Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Hey now. Help me out here. What's this about a closed door session in the senate? Where does the right to a closed door session come from and what is it used for (besides stirring up news)? Are the dems quite suddenly growing a backbone?

4 comments:

Stacey Pelika said...

It was invoked under the mysterious "Rule 21," which hasn't been used in like 20 years. Any senator can invoke one to discuss any topic they think requires secrecy.

grrrbear said...

...in bed.

towwas said...

Yeah, they're supposed to do it to discuss secret stuff. But here's a sentence from the Post's story: "Plans to bring in electronic-bug-sniffing dogs were dropped when it became clear that senators would trade barbs but discuss no classified information."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101037.html

Apparently Bill Frist was mega-pissed.

towwas said...

Apparently secret sessions aren't all that rare - the Times says there were 6 during the Clinton impeachment business. (I think what's rare is one party calling it without discussing it with the other side first.)