NORTON META TAG

09 February 2017

Why Silencing Senator Warren Is Actually Backfiring On GOP & Senate Republicans did not use Rule 19 when Ted Cruz attacked Mitch McConnell 8FEB17


HEY republicans, it is 2017 not 1817 or even 1917 and women are NOT going to tolerate being told to shut up! YOU MAKE US PROUD +Senator Elizabeth Warren !!!!! From +Huffington Post with Coretta Scott King's letter followed by the +PolitiFact article.....

Why Silencing Senator Warren Is Actually Backfiring On GOP


Shaheen

McConnell interrupted her, saying she had impugned another senator.

Last night, the Senate voted 49-43 to silence Elizabeth Warren as she read a letter written by the wife of Martin Luther King Jr, Coretta Scott King. King sent this letter to the Senate in 1986 when the chamber was in debate on whether or not to confirm Jeff Sessions to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench.
King’s explains:
Blacks still fall far short of having equal participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts continue to be made to deny blacks access to the polls, even where blacks constitute the majority of the voters.
It has been a long, up-hill struggle to keep alive the vital legislation the protects the most fundamental right to vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws, and thus to the exercise of those rights by black people should not be elevated to the federal bench.
King argues that during Jeff Sessions’ time as a prosecutor in Alabama, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” As Sen. Elizabeth Warren read this portion of the letter, McConnell interrupted the senator, saying she had impugned another senator. “She was warned. She was given and explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Senator Warren followed up by stepping outside the senate doors and reading the letter in it’s entirety using Facebook Live to get her message out. “They can shut me up, but they can’t change the truth,” Warren later told CNN’s Don Lemon.

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.

- Mitch McConnell

Overnight, #ShePersisted and #LetLizSpeak went viral. People from across the country began sharing pictures and stories of other brave women who have been silenced by men but continued fighting the fight against discrimination. We’ve seen this before. The vote to keep Warren quiet was a textbook case of males silencing a women.

If you don't see how the brave people speaking up are mostly women, and how the  is set on silencing them, then WAKE UP...

If u need to silence words of a civil rights icon b/c it impugns ur senator, perhaps the problem is ur senator?

.@SenateGOP should have watched the . Lots of women who have been told to "take their seat" aren't sitting anymore. 
“Senator Warren is so articulate and precise with her words that it drives the Republicans blood pressure through the roof. They know the following she has. I think this shows that the women of the Democratic party will not be silenced.” Sen. Dick Durbin told MSNBC. Following Elizabeth Warren being kicked off the senate floor, Tom Udall took the stand and began reading the same letter read by Warren and was followed by Sherrod Brown from Ohio. Neither were silenced.
“I will not be silent about a nominee for Attorney General who has made derogatory and racist comments that have no place in our justice system.” Elizabeth Warren
As if women needed anymore reason to continue on with their fight, it seems as though the Republicans have done nothing but dig themselves in a bigger hole by firing up the Progressive base. This comes just two days after the Women’s March on Washington announced “A Day without Women” strike.



