Semper Fi Act Anonymous Hold – UPDATED

An anonymous hold has been placed on the Semper Fi Act (S. 2596) which means it cannot proceed.

Please call your senator and ask the staffer to deny, for the record, that Senator ___ placed an anonymous hold on S.2596, the Semper Fi Act. If they refuse to deny it because they “it’s supposed to be anonymous,” ask why they support a sneaky, unAmerican Senate tradition more than they support our troops – and why aren’t they cosponsoring this bill?

Click here for their phone numbers. Try to get a specific denial; don’t let them get away with an “I don’t think so.”

The list of Senators and their responses, or lack of, is below the fold. I’ll be updating it as new info is available.

Update2: Well, the Berkeley City Council folded – sort of. It’s a tactical retreat rather than a surrender: “We’ll back off and return to our previously obstructive and annoying activities like allow Code Pink to violate the law and block the door, since you’re making it too hard to do what we really want to do.”[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b73_hKWiSmc[/youtube]

Jim DeMint has not given up. He’s doing an end run around the anonymous hold and adding it as an amendment to another bill. And the classic response, so far, of Senator’s offices seems to be, “Well, we can’t tell you if our Senator placed the hold because that’s why it’s anonymous.” They really do think we work for them. And if they are permitted to get away with this – then maybe they’re right.

Update: the text of the bill, which is short, sweet, and to the point -

To rescind funds appropriated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, for the City of Berkeley, California, and any entities located in such city, and to provide that such funds shall be transferred to the Operation and Maintenance, Marine Corps account of the Department of Defense for the purposes of recruiting.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Semper Fi Act’.

SEC. 2. RECISSION AND TRANSFER OF FUNDS.

(a) Recission of Certain Earmarks- All of the amounts appropriated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (Public Law 110-161) and the accompanying report for congressional directed spending items for the City of Berkeley, California, or entities located in such city are hereby rescinded.

(b) Transfer of Funds to Operation and Maintenance, Marine Corps- The amounts rescinded under subsection (a) shall be transferred to the `Operation and Maintenance, Marine Corps’ account of the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2008 to be used for recruiting purposes.

(c) Congressional Directed Spending Item Defined- In this section, the term `congressional directed spending item’ has the meaning given such term in paragraph 5(a) of rule XLIV of the Standing Rules of the Senate.

(NOTE: post altered for clarity after several updates, and the list is updated as new info comes in)

Thanks to a nifty table plugin you can click to sort the table by column heading.

[TABLE=4]