I will never vote Republican again

[ACPlayer]

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Where were the Dems when Frist was attaching the Bill?

If you claim that they were unable to stop them, and that we therefore have a system that allows one congressman to simply attach any bill he wants to any other bill, would you agree that the entire system, and the constitution outlining it, is flawed?

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Blaming the constitution at this point is beside the point.

And yes, as near as I can tell, there was no vote on whether that language should be removed from the bill. The Dems, as I understand it, tried to remove the language from the bill (not clear if this was in committee or on the floor) but were not successful.

In any event, for this particular bill, under the rules in the senate at this time, it was the Republicans who ramrodded the language through using a bill that was a shoe in to pass and impossible to vote against - specially with a time deadline so that the parliamentarians could go campaigning.. They used parliamentary manoevers to make this happen.

In a democratic controlled senate the Democrats would likely have attached some language to make it easier to sue manufacturers or something and forced the issue in a similar way and would have been correctly lampooned for forcing an issue important to their base through in an unrelated bill. Has happened before will happen again. Frist felt gambling would help him in his presidential aspirations and perhaps the Reps in November.

[bkholdem]

Blame accomplishes nothing.