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Specter: "I Do Not Slip Things In"
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) angrily addressed his insertion of a measure that changed the law governing the selection of U.S. Attorneys during this morning's hearing on the issue.
As we reported last month, Specter inserted an obscure provision into the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act that made it possible for the administration to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys for an indefinite period. The measure was inserted when the bill was in conference committee. "Specter slipped the language into the bill at the very last minute," we wrote.
This morning, Specter said that he found the report "offensive" and proclaimed, “I do not slip things in.” If an item is potentially controversial, he argued, he makes it a practice of alerting other senators to the issue.
The bill was not voted on for three months after the conference, Specter continued, giving senators plenty of time to notice and object to the measure. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and others have said that the short and obscurely-worded measure, part of a very large and extremely controversial bill, simply went unnoticed as the fight over its passage roiled for months.
Specter explained that the request for the language's insertion came from a Justice Department representative, and was handled by Brett Tolman*, who is now the United States Attorney for Utah, and that the principal reason for the change was to resolve "separation of power issues."
According to the original law, the Attorney General could appoint interim U.S. Attorneys, but if they were not nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate within 120 days of being appointed, the federal district court would appoint a replacement. Justice Department officials apparently didn't like that judges were able to appoint U.S. Attorneys, members of the executive branch, so the new language removed the court's involvement in the process. But in doing that, the change also allowed the administration to handpick replacements and keep them there in perpetuity.
As he has before, Specter said this morning that he supports changing the law back to its previous version.
Note: We'll post a transcript of Specter's remarks as soon as we have them.
Update: Uh oh. In remarks later in the hearing, Sen. Feinstein addressed Specter's insertion of the measure, making a point of saying that the language had indeed been “slipped in," adding that it had been slipped in "in a way that I don’t believe that anyone on this committee knew it was in the law... no Republican, no Democrat."
Later Update: OK. In later remarks in response to Feinstein, Specter said that he actually didn't know about the added provision until Feinstein approached him recently about the issue. After Feinstein's inquiry, Specter says, he asked his chief counsel about the issue, who then explained what had happened. So according to him, Specter's staff was responsible for the provision, but Specter himself didn't know about it.
Latest Update: Here is a transcript of Specter's remarks:
When Senator Schumer says that the provision was inserted into the PATRIOT Act in the dead of night, he’s wrong. That provision was in a Conference Report which was available for examination for some three months. The first I found out about the change in the PATRIOT Act occurred a few weeks ago when Senator Feinstein approached me on the floor and made a comment about two U.S. Attorneys who were replaced under the authority of the change in law in the PATRIOT Act which altered the way U.S. Attorneys are replaced.Prior to the PATRIOT Act, U.S. attorneys were replaced by the Attorney General for 120 days and then appointments by the Court or the First Assistant succeeded to the position of U.S. Attorney. The PATRIOT Act gave broader powers to the Attorney General to appoint replacement U.S. Attorneys. I then contacted my very-able Chief Council Michael O’Neill to find out exactly what had happened. Mr. O’Neill advised me that the requested change had come from the Department of Justice, that it had been handled by Brett Tolman, who is now the US Attorney for Utah.
That the change had been requested by the Department of Justice because there had been difficulty with the replacement of a US Attorney in South Dakota where the court made a replacement which was not in the course with the statute, hadn’t been a prior federal employee and did not qualify. There was also concern because in a number of districts the courts had questioned the propriety of their appointing power because of separation of powers. As Mr. Tolman explained it to Mr. O’Neill, those were the reasons and the provision was added to the PATRIOT Act, and as I said was open for public inspection for more than three months while the Conference Report was not acted on.
If you’ll recall, Senator Schumer came to the floor on December 16, and said he had been disposed to vote for the PATRIOT Act but had changed his mind when the New York Times disclosed the secret wiretap program, electronic surveillance.
May the record show that Senator Schumer is nodding in the affirmative; there is something we can agree on. In fact we agree sometimes in addition.
Well, the Conference Report wasn’t acted on for months and at that time this provision was subject to review.
