[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16227-16231]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         LEGISLATIVE BRANCH APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010--Continued


                Amendment No. 1366 to Amendment No. 1365

  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I have an amendment at the desk and ask 
for its immediate consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1366 to amendment No. 1365.

  Mr. McCAIN. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment 
be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

    (Purpose: To strike the earmark for the Durham Museum in Omaha, 
                               Nebraska)

       On page 27, strike lines 5 through 10 and insert 
     ``mission.''.

  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, the amendment is very simple. It strikes 
from the bill an earmark of $200,000 for the Durham Museum in Omaha, 
NE. Let me be very clear. I hold no grudge against the museum or the 
sponsor of this earmark. On the contrary, I hold my colleagues from 
Nebraska in very high esteem, and I have no doubt that the museum does 
wonderful work. Thanks to modern technology and Wikipedia, it has a 
very nice description of the Durham Museum, formerly known as the 
Durham Western Heritage Museum in downtown Omaha, NE, dedicated to 
preserving and displaying the history of the U.S. western region and it 
is housed in Omaha's Union Station.
  I am sure it is a very fine place. I am sure it gets lots of visitors 
from all over the great State of Nebraska. The only problem is, as I 
understand from reading the bill, which sometimes some of us don't do, 
this is a bill that is entitled ``Making Appropriations for the 
Legislative Branch for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2010, and 
for Other Purposes.'' Well, obviously, the distinguished manager of the 
bill found another purpose but certainly none that has the slightest 
connection to the city of Omaha or the State of Nebraska, except the 
Senator happens to be from that State. He maybe even resides in that 
city.
  The reason I am taking the floor is because Americans are hurting 
right now. Americans all over this country are hurting right now. I go 
downtown in my city, my hometown of Phoenix, AR, and I see people 
closing store fronts. I see people not able to make their house 
payments or people not able to pay their medical bills, and $200,000 
would mean a lot to them; $200,000 is not a small sum.
  So the fact is, I don't question the merits of the program. I don't 
question that the Durham Museum is probably a nice place to visit. I do 
question when we are going to stop earmarking porkbarrel projects 
because of the influence or clout of Members of the Senate.
  I want to repeat, I do not question that this museum is a fine 
museum. I do question--and any objective observer would question--how 
in the world that has a place on appropriations of the taxpayers' 
dollars for the legislative branch. I don't think the Durham Museum is 
in the legislative branch of government unless I am badly mistaken, and 
I am sure I am not.
  Here we are with trillions of dollars of deficit--$1.2 trillion for 
TARP, $410 million for the Omnibus appropriations bill, which was 
loaded with 9,000 unnecessary and wasteful earmarks, tens of billions 
of dollars to the domestic auto manufacturers, and we passed a budget 
resolution totaling $3.5 trillion. Now we have a bill totaling $3.1 
billion to run the legislative branch of government.
  As has been widely trumpeted, this bill is less than that requested. 
What it is also, though, is 3 percent more than it was last year. How 
many Americans are able to get 3 percent more money than they had last 
year? It is over $76 million more than last year's bill. So is this a 
big deal, $200,000? Probably not, with the trillions of dollars that we 
seem to throw around here.
  But I am serving notice on my colleagues that I and some of my other 
colleagues are going to come to the floor and challenge these earmarks. 
We have to stop doing business as usual while we are committing 
generational theft and mortgaging our children's future.
  Since it is going to be about 10 days or so before we will have a 
vote on this amendment--as the majority leader mentioned, we are not 
going to have anymore votes--I ask unanimous consent that before the 
vote I have 5 minutes and the Senator from Nebraska have the time he 
needs before the vote that will take place at the pleasure of the 
majority leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska is recognized.
  Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. Madam President, I respect greatly my 
colleague from Arizona and his concern about spending. As was noted, 
the increase in the spending requested in the appropriations bill is 
about 2.4 percent. While $200,000 is a lot of money--and it certainly 
is a lot to people today--I

