"Showdown With Bush Likely," Boehner calls it "very hot political potato"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

House Agrees To Vote On Ports
Showdown With President Likely

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701229_pf.html

Efforts by the White House to hold off legislation challenging a Dubai-owned company's acquisition of operations at six major U.S. ports collapsed yesterday when House Republican leaders agreed to allow a vote next week that could kill the deal.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) will attach legislation to block the deal today to a must-pass emergency spending bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A House vote on the measure next week will set up a direct confrontation with President Bush, who sternly vowed to veto any bill delaying or stopping Dubai Ports World's purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Co.

"Listen, this is a very big political problem," said House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), explaining that he had to give his rank-and-file members a chance to vote. "There are two things that go on in this town. We do public policy, and we do politics. And you know, most bills at the end of the day, the politics and the policy kind of come together, but not always. And we are into one of these situations where this has become a very hot political potato."

Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), said GOP leadership is "endorsing the viewpoint of our members and Chairman Lewis that we do not believe the U.S. should allow a government-owned company to operate American ports." White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said last night that the administration is "committed to keeping open and sincere lines of communication with Congress." She added, though, that "the president's position is unchanged."

[zbdent]

1. Lost in the "illegal wiretapping" debate

is the fact that Boehner was the guy making the phone call (which was picked up on the police scanner) that got Gingrich in trouble years ago . . . when Repukes decided that "wiretapping" was illegal . . .

[calimary]

2. Could you refresh my memory on that?

Sounds excruciatingly intriguing... More please! Thanks in advance.

[zbdent]

3. Have to get back to you later, my copy of the article is at home

[KansDem]

5. Here...

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/time/9701/27/lacayo.html

Meanwhile, Democrats turned the spotlight on themselves by trying to exploit the illegally taped conference call between Gingrich, his lawyer Ed Bethune and a group of Republican House leaders. As part of the December deal with the ethics committee, in which he admitted guilt, Gingrich had promised not to orchestrate a counterattack on the committee's judgment. But on the tape, Gingrich and the other parties to his call are mulling over how to spin the news of his admissions.

I'd almost forgotten about this!

[calimary]

8. Thanks, both of you!

Was this one of the things that led to his demise as Speaker of the House? My memory's spotty here - seems to me he was also one of those (Robert Livingstone was the other) who were exposed as philanderers outside their own marriages, just as the Clinton persecutions were gathering republi-CON momentum. But the way I remember it, newty went down, technically, for something else - a little scandal-ette like this. The fact that he lived in a big glass house on the cheating-on-your-wife front seemed fairly unspoken as I recall. Not sure that's all that went down, though, no less that I correctly assessed it.


So I'm reading the link, and here's some more...

One of them, Ohio Representative John Boehner, was joining in on a cellular car phone in Florida. That made the call susceptible to electronic eavesdropping by John Martin, a school maintenance man from Fort White, Florida, and his wife Alice, a teacher's aide. The Martins are Democratic Party activists who happen to keep a police radio scanner and a tape recorder in their car. As they explained in a press conference last week, they picked up Boehner's conversation, realized that Gingrich was also on the line and excitedly taped the call as "a part of history." Two and a half weeks later, they passed the tape to Representative Jim McDermott, the Seattle Congressman who was the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee. Soon after, it found its way to the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which published excerpts.

No wonder they've been giving McDermott shit.

[zbdent]

12. Here's my part

2/2/1997 Akron Beacon Journal (sorry, no link) editorial by Martin Gottlieb.

"More on that now-famous taped telephone conversation"

<snip>

The other (Ohio republican) was John Boehner, from an exurban area between Dayton and Cincinnati.

Boehner was the reason the famous phone call was taped, the one in which House Speaker Gingrich was heard to be planning strategy after a House subcommittee's action against him. The Floridians who taped the conversation heard it on their police scanner, because Boehner was participating from a car phone.

<snip>

Boehner was one of the early Gingrich-philes. He favored Gingrich for speaker even before being elected to congress in 1990, having apparently been one of the people Gingrich helped wend his way up politically.

[Bandit]

4. I guess Halliburton complained they didn't get it

So guess who will be chosen to replace the UAE?

[0007]

9. Of course the Carlyle Group will provide a helping help.

.....and keep the UAE as a silence partner.

[gratuitous]

6. Tough talk in March will collapse into ineffectuality in April

It's the GOP way! A lot of GOP Senators were talking tough at the end of last year about the administration's illegal domestic spying, but when the pedal got to the metal, they all lined up to give the corrupt Bush administration another blank check to do as it pleased.

[Sensitivity]

7. NeoCon Coup. Ceasar Bush gets the knife for sake of "Republic"

Or should we say "republican votes" in November.

Nothing rallies the RW base like bigotry.

[BlueIris]

10. GOD. I am SO tired.

I hate his evil, evil face.

[bpilgrim]

11. All Your Bases Belong To Us

"DP World officials suggested yesterday that within days, Peninsular & Oriental's operations will belong to them, no matter what Congress does."

will they globalize our "Critical Infrastructure" :shrug:

peace