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About That Deleted Post

My friend Rob Bluey is a bit miffed that I deleted my previous post on "secret holds." As I told him:

It was deleted because it was accidentally posted. I thought I was saving it offline as a wrote in "scheduled" mode and changed my mind about the post late yesterday.

I was surprised to see it appear in my RSS feed and then start seeing links to an archived page this morning when my post was NEVER on the front page of Beltway Blogroll. It was never supposed to be published in the first place, so I had our techie go in manually and delete it after I started seeing links to it.

I basically said in my current post what I had said in the deleted one in terms of whether there was technically a "hold." I just changed my view as to whether that mattered.

But I appreciate Rob's point, sarcastic or not, that this whole debate is about transparency, so it doesn't look great for me to be deleting an entry, something I don't recall having done on this blog before. With that in mind, the entirety of my original post is in the extended entry:

Blogosphere rumors of a "secret hold" on legislation to mandate electronic filing of Senate campaign finance documents appear to be greatly exaggerated, according to the Senate minority leader's office and the text of yesterday's floor debate.

Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin and Dianne Feinstein of California tried to get a vote on the bill yesterday, but Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., objected on behalf of another Republican senator.

Led by the Sunlight Foundation, blogs pounced on the inaction today and accused the unnamed senator of placing a secret hold on the bill to prevent more transparency in the Senate. The watchdog group reminded readers of its blog, In Broad Daylight, that two senators availed themselves of the chamber's "hold" tradition last year to block a bill on federal budget transparency, only to be embarrassed by bloggers into lifting the hold.

"We need your help to find out who placed this secret hold!" Paul Blumenthal wrote. "Call your Senators and ask them if they are the one with the secret hold on S. 223. Then report back."

There's just one problem. A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he isn't aware of any hold on the measure. "I know there was an objection raised (not by Sen. McConnell) to a unanimous consent vote yesterday on the bill, but that’s different from a hold," Don Stewart said via e-mail. "My guess is that senators wanted to review the bill, not prevent the bill."

The Congressional Record seems to bear out that view.

What actually happened on the floor is that Feinstein asked "unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of [the bill] ... that the committee-reported amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be read three times, passed; and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action." In other words, she requested immediate passage of the bill, without any floor debate.

The anonymous Republican senator in question may well oppose the bill itself, but his or her objection technically was only to an expedited vote on the measure -- and that's not at all unusual for the more deliberative half of America's legislative body.

The bill obviously does not have clear sailing to Senate passage. A press release issued by Feinstein notes that it has been "held hostage" in the past by lawmakers who see the popular bill as a good vehicle for making other campaign finance changes, and it may face that fate again.

But the rush by bloggers to characterize yesterday's action as a secret hold like last year's against the budget bill -- and to rally their readers to expose the secret holder -- seems to be spin.

Posted by Danny | 01:49 PM

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