[[Page 16228]]

think it is important to point out that this museum is associated with 
the legislative branch in the following manner.
  The Durham Museum is seeking to provide a public service of Federal 
interest making it appropriate to promote a public-private partnership. 
And this truly is a public-private partnership; the funding for the 
project in this bill is only 10 percent of the total cost. The Durham 
Museum will privately raise the remaining 90 percent and incur all 
ongoing operating costs.
  The $200,000 requested in this bill for the Durham Museum to begin 
the preservation and digitization of the museum's photo archive 
collection will create new jobs, preserve our history and improve 
access to these priceless treasures.
  This project will be moved significantly forward by the able 
assistance of the Library of Congress, and I thank Dr. Billington for 
his willingness to assist with this important project.
  It is important to point out that the Library of Congress has been a 
leader in digitization efforts, having digitized more than 15 million 
unique primary source documents. The library enjoyed a remarkable long-
term relationship with the Durham Museum long before I came to the 
Senate and will undoubtedly oversee a quality project as the Durham 
Museum seeks to follow in our national library's footsteps.
  Mr. President, not all national treasures are located inside the 
beltway.
  This project is more than just a ``photo exhibit.'' In addition to 
making these images available to the public, as noted in the 
Legislative Branch Report, Durham will work with the Library of 
Congress to establish conservation and preservation training programs, 
and on incorporating digitized primary source materials into school 
curricula.
  Dr. Billington and I have worked together to ensure that the 
library's most impressive exhibits have traveled to the Durham Museum 
over the years, ensuring that my fellow Nebraskans, Iowans from the 
east, Kansans from the south, and South Dakotans from the north, have 
had access to some of our Nation's most treasured documents and 
artifacts.
  Some of the notable library exhibits that have traveled to the Durham 
Museum have included: ``Bound for Glory,'' showcasing the photographs 
of the Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s and 1940s, and 
``With An Even Hand, Brown v. Board at Fifty,'' commemorating the 50th 
anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in the case of Brown 
v. the Board of Education.
  In January of 2011, the library's most recent impressive exhibit on 
Abraham Lincoln, ``With Malice Toward None,'' will travel to the Durham 
Museum, showcasing some of our revered former President's most 
transformative speeches and eloquent letters.
  I urge that this not be considered just a local project. It is 
associated with the Library of Congress and, as such, has a tie that is 
an ongoing and longstanding relationship that will benefit both the 
Library of Congress and the Durham Museum. There is a nexus here and it 
is not an isolated incident.
  At this point, I ask my colleagues to support the inclusion of that 
funding within this budgetary request.


