An entertaining and looks-pretty-much-right post from Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic about Washington politics, “The Six Republicans Obama Listens To.”

Regardless of whether the President’s bipartisan outreach is producing legislative results, there is a handful of conservatives and Republicans that the president and his White House team respect. By respect, I mean, quite simply, the degree to which the White House responds to their worries and needs and believes that the time spent responding is useful and necessary. It is unclear whether the quality of this outreach differs from the respect accorded to Sen. Ben Nelson by the Bush White House.

Ambinder cites Sens. Collins and Snowe of Maine, Sen. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, columnist David Brooks, and Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith. Rahm Emmanuel is frequent caller to Brooks, eh?

And there’s the rest of the class, NAM included.

Others: Sen. Chuck Grassley, on budget and health care matters, as well as government operations; Sen. Orrin Hatch on health care; Sen. Mel Martinez on immigration; Govs. Schwarzenegger and Crist on policy matters, the environment and the stimulus; George Will; the National Association of Manufacturers (much more bipartisan recently) on labor and taxes; Sen. Lindsey Graham on detainee issues; Sen. Judd Gregg (still); what of Charles Krauthammer, who dined with Obama pre-inaugural? He’s read…but not influential.

Wonder what Ambinder’s original list looked like. The url for his post gives an indication of his having planned a different commentary.

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/the_five_conservatives_obama_listens_to.php

P.S. We do the same thing all the time. You could probably find 20 posts on the blog that are on a different topic than the url indicates.

Jay Timmons, Executive Vice President, will have comments and analysis through the evening on the election results, focusing on the White House and Congress.

I’ll be taking a look at some of state races, governors and judiciary.

Wow. Interest must be really high. As the doors opened this morning, the line wound halfway around the block. Who knew that many people wanted to buy Lou Reed’s “Berlin: Live at St. Anne’s Warehouse” the day of its release?

What did you think we meant?

Anyway, at the Chevy Chase Community Center at 8 a.m., there were indeed long lines, but not for people whose last names begin with T-Z. Voting took a total of seven minutes. The precincts around here are remarkably diverse politically, at least by District standards. McCain will probably get a good 7, 8 percent of the vote.

Elsewhere among the auguries, right before we reached the polling place, a commuting bicyclist smacked right into a car, or vice versa. We spotted eight people calling in the accident on their cell phones. Civic involvement lives! (Ambulance and firetruck came within five minutes; the biker survived but injured.)

And at the intersection of Connecticut and M, NW this morning, 8:45 a.m., a dead deer, a buck. Deer in Rock Creek Park, absolutely, but at one of the busiest downtown interesections in the city? Couldn’t have been shopping at Burberry’s. The cabbie said he’d never seen anything like it in his 18 years in D.C. (Alas, no camera.)

Apropos dead animals on Election Day, we’d missed this news about yet another California ballot measure. From USA Today: “If passed Tuesday, Proposition 2 would prevent California farmers from confining egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs and veal calves in ways that don’t allow them to lie, stand and extend their limbs.”

Wonder if there’s an interview with any presidential candidate saying,  ”So if somebody wants to build a confined-animal feeding operation, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum to meet all the regulations we’re imposing.” Would that be news?

From today’s Washington Post:

Handing environmentalists a major victory, a federal judge yesterday overturned the Bush administration’s plan to allow hundreds more snowmobiles to traverse Yellowstone and other iconic national parks each winter.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan threw out the National Park Service’s 2007 plan, calling it “arbitrary and capricious, unsupported by the record, and contrary to law.”

That’s possible, we suppose, depending on the record of how courts interpret the Organic Act that created the National Park Service in 1916. The Bush Administration certainly went through the full process of issuing proposed regulations, taking public comment, etc., and there was extensive input from groups and individuals who opposed the ban on snowmobiles. 

You know what was really arbitrary and capricious? Again from the Post:

The Clinton administration published a rule in late January 2001 that would have phased out snowmobiles in Yellowstone in favor of a system of public snow coaches, but Bush cancelled that plan and pushed for expanded snowmobile access.

