Congressional Speech Codes...

[shagdrum]

House guidelines for Presidential put-downs
by Glen Thrush

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has released a helpful, updated primer for members regarding their conduct on the floor and in committees.

Especially useful: The section on how to properly insult the executive branch in the in the chamber.

"Disgrace" and "nitwits" -- okay.

"Liar" or "sexual misconduct" -- ixnay.

Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:

• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”

Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:

• call the President a “liar.”
• call the President a “hypocrite.”
• describe the President’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the President has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the President as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the President’s part.”
​

 

[shagdrum]

Interestingly, the typical, non sequiter/red herring/ad hominem insults that dems/libs throw at conservatives/republicans all the time are perfectly acceptable (like "disgrace", "nitwit", "stupid", etc), but the typically substantive and relevant insults that conservatives use are banned (like "liar", "intellectually dishonest", etc). That seems a little self serving...

More imporantly, if there is ANY place in this country where it is vitally imporant that there be no "speech codes", it would be in the chambers where laws are debated and created.

Leave it to the left to try and silence their opposition by rewriting the rules against them.

 

[Calabrio]

...if there's a single Republican or Democrat in the congress with an ounce of courage or integrity, they should break "protest" those rules by breaking them at the first appropriate opportunity.

EDIT:
I mistaken thought they were applying these rules.
Apparently they were are existing, unenforced rules from the past....

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2009/09/did_joe_wilson_violate_house_r.html

 

[topher5150]

why did they throw in "sexual misconduct"

 

[Aquabrit]

why did they throw in "sexual misconduct"

To protect the likes of Bill Clinton? :lol:

 

[topher5150]

To protect the likes of Bill Clinton? :lol:

that's what i was thinking

 

[foxpaws]

Shag - you might want to research what section 370 of the House Rules and Manual really states...

 

[lincolnx2]

To protect the likes of Bill Clinton? :lol:

Or Micheal Duvall

 

[topher5150]

Or Micheal Duvall

I don't think Democrats would really care if someone would call out a Republican, unless Obama's up to something and their admitting to a crime they haven't been accused of yet

 

[Calabrio]

Or Micheal Duvall

That guys in the state house....

 

[Calabrio]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27184.html

GOP paved way for Wilson reprimand
By: Daniel Libit
September 15, 2009 04:39 PM EST

If Rep. Joe Wilson is finding parliamentary procedure to be a bit of a nuisance in the wake of his “you lie” attack on President Barack Obama, he has his Republican forbearers to thank.

On June 26, 1985, Rep. Robert Walker – a Pennsylvania Republican who beat the drum for decorum throughout his 20 years in the House – took issue with Rep. James Traficant for saying that then-President Ronald Reagan had deceived the senior citizens of the United States.

“Is it not a violation of the rules of the House to question the motives of the president and to refer to him as being someone who lies?” Walker asked on the floor.

“The gentleman is correct,” agreed then-Speaker Tip O’Neill . “It is not proper.”

O’Neill ordered that Traficant’s offending remarks be stricken from the record and directed the congressman – subsequently convicted on federal corruption charges – to “revise his remarks.”
Traficant’s toupee wasn’t Walker’s only scalp.

In 1986, Walker demanded that the words of Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) be “taken down” after Markey said that “hypocrisy had characterized” Reagan’s handling of arms control.

Then, on Sept. 24, 1992, Walker went after Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) after DeFazio attempted to defend then-Democratic nominee Bill Clinton against House Republican attacks over his memory of the Vietnam era by going after then-President George H.W. Bush’s memory of the Iran-Contra affair.

“Well,” said DeFazio, “it turns out that the president’s recollection of affairs of state a mere six years ago when he was vice president of the United States are contradicted by Secretary [Caspar] Weinberger and Secretary [George] Shultz.”

DeFazio proceeded to read from a Washington Post story:

“New information emerging from court cases and congressional records since Bush last ran for president has cast fresh doubt on his assertion that he was ‘out of the loop’ generally involved in and largely unaware of the most controversial Iran-Contra operations.”
Walker stepped in.

“Mr. Speaker, I demand the gentleman’s words be taken,” he exclaimed. “I demand the gentleman’s words be taken down.”

As Walker persisted, DeFazio stood his ground.

“I am certainly not going to withdraw the printed quote,” he said, from whence a parliamentary inquiry was conducted.

Ultimately, the speaker pro tempore, former Rep. Ron Mazzoli (D-Kentucky), rendered this judgment: “The chair has ruled that [DeFazio] was out of order on that part of his remarks…If [Walker] wishes to object to any of the other members who may want to read from printed material, the gentleman would be in order, subject to the will of the House.”

The question whether a member could attack the president’s veracity via quoted material emerged again on Nov. 15, 1995, when Republican Rep. David Dreier used a David Broder line to launch an attack on Clinton.

After going through a litany of Clinton statements about balancing the budget, Dreier said: “Looking at those statement that were made by the president, one could not help but think once again of what David Broder referred to in his very famous column back in 1993 as the ‘trust deficit.’”

Dreier was admonished for his statements and told his defense – “I was quoting, Mr. Speaker” – did not make for a suitable excuse.

The prohibition on attacking the president’s integrity dates back to Thomas Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the Senate of the United States, which he wrote in 1801. In 1909, the House made his proscriptions the explicit rules of decorum, and has put abridgements of his manual in a pamphlet titled, “Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives.”

It stipulates that: “Personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the president, is not permitted. Under this standard it is not in order to call the president, or a presumptive major-party nominee for president, a ‘liar’ or accuse him of ‘lying.’ Indeed, any suggestion of mendacity is out of order.”

If Wilson has any doubts about the prohibition, he needs only goes back to June 6, 1996, when his current Republican colleague in the South Carolina delegation, Rep. Bob Inglis, was holding the gavel.
“The chair admonishes members not to refer to the president in terms personally offensive,” Inglis told the House that day.

Inglis has urged Wilson to apologize for his outburst.

 

[foxpaws]

Ah- back up - last night when I check it out it was down... byte burp?