                            OSHA violations

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, as the Senate considers the fiscal 
year 2010 legislative branch appropriations bill, S. 1294, I would like 
to raise a concern I have with a provision related to the Congressional 
Accountability Act of 1995, CAA. As the author of the Congressional 
Accountability Act, I have long believed that Congress needs to 
practice what it preaches by applying certain laws Congress passes to 
the legislative branch. The CAA did this by incorporating a number of 
laws including the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. Senator 
Murkowski, the distinguished ranking member of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch, is here and I would like to ask 
about the provision in the bill related to the CAA.
  I am concerned that the provision striking a section of the CAA 
related to the compliance date for OSHA violations may go further than 
necessary. As the author of the CAA, this provision was included to 
ensure that OSHA violations that are found in legislative branch 
buildings are remedied in a timely fashion. I understand that some 
concerns have arisen regarding the requirement that compliance occur by 
the next fiscal year, which prompted this revision, is that correct?
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. That is correct, and it was a topic of discussion 
during the subcommittee hearings. Citations from the Office of 
Compliance are requiring certain actions by the Architect of the 
Capitol that don't always make sense. We found that the legislative 
branch is held to a higher standard than the executive branch and the 
private sector, and certain standards and timelines are applied that 
would not be applied outside the legislative branch, particularly to 
historic buildings.
  As I said in our hearing with the Architect of the Capitol and Office 
of Compliance, I am completely supportive of having strong fire and 
life safety standards, but applying a ``gold standard'' to the 
legislative branch doesn't seem to be appropriate. We need to be 
pragmatic, and operate within a risk-based framework. In some cases, we 
have been asked to fund expensive projects by the AOC that simply 
aren't a good use of taxpayer dollars and don't necessarily offer 
significant improvements in fire and life safety.
  Senator Nelson and I asked GAO to work with us to suggest how we 
could get the legislative branch on par with the executive branch and 
private sector. This language is the result of those discussions.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I agree that this provision should not lead to 
unnecessary expenditures and that we should examine this provision. 
However, I'm concerned the current revision in S. 1294 goes a bit too 
far by completely striking the compliance date. In fact I am informed 
the Office of Compliance, the entity in charge of enforcing the CAA has 
expressed concerns with completely striking this provision and instead 
recommends a selective amendment.
  Out of the interest of saving time on the Senate floor, I will 
withhold an amendment to strike or modify this provision if the 
distinguished ranking member is willing to commit to working with me on 
this provision to make sure the revision is as narrow as possible as 
recommended by the Office of Compliance.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. I would agree to work with the ranking member of the 
Finance Committee, to work with the chairman of this subcommittee, 
Senator Nelson, and attempt to address his concerns as this bill moves 
forward.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the distinguished ranking member and look 
forward to working with her and the chairman to narrow this provision 
and address the concerns expressed by the Office of Compliance.
  Mr. NELSON of Nebraska. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, the nomination of a new Justice to the 
Supreme Court has somewhat unexpectedly brought to our mind a core 
question both for the Senate and the American people, and that is: 
What, if any, is the appropriate role for foreign law to play in the 
interpretation of our Constitution--meaning, should judges look at what 
other countries say when they are determining what are our 
constitutional rights.
  This is not an academic question; it is a question that has the 
potential to impact our fundamental rights guaranteed to us by the U.S. 
Constitution.
  Until recent years, the answer has always been understood to be no, 
apart from a few rare circumstances, certainly, and certainly never in 
the interpretation of the meaning of our precious constitutional 
rights.
  This traditional understanding has served to protect our 
constitutional

[[Page 16229]]

right by ensuring that judges remain true to the will of the American 
people, not the will of foreign judges or courts.
  Our system has a critical component: moral authority. That moral 
authority comes from the basic concept that our law is a product of the 
will of the people through the people they chose to represent them. The 
Constitution begins ``We the People do ordain and establish this 
Constitution.'' Our laws are enacted by a Congress, a body subject to 
the will of the people, composed of people elected by the people. We 
are accountable to the American citizens.
  The novel idea that foreign law has a place in the interpretation of 
American law creates numerous dangers. A number of academics, and even 
Federal judges, I would say, are seduced by this idea.
  Judge Sotomayor clearly shares in that idea. I am somewhat surprised, 
but it is true, as I will discuss. Her vision seems to be that we 
should change our laws, or listen to other laws and judges, and sort of 
merge them with this foreign law. That is the overt opinion of Mr. Koh, 
who was just nominated and confirmed to the chief counsel of the U.S. 
State Department. Mr. Koh is quite open about it--shockingly so, 
really.
  But I suggest that if we become transnational, we suffer two 
monumental blows to our legal system. First, the laws we are subject to 
would not be laws made by us. This should remind us of the Boston tea 
party. The colonies objected to paying taxes, but not just any taxes; 
they objected because the taxes were being imposed on them by the 
British Parliament, and they didn't have a voice in it. The complaint 
was ``taxation without representation.'' Thus, the moral power of the 
American law to compel obedience arises from the people's choice to 
enact it in the first place. That moral authority is undermined when we 
allow foreign law, which we had nothing to do with, to impact our law. 
That is a pernicious thing, I suggest.
  Second, it is not ever going to work in a good way. Most countries 
don't have laws, truth be known. They have politics masquerading as 
laws. Trying to merge our system, based on truth, the law, and the 
evidence, with these political legal systems will only result in our 
being shortchanged. We can reach agreements affecting mutual interests 
with foreign nations and adhere to them as long as we agree to do so--
treaties and other kinds of agreements--but to submit ourselves to 
their political policies while pretending we are merging our law with 
theirs is foolishness.
  It also creates confusion on a matter of utmost importance. The 
question is, who does the judge serve, the people of the United States 
or the people of the world or some individual country with whom they 
agree or the amorphous ``world community,'' which has been referred to?
  Furthermore, reliance on foreign law places our constitutional rights 
in jeopardy. There are great differences between American and foreign 
law on cherished rights protected by our Constitution. The 
Constitution's protection of free speech is probably unparalleled 
anywhere in the world. Other nations punish sometimes spirited debate 
on controversial matters. They call it sometimes ``hate speech'' and 
take action against speech and other things that we would allow without 
a single thought, but it is criminalized in other countries.
  The Constitution clearly protects the right to keep and bear arms. 
Other nations ban private gun ownership entirely. The Constitution 
allows for the death penalty. Other nations reject the use of the death 
penalty, even for violent killers, while some other nations have the 
death penalty and they impose it without due process being carried out. 
Yet this troubling potential for infringements on constitutional 
rights, I suggest, is only the tip of the iceberg.
  First and foremost, reliance on foreign law creates opportunities for 
judges to indulge their policy preferences. In a speech that was given 
to the Puerto Rico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union on 
April 28 of this year, 2009, 1 day after having been contacted by the 
White House about the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy, Judge 
Sotomayor placed herself firmly on what I believe is the wrong side of 
this debate, stating in this speech:

