Update: I just wrote a quick blog entry about this at The Huffington Post.
Update 2: Welcome Diggers! First, some folks at Digg were upset this was posted in the “Space” category. Sorry about that; my Digg It button defaults to Space. I’ll see if I can figure out a way around that. Also, the software at Digg didn’t like my “less than” sign in my title, so the title just says “Congress”. Ironically, even that isn’t correct; I should have written “House”. :-) Anyway, I can’t correct it without screwing up all the links, so I’ll leave it as is.
Second, a link I had below to a tally of members of the House went to a specific Congressman’s page. I missed that somehow, so I corrected it.
Did the devil just shiver? Or was that the White House?
The House of Representatives today overwhelmingly passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which would, for the first time, grant federal scientists and contractors the right to expose political interference in their research without fear of retribution. The bill passed by a 331 to 94 vote, with 229 Democrats and 102 Republicans voting in favor.
Yeehaw!
But 94 voted against it. Hmmm. Here’s an interesting little tidbit: not one Democrat voted against this bill. Not one.
All 94 nay votes were from Republicans. All of them.
There are currently 233 Democrats and 202 Republicans in the House. That means 4 Dems abstained, both Independants, and 6 Repubs.
Hmmm.
So this bill had essentially 100% support among Democrats, but only about half of the Republicans.
Hmmm.
Are you a Republican? Did your rep vote against this bill? Maybe you have something to say to them.
Postscript: I went to the House site to find out how many from each party made up Congress. It says:
There are 222 Republicans, 211 Democrats, and two Independents in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, there are 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one Independent.
Someone should tell them the election was now 4 months ago, and they should update that. Or did I miss something? I recall the Democrats holding the majority right now.
That was a link to Congressman Fattah’s site; I missed that somehow when I read the page. As commenter Skepted56 pointed out, the website for the Office of the Clerk of the House has it right.
