Sen. Kyl feeling a little heat over attempt at Supreme deception

As has been noted in many places, both MSM and blogosphere, Sen. Jon Kyl inserted a fake exchange into the Congressional Record concerning the treatment of detainees (December 21, 2005).

In and of itself, this is not rare, as Senators frequently "revise and extend" their comments in the record, even if those comments weren't uttered on the floor of the Senate. While the manufacturing of a fake conversation between Senators is unusual, it's not an egregious misuse of the "revise and extend" privilege.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court heard the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case. And Jon Kyl (and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina) cited the faux debate in an amicus brief submitted to the Court.

And was caught at it, and called out on it, by Justice John Paul Stevens.

From his opinion on page 23 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld:

While statements attributed to the final bill’s two other sponsors,Senators Graham and Kyl, arguably contradict Senator Levin’s contention that the final version of the Act preserved jurisdiction over pendinghabeas cases, see 151 Cong. Rec. S14263–S14264 (Dec. 21, 2005), those statements appear to have been inserted into the Congressional Record after the Senate debate.

Needless to say, Sen. Kyl has been rationalizing his actions as just "how the Senate operates.”

That begs the question - when did it become SOP for the Senate to lie to the USSC?

Well, actually, it hasn't.

U.S. Senate historian Richard Baker called it "unprecedented."

My questions to Sen. Kyl are these:

If the fact that President Clinton lied during a deposition warranted impeachment proceedings, what punishment does lying to the Supreme Court merit?

What happens to a lawyer who lies to a court? It seems that nothing happens, though it should mean automatic disbarrment. Fortunately, we have another option here.

Voting the lawyer in question out of office.

For the next few months, we are stuck with a Senator with no credibility. From FindLaw's article on the controversy:

Nevertheless, when Graham and Kyl sought to file the very same brief, a month later, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columba, Slate's Emily Bazelon reports that court "issued an unusual order rejecting" their amicus brief alone, although they accepted five others.

In November we get to send a message to you and to everyone else in D.C - Enough is enough.

Senator, I'd ask if you learned a lesson from this, but your shameless rationalizations are a clear answer to that.

The bottom line Senator is that YOU ARE A LAWYER. If anyone in the Senate should know better, you should.