More misdirection or sleaziness as usual?

[fishbob]

Fake news, fake boobs, fake sweetener, now fake elected representatives. Or pod people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801685.html

According to the official Congressional Record of Dec. 21, 2005, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) held a long conversation on the Senate floor about an amendment bearing Graham's name that restricts the legal rights of detainees in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. . . . . .

. . . But those exchanges never occurred. Instead, the debate -- which runs 15 pages and brims with conversational flourishes -- was inserted into the Congressional Record minutes before the Senate gave final approval to the legislation. . . . .

. . . . Members of the House and Senate routinely insert lengthy statements into the Congressional Record without uttering them on the floor or anywhere else. But Senate historian Richard Baker said that colloquies -- contrived debates between two or more lawmakers -- are relatively rare. Baker said he could not recall another example that included feigned banter of the type found in the Graham and Kyl debate.

[Manny]

More misdirection or sleaziness as usual?

Both. I've always felt that "revise and extend" was BS. I guess it started innocously enough, so that Representatives could enter blather about their local high school's field hockey team without actually taking time on the floor. Stuff like that plays in a lot of places -- 'gee, our spelling bee and bake sale is in The Congressional Record! Thanks, Representative Cheatum!' But it's used for substantive stuff like this and to put factual statements into the record which ought not be there (that was a big part of the Abramoff scandal -- 'here's $3,000, now get it on record that the leader of that Indian tribe is a fine man worthy of receiving a casino license and you urge the Interior Department to approve it post haste!').

If I were SCOTUS (daidle deedle daidle daidle daidle deedle daidle dum) I'd stop accepting the Congressional Record as an indication of Congressional intent and require the government to provide actual debate transcripts, notarized by the Sergeant at Arms or the Clerk or whoever.