Now, I read in the newspaper that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter, slipped it in. I take umbrage and offense to that. I did not slip it in and I do not slip things in. That is not my practice. If there is some item which I have any idea is controversial I tell everybody about it. That’s what I do. So I found it offensive to have the report of my slipping it in. That’s how it got into the bill.
*Update: This post incorrectly originally stated that Tolman worked for the Justice Department. In fact, he worked as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Specter was Chairman at the time .
Comments (57)
pol wrote on February 6, 2007 11:14 AM:Whether he "slipped it in," or not, your report got Specter's and the Congress's attention. Good show!
DonQ wrote on February 6, 2007 11:19 AM:"If an item is potentially controversial, he argued, he makes it a practice of alerting other senators to the issue."
So did Specter alert other senators to this clearly controversial issue?
Crust wrote on February 6, 2007 11:21 AM:Good show, indeed.
"If an item is potentially controversial, [Specter] argued, he makes it a practice of alerting other senators to the issue." Well, did he alert other senators in this case? If not, that sure sounds like he "slipped it in" to me. His one remaining excuse would be that his colleagues had 3 months to notice the needle he put in the haystack; sorry, I'm not impressed.
Anonymous wrote on February 6, 2007 11:21 AM:"...This morning, Specter said that he found the report "offensive" and proclaimed, “I do not slip things in.” If an item is potentially controversial, he argued, he makes it a practice of alerting other senators to the issue..."
A classic non-denial denial.
Offensive does not mean yes or no.
And use of the active voice "I do not slip things in" may not necessarily mean that back then, in the last Congress, he DID not slip things in."
Anonymous wrote on February 6, 2007 11:29 AM:So Specter feels he didn't slip the language in because there was 3 months to find it. Not much of an excuse. Here's my question - when he got this little gem from a representative of the executive branch, which the guy told him was to resolve 'separation of powers' issues, did not a little bell go off in his mind? Gee, the executive branch has been in power-grab mode for the past 6 years, maybe I should have one of my legal aides take a look at what the heck this actually says? Or maybe he thought, oh, sure, I have no problem being a tool for the White House. I'll be their lap dog any day. Wording in a bill for you? Sure thing!
Frank wrote on February 6, 2007 11:35 AM:Nice going for that quintessential Bush enabler Spector. His legislative antics are so sycophantic, it is an embrassment. Of course the AG is stacking the deck..It is for the same motive as the attempt to get an adoring female white house legal counsel to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. It would be stupid to think there was no other motive. The administration is preparing for the legal battles perpetrated by bush's criminal acts ahead.
So many dirty hands have helped this empty cowboy hat to sit in the white house. The dirtest is the SCOTUS. Is it any wonder that the rule of law in this country is a joke.
Monty wrote on February 6, 2007 11:35 AM:So Spectre doesn't "slip things in?" Fair enough. Does he "insert language into bills at the last moment without giving other senators a heads-up?"
Of the many degradations suffered in recent years, destruction of meaning is one of the worst.
john o. wrote on February 6, 2007 11:49 AM:Specter is standing in a puddle of water claiming he wasn't in the tank. Just not credible. Keep up the good work.
KWM wrote on February 6, 2007 11:50 AM:What's truly 'offensive', is the increasingly palpable fact that he did, indeed 'slip it in'....well done TPM...
DallasNE wrote on February 6, 2007 11:52 AM:So, if separation of powers was the issue before, how can reverting back to the old law correct the separation of powers issue. It is good this time that Specter caves but where are his principles?
Separation of powers actually is the issue. But it is with stripping the Legislature from the process that is the problem, not the Courts. We don't need a bunch of Mike Brown's acting as US Attorneys. We need qualified people filling those positions rather than someone knowledgeable in the sex lives of race horses or whatever.
Redshift wrote on February 6, 2007 12:01 PM:Obviously, no one could have foreseen that this administration would abuse this new power just because they were demanding it and they have abused every previous power they've been given!
And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those darn voters!
mac2151 wrote on February 6, 2007 12:03 PM:The troops die for freedom while Arlen gives it away.
Anonymous wrote on February 6, 2007 12:06 PM:>>So according to him, Specter's staff was responsible for the provision, but Specter himself didn't know about it.
Wow
sounds just like '24.'
