So apparently, Senator Salazar, coming as he does from the hog farming part of the state, is a fan of pork. The Senator joined Senator Majority Leader Harry "Oooooh, that land deal" Reid and most of the rest of his caucus in voting against Sen. Jim DeMint's tougher definition of earmarks:
The measure, an amendment to an ethics and lobbying bill, would have adopted a wider definition of "earmarks," specific projects inserted in bills, to include Corps of Engineer water projects, Pentagon weapon systems and items from other federal entities.The language favored by Reid would require disclosure of only targeted funds directed to nonfederal entities such as city parks, state universities and private contractors. Reid crafted the ethics bill with Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., but McConnell supported Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., the sponsor of the legislation, on the earmarks issue.
"If we're going to go through all this process, if we're going to change the laws and try to tell the American people that now you can see what we're doing, let's don't try to pull the wool over their eyes," DeMint said.
Makes sense to me, but apparently not to our junior senator.
Amusingly, the AP continues its run of innumeracy. The article states that 7 Republicans voted against DeMint, when in fact, only 5 did so. The 46 votes against came from 49 Democrats, minus the 9 defectors, plus 5 Republicans and 1 Indpendent, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The AP writer probably did the arithmetic in his head, trying to back out the number of Republicans, rather than actually looking at the roll call tally as he did for the Democrats. I don't suppose there's bias in the difference between 5 and 7 Republican defectors, just laziness.