Late January, as in January 22, 2001, two days AFTER George W. Bush was sworn into office.  The snowmobile rule was part of a slew of Clinton administration “midnight regulations” designed to pay off constituencies, evade accountability, and set up the next administration to stumble politically. Mission accomplished.

You can bet if the Bush Administration does anything similar, environmentalists will scream and the Post’s Juliet Eilperin will write accusatory articles about the manipulation of the regulatory process.

But, to its credit, the White House has sworn off “midnight regulations.” On May 9th, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten issued a memo (a copy is here), setting the deadline for new regs on June 1, specifically trying to stop last-minute regulatory enactments. (See The New York Times in “Administration Moves to Avert a Late Rules Rush” and a Bloomberg column, “Bush Aims to Stop Midnight Surge of New Rules.”)

As we noted in a previous post, the Bush position is almost a unilateral surrender politically. The next time a pro-regulation administration takes office, midnight regulations expanding government control of the economy will return to fashion, we’re sure.

But for now, credit to the White House for bringing a little bit of good government practices to the regulatory state. Now if we could only get judges to do the same.

Just because members of Congress have returned to their home districts or other points beyond, does not mean that trade associations have closed up shop for the month. On the contrary, there’s much work getting done.

Why, just this morning at the NAM headquarters, 13th and F Street, NW…

From Computer World:

Hackers, perhaps affiliated with a well-known Russian criminal network, have attacked and hijacked Web sites belonging to Georgia, the former Soviet republic now in the fourth day of war with Russia, a security researcher claimed on Sunday.
Some Georgian government and commercial sites are unavailable, while others may have been hijacked, said Jart Armin, a researcher who tracks the notorious Russian Business Network (RBN), a malware and criminal hosting network.

“Many of Georgia’s Internet servers were under external control from late Thursday,” Armin said early Saturday in an entry on his Web site.

More from the blog, Wilmette:

Russia and Georgia are at war, and the war includes Russia’s hacking and/or taking down Georgia’s official government websites. In one of the most unusual and creative uses of blogger, the Google blogging platform that hosts this blog and perhaps one million more, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Georgia is using blogspot as its method of communicating with the world. You can click here to see the government blog, which is available at http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/. There is a complete list of the military actions taken by Russia. Some of the earlier information also appears on the English version of the website of the President of Poland at the request of the President of Georgia.

President Bush has scheduled a White House press event on the Russian invasion of Georgia for 5:15 p.m. tonight.

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.)

AP has the story, “Non-senator wields fast gavel in 30-second session.” Less than 30, but in any case…

It was the first time in more than 60 years that someone other than a senator had to fill in. Back in 1947, a spat between the parties blocked the Senate from naming a presiding officer known as the president pro tempore. Then, Leslie Biffle, a confidante of President Harry Truman who was the secretary of the Senate, filled the chair instead.

A strict reading of Senate rules suggests that Friday’s session might not have been entirely legitimate since the rules say the secretary can preside if a president pro tempore hasn’t yet been chosen. President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., was elected last January.

Republicans, however, said they agreed with Democrats that Friday’s meeting passed muster.

A bipartisan consensus! Strictly speaking…

Here’s the rule again:

Standing Rules of the Senate
RULE 1
APPOINTMENT OF A SENATOR TO THE CHAIR

1. In the absence of the Vice President, the Senate shall choose a President pro tempore, who shall hold the office and execute the duties thereof during the pleasure of the Senate and until another is elected or his term of office as a Senator expires.

2. In the absence of the Vice President, and pending the election of a President pro tempore, the Acting President pro tempore or the Secretary of the Senate, or in his absence the Assistant Secretary, shall perform the duties of the Chair.

