Thread: House Judiciary panel seeks bipartisan touch

House Judiciary panel seeks bipartisan touch
By Molly K. Hooper - 01/18/11 06:23 AM ET

Lawmakers on a committee known for its intense partisanship are attempting a new approach.

Republican and Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee will break bread at a Wednesday meeting aimed at fostering bipartisanship. The forum will be headlined by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Such a meeting has been in the planning stages for quite some time, well before the Jan. 8 shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and injured 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he has envisioned such a bipartisan retreat for the past four years.

In an interview with The Hill, Smith revealed that his plans to hold such an event were put on hold in late 2006 when Democrats won control of the House, denying him an opportunity to grab the gavel.

Since Republicans regained control of the majority, Smith says that he immediately started putting together a program to focus on bipartisanship.

With rare exception, partisanship has reigned in the House Judiciary Committee, a panel that impeached then-President Clinton in 1998 along party lines. A decade later, a Democratic-led committee investigated alleged war crimes by former President George W. Bush.

Smith late last year read an article in The New Yorker on Breyer’s work in the mid-1970s, when he served as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee under Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The piece detailed the success that Kennedy achieved on major legislation because of bipartisanship, including deregulation of the airline industry.

Smith subsequently invited Breyer, who was nominated to the high court by Clinton, to speak to his committee.

“[Breyer] said yes,â€

I think this is a really good step forward for the Judiciary Committee. I hope this will give our friends in the Democrat Party an opportunity to learn ways to agree with what we need to do to save our country.

Democrats individually as well as on the party level must see and understand that there are certain things that we need and stopping illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration lead the list. This means ending automatic birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. This means making E-Verify mandatory. This means streamlining deportations of illegal aliens. This means supporting states who want to use their existing 800,000 state and local police officers and all their existing resources including jails and courts to arrest, detain and even deport illegal aliens.

The typical Democrat doesn't want illegal immigration any more than a typical Republican. Immigration issues both legal and illegal should be biparatisan. We have more people than jobs because traitors have not only abandoned the rule of law they abandoned their oath of office to protect, defend and promote the best interest of the American People. And it doesn't matter whether you're a traitor that a member of the Democratic Party or one that belongs to the Republican Party. This treason against our citizens and nation must end and it must end now.

It's time to unite and that means Democrats must support Republicans introducing legislation that will help us to end this disaster and get our country and population back on track where it should and would have been but for the lawbreakers that comprise the massive crime of illegal immigration, both the illegal aliens and their governments as well as those Americans and our government who are responsible for luring, allowing and rewarding illegal immigration.

Lets do it and get R done so we can end this and move on to more pleasant undertakings.

Originally Posted by Judy

Lets do it and get R done

"Are you dating Larry the cable guy?"