June 9, 2009

Lieberman-Graham Photo Suppression Bill Dead For Now

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Last week, House liberals got together to try to block Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham’s bill that would have allowed the administration to unilaterally override the Freedom of Information Act when it wanted to withhold photos of detainee abuse. The liberals won this battle. Jane Hamsher reported Monday afternoon that the photo suppression legislation, which President Barack Obama supported, will not make it into the final war supplemental.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post on what this all means, but the bottom line is that you can be sure that Lieberman and Graham will try to bring this up again. This time around, House liberals got lucky because Republicans opposed the addition of IMF funding to the war supplemental, ensuring that liberal votes would actually matter. If Lieberman and Graham can find a bill to attach the photo suppression amendment to that Republicans and non-liberal Democrats will support, it’ll stand a better chance of passing, because liberal votes won’t matter.

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