A motion to Debate Expelling Delay on House Floor?

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Saturday April 30, 2005 · 4:02 PM PDT

2005/04/30 · 16:02

In the House there is a type of Motion of House Privilege that takes precedence over all other business. What if once a week a Democratic member, especially a very moderate or conservative member rose to Call for a Motion of House Privilege to discuss whether to entertain a motion to expel Tom Delay? Under House rules, as researched by the Congression Research Service, this would be a permissable action!

The result? If the Motion of House Privilege were made by Minority Leader Pelosi the debate must be held within one hour. If made by another member The Speaker must hold the debate within 48 hours.

Started by well known blogger,college professor and former House staffer Mark A.R. Kleiman and picked up by myself with an audio blogcast and podcast at the The Political Dogfight the concept has gained steam with the support by Oliver Willis.

And now we need your support to move the idea forward. And what would a Motion as described in more much more detail in my blogcast or at Mark's blog accomplish?

A. At best, if the debate on whether to entertain the motion to hear evidence, in the full House, comes to a vote it forces the Republicans to vote against hearing the evidence (!).

B. At worst, each week another moderate or conservative member makes the same motion and it is struck down by the Chair creating a media story about how the Republican Majority refuses to even allow debate on whether to allow debate on the merits of Delay's actions.
((Now if you read my blog you'll see that is seems to me that The Speaker may disallow the entire motion. On that none of us are sure.)

There is much more detail at both Mark A.R. Kleiman and The Political Dogfight. Mark has the original Congressional Research Service study document on his site.

We need to push this through out the blogsphere and into the offices of each Democratic officeholder. Many of you know officeholders, are contributors and have influence. Some officeholders monitor and post here at dKos. Perhaps they will participate in the response to this diary.

The entire concept here is to create a Media story and take advantage of the actual House rules to keep forcing the Republican Members to support Delay, however much they personally don't want to, with their votes...or to force the Speaker into continually disallowing a perfectly legit Motion.

Either outcome works. But how far this get will depend on you Kossacks and whether you decide to take to the streets and the Blogsphere.

And Mark and I thank Oliver Willis for his support on his popular site. And I personally want to thank Mark Kleiman for telling me and others about this great idea while we were at the California Democratic State Convention. Anyone who knows Mark at all knows he does his research! I believe what he has suggested is very real. Let's help push a good idea!

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