"Analysis: Democrats Win Some Fights"

[GreenPartyVoter]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican-controlled Congress is staggering home for the holidays. Democrats, demoralized after last year's election losses, have a spring in their step after outmaneuvering President Bush and GOP congressional leaders in a series of session-ending clashes.

"This has been the saddest day of my life," Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens lamented at one point, mourning the demise of legislation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The drilling issue has been a crusade of the 82-year-old Alaska lawmaker for more than a quarter-century. It was a White House priority, as well, and Bush made its enactment part of a first-term energy policy.

Stevens and other supporters had a shaky majority for the legislation, but critics skillfully used their political leverage and arcane congressional rules to thwart passage. Efforts to include it in a broad deficit-cutting bill were abandoned at the insistence of House GOP moderates, who made its removal a price of their support for changes in Medicare, Medicaid and the student loan program. The leadership agreed reluctantly, deciding in effect that saving the deficit cuts was a higher priority.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20051223/D8ELN3P06.html

[MrModerate]

1. I'm not sure that "you can't add provisions to this bill . . ."

"That have nothing to do with it and haven't been discussed on the floor" is so arcane.

[xchrom]

2. like i care what kind of emotional trauma sen stevens is feeling.

he's a fuckin rabid moron.