3. The President pro tempore shall have the right to name in open Senate or, if absent, in writing, a Senator to perform the duties of the Chair, including the signing of duly enrolled bills and joint resolutions but such substitution shall not extend beyond an adjournment, except by unanimous consent; and the Senator so named shall have the right to name in open session, or, if absent, in writing, a Senator to perform the duties of the Chair, but not to extend beyond an adjournment, except by unanimous consent.

A mild amusement of ours, very mild, is to watch the pro forma sessions of the U.S. Senate to see how quickly they can be dispensed with. These are the sessions the Majority Leader has scheduled every third day to prevent the President from making recess appointments. They’ve attracted media attention in the past (here and here, for example) because of the parliamentary maneuver and the brevity of the sessions. We missed Tuesday’s session, presided over by Sen. Jack Reed, by judging by the Daily Digest, pretty brief.

Today, 24 seconds. Very expeditious.

But who was that presiding? We thought we recognized all the women Democratic Senators. Who is that? Sen. Blanche Lincoln?

No, it turns out the Senate was presided over by Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson. So apparently you don’t have to have a U.S. Senator presiding to convene the Senate. Who knew? Wonder why the Majority just doesn’t sub Secretary Erickson in all the time.

…..

Sen. Reed’s appointment accompanied the reading of this statement (Page S8081):

To the Senate:
President pro tempore.

Under the provisions of rule I, section 3, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby appoint the Honorable JACK REED, a Senator from the State of Rhode Island, to perform the duties of the Chair.

ROBERT C. BYRD
President pro tempore

And here’s the Standing Rule the statement refers to. (See below.) Yes, it does say the Secretary of the Senate can be appointed to preside, but as we read it, only in the “absence of the Vice President, and pending the election of a President pro tempore.”

Anyway, just one of those interesting subtleties of the legislative process…

From Rep. Tom Davis’ opening statement at the House Oversight Committee hearing on FEMA’s use of travel trailers after Katrina (our emphasis):

But the federal agency witnesses who might help explain this formaldehyde Tower of Babel aren’t here today.  FEMA is focusing all its attention on Midwest flood relief.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and HUD, also have information relevant to our discussion this morning.  But they were only invited to participate late last Thursday, as federal offices were closing for the holiday weekend.  Understandably, they declined to participate without more time to prepare. 

That tactic sure sounds familiar. Earlier this year, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) hammered the EPA over and over again for failing to provide thousands of documents to a “field briefing” — not a hearing — she was holding in Los Angeles by her deadline of January 7th. Of course, her request wasn’t made until December 20th, right before the Christmas break, making it next to impossible to meet. And when EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson couldn’t attend the event, she put an empty chair on stage in an effort to embarrass him. 

SOP, apparently.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) is the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, which yesterday held a hearing on environmental health and safety issues raised by the emergency housing of Katrina Hurricane survivors in travel trailers. Rather than engage in the outrage and “gotcha” politics that are the committee’s SOP — the hearing referred to “FEMA’s Toxic Trailers” — Davis gave a balanced opening statement that respected the fact that sometimes the world is complicated and people and businesses do their best in difficult circumstances. From his news release, “Government Confusion, not Industry Conspiracy“:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said today he hopes Wednesday’s hearing on formaldehyde levels in trailers distributed to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita won’t focus on a “majority-manufactured conspiracy theory among trailer makers” but rather on the dysfunction of government agencies that has led to and sustained most of the problems.“We saw first-hand the confusion that reigned on the Gulf Coast after the 2005 storms,” said Davis, who chaired the Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina and produced a report highly critical of the government’s efforts.

“But we have to remember trailer manufacturers were pushed to their limits and did their best to help ill-prepared and disjointed government agencies respond to the disaster. Standards did not exist. Testing methods were not reliable. And occupants – already victimized by a 500-year storm – were caught in the middle.”

His prepared statement is here.

As we noted yesterday, the manufacturers who spoke did a stellar job in explaining the realities they faced, putting environmental issues in context, and describing the efforts they made to ensure their products’ safety. It’s nice to see that some members of the committee were receptive to the facts instead of promoting a pre-determined storyline.