       To suggest to anyone that you can outlaw the use of foreign 
     or international law is a sentiment that is based on a 
     fundamental misunderstanding. What you would be asking 
     American judges to do is close their minds to good ideas.

  Well, the ideas our judges are supposed to reflect are the ideas that 
the Congress sought to be good, the ones we enacted into law--not what 
was enacted in France, Saudi Arabia, China, or any other place. This is 
a matter of real importance. This whole concept of foreign law has been 
a matter of real controversy for several years. It is a timely subject, 
for sure. I thought it was pretty roundly condemned, although one judge 
on the Supreme Court defends it. In her speech, Judge Sotomayor 
explains:

       The nature of the criticism comes from . . . a 
     misunderstanding of the American use of that concept of using 
     foreign law, and that misunderstanding is unfortunately 
     endorsed by some of our own Supreme Court justices. Both 
     Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have written extensively 
     criticizing the use of foreign and international law in 
     Supreme Court decisions.

  So she criticized Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, who have 
expressed opposition to this. Let me be blunt. I believe it is Judge 
Sotomayor, not Justices Scalia and Thomas, who is wrong.
  Under her approach, a judge has free rein to survey the world to find 
what they might consider to be good ideas and then impose these views 
on the American people, calling it law. However, this is not the 
American system. Our system requires judges to adhere to this 
Constitution, to the statutes, and to the legal precedent, to the end 
that judges follow the will of the people of our country as expressed 
in our law.
  The Constitution says ``We . . . do ordain and establish this 
Constitution for the United States of America,'' not some other. Judges 
are not free to amend it by citing some other foreign constitution. I 
think this is a big deal.
  Judges are not free to indulge their own personal opinions about what 
good policy is. Judges do not set policy and search for support for 
that in foreign law. Despite Judge Sotomayor's claim at a Duke Law 
School panel discussion that ``courts of appeals is where policy is 
made,'' judges are not policymakers. They are servants of the law, if 
they are fulfilling their role properly--the law as it is, not the way 
they might wish it to be.
  Second, reliance on foreign law causes confusion rather than 
clarification as to the state of American law. Judge Sotomayor claims 
that foreign law ``can add to the story [sic] of knowledge relevant to 
the solution of . . . [a] question [sic],'' paraphrasing Supreme Court 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who pioneered this concept. She made those 
statements. Judge Ginsburg's citation of it in cases and her defense of 
it in speeches has really led to this controversy to which Justices 
Scalia and Thomas have responded.
  On the contrary, reliance on foreign law creates confusion. Consider 
Judge Sotomayor's dissenting opinion in Croll v. Croll in the 
interpretation of a treaty--one of the few instances in which reliance 
on foreign law may be perfectly permissible. Judge Sotomayor repeatedly 
criticized the majority judges on the panel as ``parochial'' for 
consulting American dictionaries to understand the meaning of custody 
as determined by the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction, 
and then she relies on foreign interpretations of those words instead. 
Yet the majority rightly rebuked Judge Sotomayor for relying on the 
scattered and divergent foreign legal cases on this subject. The 
majority even cites a Supreme Court precedent that warns against 
relying on foreign law where it is in a state of confusion.
  Third, the reliance on foreign law is also based on a misconception 
that judges, rather than elected officials in the political branches of 
government, play a role in advancing our Nation's foreign policy.
  Judge Sotomayor states this:

       I share more the ideas of Justice Ginsburg in thinking . . 
     . that unless American courts

[[Page 16230]]

     are more open to discussing the ideas raised by foreign 
     cases, and by international cases, that we are going to lose 
     influence in the world.

  But judges are not diplomats. It is the job of diplomats to protect 
our standing in the world, and they have to explain to the world why we 
rule the way we rule on our cases. That is their responsibility.
  Fourth, reliance on foreign law blurs the distinction between 
domestic and foreign law, undermining our ability to make democratic 
choices. The examples of the Supreme Court reliance on foreign law, 
cited approvingly by Judge Sotomayor, involved the interpretation of 
the Constitution dealing with purely domestic legal issues that do not 
and should not touch on any matter of international concern. For 
example, she approvingly cites the case of Roper v. Simmons in which 
five Justices of the Supreme Court recently rendered a decision based 
in part on their review of foreign law and concluded that our 
Constitution declares that we cannot execute a violent criminal if that 
criminal is 1 day under 18 years of age when he killed someone or a 
group of people. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that. 
They found some foreign law to make an argument about what the 
Constitution says about what age a State can set for the death penalty. 
I know we can disagree on what the age should be, but it is a 
legislative matter.
  The Court in that case said it was looking to ``evolving standards of 
decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.'' What kind of 
standard is that for law? Where do you find what a maturing society now 
believes? Do you check with China? Do you check with Iran? Or maybe 
France? Where do we do this? How do they divine what this all is?
  The Court concluded that the death penalty violated the eighth 
amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. There are at 
least six or more references in the Constitution itself to capital 
crimes, to taking a life without due process. It has always been 
contemplated in the Constitution that the death penalty is not cruel 
and unusual. That was for drawing-and-quartering and such matters as 
that.
  If basic constitutional rights are subject to redefinition by 
considering foreign law, our Constitution ceases to be the bulwark for 
our liberty it has always been. The Constitution will be weakened. Its 
authority and power will be diminished. Yet this is precisely the view 
of foreign law advocated by Judge Sotomayor, who says that these courts 
that do this ``were just using foreign law to help us understand what 
the concept meant to other countries, and to help us understand whether 
our understanding of our own constitutional rights fell into the 
mainstream of human thinking.'' I am not sure, did the judge conduct 
worldwide polls of human thinking? How does a judge find out what the 
mainstream of human thinking is? In truth, many of the critics of this 
idea have hit the nail on the head. They say that all it does is allow 
a judge to look around the world to find somebody who agrees with them 
and use that as authority to do what they wanted to do all along.
  Judge Sotomayor not only advocates for reliance on foreign law, but 
she also goes a step further than Justice Ginsburg, advocating for 
adoption of the techniques of foreign judges, even ones that serve to 
conceal the individual judge's reasoning process from public scrutiny.
  In her forward to the book ``The International Judge,'' which she was 
chosen to do, Judge Sotomayor states:

       [T]he question of how much we have to learn from foreign 
     law and the international community when interpreting our 
     Constitution is not the only one worth posing. As ``The 
     International Judge'' makes clear, we should also question 
     how much we have to learn from international courts and from 
     their male and female judges about the process of judging and 
     the factors outside the law that influence our decisions.

