Katrina Coverage in Video Library
August 27, 2010
Just type in the word Katrina and you will find lots of coverage of Hurricane Katrina. There are the original briefings and presidential visits. There are congressional hearings and video reports. Now there are retrospectives looking back on the disaster five years ago. Use the Video Library to follow a breaking story such as this.
Apologies on the House Floor
August 19, 2010
Charlie Rangel‘s speech on the House floor about his pending ethics case reminded me of other speeches by past members on mistakes or allegations of misdeeds. There was one members expelle – James Traficant in 2002.
Speakers Wright and Gingrich both gave speeches on the floor following their ethics investigations.
Barney Frank both gave an apology and was the subject of one by Majority Leader Armey.
Three other notable speeches of apology or near apology were Livingston, McKinney, and Thomas.
Each of these speeches arose from a different set of circumstances. Each has a different level of apology or contriteness. What binds them all, however, is that they are delivered in the well of the House – colleague to colleagues. In each case, the speaker realizes that they have broken faith with the norms of behavior. While there is a tendency to try to avoid confronting these cases, there comes a time when action is taken or when the member feels he or she must rise up and address his colleagues and if not offer an apology, at least proffer an explanation.
Senator Ted Stevens Farewell to the Senate
August 10, 2010
Who Spoke in Senate Kagan Debate?
August 6, 2010
Now that Elena Kagan has been confirmed as a Supreme Court justice we can look back at the Senate debate as it was covered on C-SPAN. The debate took place over three days, Tuesday, August 3 through Thursday, August 5. Fifty-seven senators spoke about her nomination on the floor during those three days. That means that forty-three senators did not speak. Thirty Republicans, twenty-six Democrats, and one Independent, (Lieberman, I-CT), spoke. Two of the Republicans who spoke voted in favor and the single Democrat who voted no did not speak. This translates into twenty-seven senators speaking in favor and twenty-eight senators speaking against the nomination.
All but one member of the Judiciary Committee spoke on the floor about the nomination. Senator Feingold (D-WI) did not speak. All the elected party leadership except for Senator Alexander (R-TN) also spoke. This means that there were thirty-five senators who were not part of the committee or the leadership who came to the floor to speak on the nomination. The Republicans dominated this group with twenty-two speaking while only twelve Democrats plus the one Independent, (Lieberman I-CT), spoke.
Modern Senate debate consists of serial speeches where one senator follows another to state their position. Looking at the video record, there appeared to be little if any engagement of senators with each other debating the nomination.
All these debates can be be found in the Congressional Chronicle under Senate Session the dates they occurred. The remarks are all labeled either Kagan nomination or executive session. C-SPAN has also collected all of the speeches by day. They can be found at ww.c-span.org/kagan>. You can look back and view the debates and listen for yourself or even do further analysis using the Video Library.