I hope Sen. Spector doesn't end up in an interogation room at CTU after revealing someone's plan!
Mary wrote on February 6, 2007 12:10 PM:This sounds like the patter from the Libby trial.
"Offensive" well yes, but "unduly offensive?" uh, well, never mind.
The guy who is USA in Utah (which already says so much), Tolman, did he go through advice and consent?
Curt wrote on February 6, 2007 12:30 PM:Once again the senator is lying. Remember this is the guy that buy time to stall and then rolls over. It really is a matter of trust. How can anyone trust that sleazebag?
Peter Carlsen wrote on February 6, 2007 12:32 PM:The fact that you don't even know what your staff is doing in your name is even worse. Why isn't Spector supervising his staff?
And was Bret Tolman rewarded, by being appointed a US attorney in Utah because of service rendered in inserting this language and others?
Isn't this the man who sold (invented) the pristine bullet theory that explained the JFK murder? He seems to have been able to sell whoppers for some time.
Peter Carlsen wrote on February 6, 2007 12:33 PM:The fact that you don't even know what your staff is doing in your name is even worse. Why isn't Spector supervising his staff?
And was Bret Tolman rewarded, by being appointed a US attorney in Utah because of service rendered in inserting this language and others?
Isn't this the man who sold (invented) the pristine bullet theory that explained the JFK murder? He seems to have been able to sell whoppers for some time.
Dungheap wrote on February 6, 2007 12:36 PM:So Specter didn't slip it in but he himself didn't know about it until after Feinstein approached him on the issue?
That makes sense.
Jan wrote on February 6, 2007 12:43 PM:Sen. Specter has become a sad, sad little man. What an incredible load of... incompetence.
AK wrote on February 6, 2007 12:48 PM:The 'RIGHT' hand does not know what the 'LEFT' hand does.!!!
Classis denial non-denail. What else can we expect from the republicans...
CheeseMoose wrote on February 6, 2007 12:53 PM:Spector will be played by F. Murray Abraham in the movie version of his corrupt life. Is there anyone you can more easily imagine as the archetypal Hanging Judge, wearing a white wig and sniffing a handkerchief as he condemns the accused to death? The sexual pleasure he gets from proximity to power is evident every time he moves his spittle-moistened lips to utter another abstruse legalism. Jeff Gannon had no better customer than this closeted sycophant. This guy is Satan.
JeffC wrote on February 6, 2007 1:22 PM:It was actually a magic addition to the Patriot Act that was found intact on John Connally's stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital. It passed unharmed through the entire length of Specter's body, then took a right turn and landed in the Patriot Act.
DanF wrote on February 6, 2007 1:33 PM:Look ... I know Senators don't have the time to read every piece of legislation that comes before them. But. When something labelled the "USA PATRIOT ACT" hits your desk, bells need to go off. When rights of Americans are being curtailed by the obvious language of the bill, there is no excuse for not thinking there aren't less obvious nasty-bits in the bill. There should not have been any surprises. This should have been one of the most vetted pieces of legislation in recent history. Democrats should have had a team of legal experts on this thing looking specifically at how the legislation would be abused.
MNPundit wrote on February 6, 2007 1:59 PM:Hey, good job! TPM Muckraker is has arrived if it's being bandied about in the Senate regularly.
NOFLTWLT wrote on February 6, 2007 2:00 PM:If he doesn't "slip things in" the what was that awful fucking story he came up with during the Warren Commission's investigation of the J.F.K. assassination?
Specter is a a tool of those who orchestrated that assasination and he has been living off the scraps of the service he provided to the group who had Kennedy killed. His only job is to do anything those behind the scenes people tell him to do, no matter how bad he looks in doing so.
The other service Specter serves is to jump in and act all gung-ho against the administration and then fold in the end, giving them whatever they want.
I can't wait for this weasel to kick off.
ohiomeister wrote on February 6, 2007 2:29 PM:I don't slip controversial items into bills.
I just have my staff slip them into bills so that I have plausible deniability.
With Spector, instead of using Occam's Razor to explain what he does (the simplest answer is usually right), it's the most cowardly option that is usually the correct one.
dick c wrote on February 6, 2007 2:41 PM:I don't get it... A staffer slips language into a bill, doesn't tell anyone, nobody who voted on it knew it was there, yet it's allowed to stand as law!