  In her speech in 1999, Judge Sotomayor expressed admiration for the 
French tradition of judicial panels of judges issuing single decisions, 
commenting:

       With a single decision, there is less pressure on 
     individual judges and less fear of reprisal for unpopular 
     decisions.

  According to law professor William D. Popkin, French legal opinions 
are anonymous, unanimous, and laconic, the legal ``equivalent of 
flashing a policeman's badge,'' and ``[t]he irony about French judicial 
opinion writing is that minimal reason-giving allows French judges to 
conceal a bold judicial lawmaking role, perhaps even bolder than in the 
case of U.S. and English judges because of the lack of any formal 
notion of precedent.''
  That is different from the American heritage of law. Judges sign 
opinions. But we have seen at least three very significant opinions in 
recent years and months from Judge Sotomayor that were per curiam. No 
one judge assumed responsibility for the decision, and they were very 
short--so in a way, maybe she is following that--really surprisingly 
short in the case involving firearms, in the case involving the 
firefighters in Connecticut. They were very short opinions and not a 
lot of discussion and per curiam.
  The problems with this tradition are clear. The approach makes it 
easier for judges to conceal the grounds of their decisions, making it 
more difficult to assess whether their legal reasoning was justified. 
Only then can one see if proper principles are being followed. Indeed, 
Judge Sotomayor may already be following that, as I noted with some of 
the per curiam opinions we have seen.
  I have to say the judge wants more international law, not less. 
Ominously, Judge Sotomayor states:

       International law and foreign law will be very important in 
     the discussion of how we think about the unsettled issues in 
     our legal system. It is my hope that judges everywhere will 
     continue to do this because . . . within the American legal 
     system, we're commanded to interpret our law in the best way 
     we can, and that means looking to what other, anyone has said 
     to see if it has persuasive value.

  The judge makes an audacious claim that the American legal system 
commands judges to look at foreign law and highlights the role of 
making decisions on unsettled cases. There have been and will be many 
differences between domestic and foreign law on matters that are 
fundamental. This is normal and understandable because different 
nations have different cultures, values, and legal systems. The United 
States should be independent to pursue its own individual choices 
expressed through the American people through their elected officials 
to reach the fullest and richest expression of our exceptionalism as a 
nation.
  The American ideal of law is objectivity in deciding the case before 
the court, that case being sufficient for the day. This is unusual. 
Most countries are not so restrained. To a much greater degree, foreign 
judges see themselves as policymakers. In Afghanistan and Pakistan 
recently, the chief judge was setting all kinds of policy in 
Afghanistan. I thought it was most unusual. Surely nothing like that 
would happen here because we have a different heritage.
  I suggest that for an ambitious, strong-willed American judge, such 
freedom to search around the world to identify arguments that might be 
helpful in allowing them to reach a result they might like to reach 
would be a great temptation. It is a siren call that ought not to be 
followed, and great judges do not do so. They analyze the American 
statutes, the American Constitution in a fair and objective way. They 
apply it to the evidence fairly and honestly found and render a 
decision without any regard to the parties before them, to the rich and 
poor alike, as their oath says. That is why we give them independence 
as a judge to show they will be more willing to render those kinds of 
opinions.
  I am troubled by this, I have to say. I did not expect to see a 
nominee who would be one of the leading advocates for the adoption of 
foreign law in the American legal system. I think it is wrong. I don't 
think that is a good idea. The American people need to be talking about 
that issue as they think about the confirmation that will be coming up.
  Our nominee, Judge Sotomayor, is delightful to talk to. She has a 
record and a practice as a private practitioner, as a prosecutor, as a 
district

[[Page 16231]]

judge, and an appellate judge. All of those are good. She has many good 
qualities. But some of the issues I am raising today and have raised 
previously do cause me concern.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, what is the business before the Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The McCain amendment to H.R. 2918.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Connecticut is recognized.
  Mr. DODD. I thank the Chair.
  (The remarks of Mr. Dodd pertaining to the introduction of S. 1382 
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. DODD. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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