Cheney Drops the Bomb
 

According to the White House: "These things happen". :D

http://tinyurl.com/332js

ANKARA (Reuters) - President Bush is not taking Vice President Dick Cheney to the woodshed for uttering an expletive to a Democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate.

Cheney, annoyed at Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, had hurled the "F-word" at Leahy during a conversation on the Senate floor in Washington on Tuesday.

"These things happen from time to time," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan when asked what Bush's reaction to Cheney's remark had been.

"You're talking about one incident involving a private exchange," McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush on a trip to Ireland and Turkey. "It's not an issue with the president. The president is looking ahead."

Cheney had ripped into Leahy for his criticism this week of suspected war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran.

Cheney said on Friday he had no regrets about what he said.

"I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Fox News.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

I think these things should happen more often! C-SPAN would be very interesting and a lot more lively, like British parliment. Nothing is more fun than seeing a bunch of old, crotchety Brits tipsy on Newcastle yelling politics at each other, pointing fingers, and giving "reverse peace signs" while discussing a bill. Thats real gov't right there! Oi!

Welcome to the grand and glorious world of parliamentary procedure, OC.

Actually, (if I remember my Civics class right, and I think I do) before a bill gets a vote in the full House/Senate, it's looked over by the subcommittee that's relative to the nature of the bill (Appropriations, Armed Services, etc. etc.)

If that subcommittee votes in favor of the bill, then it's sent to the House/Senate floor for a full vote. However, there are all kinds of tricks to pull there that can kill the vote - procedural votes that can be initiated and eat up the clock (probably that vote to vote to see if they'll vote you were talking about); amendments can be tacked onto the bill, adding, subtracting, or subtly altering a few parts of the overall bill that can often result in vast shifts of support.

Case in point, from what I understand, the $87 billion that was slated for the Iraq war was, in the original bill, supposed to mostly, if not totally, come from Iraqi oil money. Then the bill was changed to have the taxpayers shoulder most of the burden, resulting in many people fine with the first source of revenue to vote against the bill in the final iteration.