I'm not smart enough for this crap.
Jalmari wrote on February 6, 2007 2:46 PM:Just like Bush: blame the subordinates. Arlen must be some kind of prodigy.
wagonjak wrote on February 6, 2007 3:01 PM:If Senator Spector didn't know about this incredibly stupid insertion in the bill, and one of his aides did this behind his back....
Has This Staffer Been FIRED?!!!
Amos Anan wrote on February 6, 2007 4:01 PM:Doesn't this make everyone in Congress ashamed? That a powerful and dangerous provision could be inserted into a law as fine print that's so fine it isn't noticed for months by lawmakers and then approved by all - is a regular occurrence. For all we and apparently anyone else knows, a "Bad Will Hunting" janitor could have made this a law. Makes you proud of the American legislative process of representative democracy?
The computer world has had collaborative document revision handling for years. Any and all changes should be instantly flagged, noted, considered and voted on with full knowledge and understanding. There's no excuse for this other than the advantages of a corrupt system to the corrupt people involved in it.
Sorry, but my dog wrote this law.
statusquomustgo wrote on February 6, 2007 4:19 PM:I just don't get it, or maybe I am confused.
Just who the hell runs the governemnt anyway? The staffers, the Attorney General's office?
Fire the bastard and take the crap out. I am sick of some bribbed and paid for lackey sliding stuff in at the last minute AND NOBODY READS THE BILL AND PASSES IT ANYWAY.
Heaven help us all, what IDIOTS.
kennywayne wrote on February 6, 2007 4:31 PM:you're all a bunch of jackals.
Kinnison wrote on February 6, 2007 4:56 PM:With that Utah connection, one might wonder whether Sen. Bob Bennett might be behind the arras --
Mark F. wrote on February 6, 2007 5:27 PM:If Specter knew about the insertion, he's an unprincipled creep. If he didn't, he's an incompetent twit. Either way, Specter's got a lot of explaining to do.
John Latimer wrote on February 6, 2007 7:05 PM:I have a theory that the amendment actually ricocheted into the Patriot Act after traveling through a bill approving the Administration's wire tapping policy and then took a crazy turn before bouncing off a bill that allows torture and did away with habeas corpus
jm wrote on February 6, 2007 8:48 PM:The buck stops with Arlen. His staff put it in the bill, he is responsible. To think that after the two senators from Maine, he was considered most likely to flip parties.
I find it ironic and moronic to argue that the item was in the bill for three months and "was open for public inspection for more than three months while the Conference Report was not acted on." Meanwhile, he didn't find it and he expected someone else to? Now he is against it?
OK, I'm married, I know what to do when I screw up - fix it, not just apologize. So Senator Spector needs to fix this by writing new language into a new bill to set things the way they were.
Thinking Person wrote on February 6, 2007 11:35 PM:I wonder how many on either side of the aisle read the bills they're voting on. In Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, John Conyers said when Moore interviewed him that no one ever reads all of every bill. That seemed so outrageous to me that I've never forgotten it.
Anonymous wrote on February 7, 2007 6:42 AM:they should trash this un Patriot(ic) act. It fundamentally changes everything about America to BUSH BUSH BUSH
NG wrote on February 7, 2007 10:04 AM:Hmmmm. The whole Tolman/provision-insertion scenario smelled fishy already. Now it's a lot fishier:
http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_049180925.html
tomg wrote on February 7, 2007 10:34 AM:just another sad pathetic comment from an elected leader..... ship of state, more like the ship of fools
oldude wrote on March 6, 2007 8:12 PM:I was born under Herbert Hoovers term in office,can remember F.D.R.and WW2,Korean war, cold war, Vietnam war and all the presidents up to the present.
Of all the administrations I lived under I've never saw one as screwed up as this one today.
Arlan Spector and the Patriotic act is the worst yet .It makes me sick
Specter and PATRIOT wrote on March 9, 2007 3:27 PM:The idea Specter didn't know is just too much BS. Even if that slim possibility were true, Specter is still responsible, and the WH still felt comfortable using his office to slip this in, knowing he'd take it, just as he always does.