THE WASHINGTON POST
Read the letter Coretta Scott King wrote

Senate Republicans did not use Rule 19 when Ted Cruz attacked Mitch McConnell

ShaheenMostly True
Shaheen
"Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him."
— Jeanne Shaheen on Wednesday, February 8th, 2017 in a CNN interview
Senate Democrats attacked their GOP colleagues for using a procedural regulation to shut down Elizabeth Warren’s criticism of a fellow senator, but not when Texas Republican Ted Cruz did the same thing two years ago.
During a Feb. 8 CNN interview, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., excoriated Republicans for invoking Rule 19 the day before to force Warren to stop her floor speech against Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
Warren, D-Mass., had been reading a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King that protested Sessions’ failed appointment as a federal judge in Alabama. The letter from King said Sessions "has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."
During Warren’s speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky cited Rule 19, which prevents senators from impugning one another. Senators voted along party lines to silence Warren, a move Shaheen said was hypocritical.
"Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him, so this has been a very subjective process," Shaheen said.
Cruz did take to the Senate floor in 2015 to accuse McConnell of lying to him. While other Republicans did admonish Cruz for doing so, the rule that silenced Warren was not invoked.
‘A simple lie’
According to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Rule 19 says in part that "no Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."
Shaheen and other Democrats argued that if the rule applies to Warren, it also should have applied to a July 24, 2015, speech by Cruz.
He took to the Senate floor to castigate McConnell for allegedly making a private deal with some senators to allow a vote to renew the charter for the Export-Import Bank in exchange for votes on a trade deal. Cruz and many other Republicans oppose the bank, which acts as the nation’s official credit agency to help businesses find foreign markets.
After McConnell moved a proposal to reauthorize the bank through a transportation bill, Cruz went on the attack. Cruz said McConnell had told him there was no such deal — "Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times," Cruz said — but Cruz’s office staff had said McConnell was lying.
"I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie. ... What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie," Cruz said.
So Cruz didn’t specifically use the word "liar" to describe McConnell, an important caveat. But he did make it very clear that, according to Cruz’s account, McConnell had told him and others a lie.
McConnell denied the charge, saying he had held the position that the transportation bill would be the best opportunity to hold a vote on renewing the bank’s charter (it passed).
We didn’t find any evidence that anyone in the Senate moved to silence Cruz with Rule 19. But Republicans did denounce his attack on the party leader as improper in the days following.
"I think it was outside the realm of Senate behavior," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN a couple of days later. "I would never contemplate going to the floor of the Senate and impugning the integrity of another senator. Just not something we do here. I really think it was a very wrong thing to do."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, then the Senate president pro tempore, suggested in a date floor speech that Cruz may have been grandstanding to draw attention to his presidential bid.
"Squabbling and sanctimony may be tolerated in other venues — or perhaps on the campaign trail — but they have no place among colleagues in the United States Senate," Hatch said. "The Senate floor has even become a place where senators have singled out colleagues by name to attack them in personal terms, to impugn their character, in blatant disregard for Senate rules."
No senator defended Cruz’s speech, and he was defeated by his own party on several procedural maneuvers in the days after he spoke. His Texas colleague, GOP Sen. John Cornyn, even questioned Cruz’s recollection of events, noting he "would have to say he's mistaken" about what McConnell said.
Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political science professor, further noted to us that the Senate majority leader isn’t the only senator who can invoke Rule 19.
"(What Cruz said) was definitely a violation of the norms of the Senate and he was not called to account," Koger said. "I would just say that any senator — including any Democrat or any Republican — could have called him on it."
Our ruling
Shaheen said, "Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him."
Cruz didn't call him a "liar," exactly, but he did say in a 2015 floor speech that McConnell had told him a lie about whether the Senate majority leader had made a deal to renew the Export-Import Bank’s charter. Republicans chastised Cruz afterward, saying it was not the proper thing to do. But he was not silenced under Rule 19.
We rate this statement Mostly True.

About this statement:

Published: Wednesday, February 8th, 2017 at 3:56 p.m.
Researched by: Joshua GillinLouis Jacobson
Edited by: Katie Sanders

Sources:

Sen. Jeanne Sheehan, comments on CNN, Feb. 8, 2017
The Atlantic, "Ted Cruz's Cry for Attention," July 24, 2015
The Hill, "Cruz on Ex-Im: Battle won, war rages on," July 30, 2015
Congress.gov, HR 22, accessed Feb. 8, 2017
U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, "Rules of the Senate: Debate," accessed Feb. 8, 2017
Interview with Ryan Nickel, Shaheen spokesman, Feb. 8, 2017
Interview with Gregory Koger, University of Miami political science professor, Feb. 8, 2017
Interview with Steven Smith, Washington University in St. Louis political science professor, Feb. 8, 2017
Share The Facts
Jeanne Sheehan
U.S. Senator

"Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him."

No comments:

Post a Comment