Now that I've got a link from a reliable source....

[theweaselking]

I mentioned here that I'd seen a claim that House Republicans were rewriting the official record on bills, claiming that amendments proposed (and defeated) "prohibited prosecution of sexual predators" when, in fact, they allowed nonparental family members to act in loco parentis for the purpose of the bill when the parents refused to.

The following is a direct quote from Rep. Louise Slaughter, the ranking member of the House Rules Committee.

"The Rules Committee discovered yesterday that the Judiciary Committee Report on this very bill, which was authored by the Majority Staff, contained amendment summaries which had been re-written by committee staff for the sole purpose of distorting the original intent of the authors.

This Committee Report took liberty to mischaracterize and even falsify the intent of several amendments offered in Committee by Democratic Members of this body.

At least five amendments to this bill, which were designed to protect the rights of family members and innocent bystanders from prosecution under this bill, were rewritten as amendments designed to protect sexual predators from prosecution and were then included in the committee report as if that was the original intent of the authors. The thing is, sexual predators were not mentioned anywhere in any of these amendments.

These amendments were no more about sexual predators then they were about terrorists or arsonists or any other criminal class in our society."

Example of an "edited" amendment:

DEMS: a Nadler amendment to exempt a grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions in the bill (no 12-19)

GOP REWRITE: . Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 19 nays, the amendment was defeated.

These rewrites were entered into the Congressional Record as being the actual amendment that was voted down, making the lie part of the official record. When the House Democrats such as Rep. Slaughter protested the rewrite by GOP staffers, the Chairman of the Rules committee replied: "You don't like what we wrote about your amendments, and we don't like what you said about our bill."

Comments

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:1:./temp/~r109L8nU6e:e33

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

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Re: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r109:1:./temp/~r109L8nU6e:e33

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that did that. Okay, let's find a permanent link.

It's page H2564.
PDF here: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2005_record&page=H2564&position=all
I can't seem to get a permanent link from thomas.loc.gov, but searching for "PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 748, CHILD INTERSTATE ABORTION NOTIFICATION ACT -- (House of Representatives - April 27, 2005)" on this page (http://thomas.loc.gov/home/r109query.html) produces it as the second link - from there, click on H2564.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

I've heard about this. It's nice to know mischaracterization of legislation is officially recognized. Sort of the warm feeling you get when court records are tampered with.