conflict or domestic criminal activity apply. He’d argued, too, that it would invited judges, rather than military tribunals to determine who is and isn’t an enemy combatant.
That’s the most important matter before Congress. Certainly securing the borders required action. Left undone is legislation dealing with surveillance of calls to the U.S. from suspected terrorists abroad. But there’s a good chance Congress will return for a lame-duck session, probably between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Whatever your judgment of the performance of Congress, I come to the end still believing that Democrats lost their advantage during the second week of August, when they defeated U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, and the British reminded the world that terrorism is real, serious and active. Combine that with falling gas prices, improving consumer confidence and a stock market that’s near record levels, and GOP election disaster seems far less likely.
Congress didn’t have a spectacular year. Failures to achieve permanent tax cuts, including death tax repeal, hanging judicial nominations, token action on border security and the absence of more aggressive efforts to eliminate pork were all disappointments. But seriousness about the stakes in the war on terror and good economic news may have saved the day for Republicans.
Congress goes home tomorrow. Their achievements and failures are now largely known. Put yourself on the record. Be the pundit. Predict November. Are incumbents in the House and Senate off the hook?
