In the event that the Administrator or the National Academy of Sciences has concluded, in the most recent report submitted under section 705 or 706 respectively, that the United States will not achieve the necessary domestic greenhouse gas emissions reductions, or that global actions will not maintain safe global average surface temperature and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration thresholds, the President shall, not later than July 1, 2015, and every 4 years thereafter, submit to Congress a plan identifying domestic and international actions that will achieve necessary additional greenhouse gas reductions, including any recommendations for legislative action.

And yet Vitter has the bizarre and fact-challenged version of this story up at his Website:

Vitter is co-sponsoring a bill with Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) that would require census-takers to ask people about their immigration status as part of the survey, in order to exclude them from the apportionment process. Vitter yesterday claimed that illegal immigrants counted in the 2000 Census allowed California to gain up to five more seats in Congress than they’re actually entitled to have. But experts warn that changing the census questions at this stage of the process would be extremely costly.

The Vitter-Bennett amendment reportedly stalled passage (sub. req’d.) of the spending bill to which it was attached. The Senate voted no on cloture on Tuesday.

According to USA Today, the U.S. Census Bureau has asked people whether they are native or foreign-born since 1790, but it has never asked about their legal status. Immigrant advocacy groups oppose asking about immigration status because they say it’s already very difficult to get immigrants to participate in the census since they fear government reprisal, especially if they are in the United States illegally.

The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, among others, are actually calling for immigrants to boycott the Census unless laws are changed to give those here illegally a chance to gain legal status, though it’s not clear what exactly a boycott would accomplish.

“Already the public fears that the Census is too intrusive,” Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, told USA Today. “Asking about citizenship status “would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is,” Vargas said.

Vitter yesterday claimed that Reid was “going through somersaults” to block a vote on the amendment because he worries that Democrats from states with low immigrant populations might vote for it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Quarterly reports (sub. req’d.) that Census experts oppose adding any new questions to the Census at this late stage because it would be extremely expensive to change the survey now and would  delay the reapportionment process. And on Tuesday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said it’s too late to add the question now in time for next year’s census. TPM’s Christina Bellantoni reported that Locke cited in a memo the printing and shipping costs to replace the 300 million Census forms already produced. He also expressed concerns about the possible wording of the question.

“A change will require using untested content in the actual census, which may affect both response rates and data quality and cannot be implemented in time to deliver apportionment counts by the statutory deadline of December 31, 2010,” Locke wrote.

Former Census directors from both Republican and Democratic administrations (pdf) also urged the amendment’s defeat, reports CQ, saying the cost would be “almost incalculable.” Taxpayers have already spent about $7 billion preparing for the count. It begins April 1, 2010.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau Website, “Census data are used to distribute Congressional seats to states, to make decisions about what community services to provide, and to distribute $400 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year.”

Democrat Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said there would be “very limited opportunity, if any, for me to support a public option.”

“The reason is because I believe that we should do nothing that would undermine the private insurance market,” Landrieu said.

Landrieu also said she thinks the Senate will find the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster of a health care reform bill that achieves President Obama’s goals, without a public option.

On the other hand, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who has not signed onto Posey’s bill, has been caught on camera telling an irate birther, who claims President Obama cannot hold office “by our Constitution”: “I agree with you, but the courts don’t.” Telling a voter that the president of the United States (who, er, carried Ohio in 2008) is not legitimate is far beyond what Boustany did, and the Democratic National Committee is hitting Schmidt on this today.

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Political handicappers have not written Cao off entirely, but any serious analysis of the 2010 election suggests that he’ll lose. Turnout in the December 2008 runoff that elected him was only 66,846, down from almost 164,000 the month before. And Cao only beat Jefferson, who raised virtually no money and offered only the least convincing spin on his bribery indictments, by a three-point margin. The Democrats’ biggest problem here will be their own internal strife and fumbling, as it was in 2006 — when a credible candidate against Jefferson, State Rep. Karen Carter, was opposed by local power brokers who wanted a shot at Jefferson’s seat themselves, and opposed even more strongly by Harry Lee, a now-dead local sheriff angry over comments Carter made in Spike Lee’s documentary about Hurricane Katrina. The video of that press conference is well worth watching, especially when Lee snaps at Carter for “running her fat mouth” about Jefferson Parish.

The takeaway from all of this is that a Democratic Party that gets a credible candidate to the general election in 2010, with turnout from the U.S. Senate race against Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), will almost certainly take back this district that voted three-to-one for President Obama. And that takes the GOP a little bit backwards in its quest to gain control of the House.

Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson was found guilty of 11 of 16 corruption charges today by a federal jury. [...]

Jefferson was charged with soliciting bribes and other crimes for a series of schemes in which he helped American businesses broker deals in West African in exchange for payments or financial considerations to companies controlled by members of his family, including his brother Mose, his wife, Andrea, their five daughters and a son-in-law.

Jefferson, who represented the New Orleans-based 2nd Congressional District for nine terms, will now face sentencing by Judge T.S. Ellis III, who earlier meted out stiff sentences for lesser figures in the case. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Jefferson faced 235 years in prison if convicted on all counts, and will still face substantial prison time.

The verdict comes four years after the Aug. 3, 2005 raids of Jefferson’s homes in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., in which the FBI found $90,000 in cash hidden in the freezer of his D.C. home, money the government said Jefferson was going to deliver as a bribe to Atiku Abubakar, then vice president of Nigeria, to gain his help with a telecommunications deal in Nigeria being pursued by Lori Mody, a Northern Virginia businesswoman.

Forty-six months after federal agents found $90,000 of aluminum-wrapped cash in his freezer, and thirty-seven months after FBI agents raided his office on Capitol Hill, former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) begins trial today in Virginia on charges that he sought cash in exchange for promoting U.S. business deals in Africa.

There’s plenty of intrigue here, as even the most casual observers of this saga have been curious how Jefferson intends to explain the choice of safety-deposit box that earned him the nickname “Cold Cash.” Meanwhile, The Hill yesterday briefly summarized the line of defense his lawyers plan to peddle:

The attorneys argue that the $100,000 Jefferson allegedly received in exchange for promoting donors’ business interests in the U.S. and Africa, including $90,000 found in his freezer, was not illegal because his dealings were related to private business and were not “official” in nature.

Good luck with that.

Jindal has a history with presidential addresses to Congress. In 2005, as a newly-minted congressman, he inspired his Republican colleagues to dye their fingers with purple ink and hoist them high during former President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, which came after the Iraqi elections.

President George W. Bush announced today that he will release oil from the country’s emergency reserves in the wake of Hurricane Gustav. The reason? Because an oil company asked, of course.

From Reuters:

“Last night we got a request from a company doing business here in Louisiana and we met that request,” Bush told reporters, referring to a request by Citgo Petroleum Corp, which is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company.

“Oil was released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and we will continue to do that upon request by companies,” Bush said after being briefed on recovery efforts in Louisiana.

For months, House Democrats have been calling (to no avail) on the Bush administration to tap part of the petroleum reserves to ease fuel prices at the pump. Following Wednesday’s announcement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had some choice words for a president more receptive to oil companies than to Congress:

By ignoring the needs of consumers but responding to the request of oil companies, it is clear that the Bush-Cheney-McCain energy decisions are made with only one thing in mind — Big Oil.

Not that Pelosi’s plan to use the U.S. emergency cache is anything but a band-aid on a larger problem. But GOP criticism that the resource should be saved for emergencies only rings hollow considering that scores of Republican have spent the last month in Washington screaming from the rafters about the dire need to address the issue with an offshore drilling vote.

What do you call a debate in which neither side has a leg to stand on?