Mary can’t even force Harry Reid to bring the Keystone Pipeline up for a vote.
Via The Advocate
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu has another opportunity early next week to put a dent in the reigning narrative about her — namely, that when Louisiana interests aren’t directly at stake, she acts like a hard-line left winger in lockstep with the Obama White House and the flagrantly two-faced Senate Majority Leader (and liberal spear-carrier) Harry Reid.
We all know Landrieu acts energetically and pragmatically, rather than ideologically, on Louisiana-specific issues (and I have credited her for it numerous times during the past quarter-century, especially for her work on garnering offshore oil revenues). On the flip side, her record on federal judicial nominations is as leftist as anybody this side of New York’s loudmouth Chuck Schumer. Now comes another test for her – with a twist.
On Monday or Tuesday, the Senate will vote to invoke cloture on (in other words, avoid a filibuster to block) the nomination of one David J. Barron to be a judge on the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (for the Northeast United States plus Puerto Rico). On his overall approach to matters judicial, Barron is as hard-liberal as liberal can be, completely alien to the values of a large majority of Louisianans. (More on that momentarily.) But in one area of civil liberties, he so dutifully did his job as an Obama political warrior at the Department of Justice that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has raised a serious yellow caution flag (although not a bright red flag of outright opposition) about his nomination.
Specifically, Barron authored at least two legal memos justifying the use of drones to kill American citizens operating abroad as suspected terrorists. Under severe pressure from the ACLU and others, the Obama administration recently made those two memos available to senators to review, but not to the public. Therefore, if Landrieu wants at least a little political coverage on the left as protection against anger from Obama and Reid for opposing their choice of Barron, she can cite the issue of drones and presidential non-transparency.
HT NRO