Now specter is dragging ass on the USA hearings.
He was clearly trying to discredit Iglesias, playing dumb as though there was another explanation besides unethical pressuring for the call.
Why the absurd habit of giving Specter the benefit of the doubt? All evidence indicates Specter and the WH use that irrational habit against Dems, again and again.
Specter is a tool for the WH to pull stunts like this, again and again. That's the reputation he deserves.
Time to call him on it once and for all.
Anyone still not wise to his act also deserves ridicule for being a chump. As another poster put it, Specter is Lucy to some Democrats as Charlie Brown. And Charlie Brown in context of a US Lawmaker, the only opposition we have to people like Bush, is not my idea of an endearing character, but an idiot.
Anonymous wrote on March 19, 2007 11:36 PM:My God!! How come so many people are saying the words likening "Criminal" and "Impeach", but nothing is happening. I, for one REGISTERED DEMOCRAT, am curious as to the slowness of getting Bush out of the White House! Is it because our alternative worse?
Bruce wrote on March 19, 2007 11:38 PM:My God!! How come so many people are saying the words likening "Criminal" and "Impeach", but nothing is happening! I, for one REGISTERED DEMOCRAT, am curious as to the slowness of getting Bush out of the White House! Is it because our alternative is worse? C'mon America! WAKE UP
pre amerikkkan wrote on March 26, 2007 4:13 PM:We are sitting here in front of a computer being outraged but without resources or power and there is so much going on just to keep food on the table, much less have decent health care or education for our kids.
if we no longer live in a democracy, we can now re-vision how we want to live together, because what is politics after all, a way to form alliances and learn to compromise and debate--live together? the politics in place now is not working, in fact, it's a horror story, but we're at a loss for what more to do about it and splintering off into other parties may not help. so the ONE mother of all third parties has to stand up NOW or we can all agitate for our states to secede from this mess, or. . . what? Who will tell us what we need to know? Who can we trust?
Brookklyn Diogenes wrote on March 27, 2007 1:23 PM:Arlen Specter says Feinstein should have sen the item in the bill during the 90 days. It is Feinstein's fault because she believed thatSpecter would not slip someting into the bill How is it that the Chairman did not look at the bill?
Ann in AZ wrote on April 1, 2007 9:24 AM:Isn't Spector up for reelection in '08? Can't control his underlings, but he wants to keep his job? Same goes for Hatch if he knew about this and didn't say anything. What I want to know now is, why is Tolman still in the USA job in Utah? Seems to me this act of his was unethical, since he didn't inform anybody about what he was doing. If he doesn't understand the system of checks and balances, seems to me he shouldn't be in a position of administering justice.
Calderon wrote on April 3, 2007 3:34 PM:I've read all these comments, and I think it's distressing how every post reflects a lack of thinking. Everyone seems convinced that Specter had bad motives, put nobody seems to have anything to say about the substance. The provision was not controversial. The Justice Department political appointees may be aligned with the White House, but not necessarily, and it's commonly known that DOJ career staff, who presumably proposed the provision, tend to be Democrats. The provision clearly reacted to a Constitutional problem involved in the federal judges appointing what is otherwise a political appointment. And, read the transcript of Specter's explanation: it was a response to unqualified people getting appointed. Do all these posters not have a problem with this? And why does Specter get criticized when Feinstein--notably lacking in sharpness--is the one complaining because she had not done the legwork to vet otherwise uncontroversial issues she had an unreasonable problem with? It seems pretty clear Specter's point is that he didn't bother giving anyone a heads-up on this provision b/c it's uncontroversial. And I advise people to read the USA PATRIOT Act, and judge for themselves how this provision rates in terms of controversy. I worked for Senate Judiciary at the time, and put provisions into USA Patriot myself, and I know for a fact that Specter, Leahy (D-VT, ranking member), Schumer, Feinstein, and many others didn't know many of these provisions were in there because there were thousands, each member has priorities, and many of these provisions are extremely minor and noncontroversial. I would rank a Constitutional fix proposed by a Democrat-leaning DOJ staffer among the less controversial provisions.
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