[KR: How does one cover a topic when there is no news coverage of it? Letters to the editors offer one possibility. Here is a good question posed by Rudy Espino at Arizona State. Any ideas or suggestions? Please add to comments on this post.].
Immigrant Politics Bloggers,
Of course, you are aware of the most recent inability to muster enough
votes in the Senate for the Dream Act. And if you were following it
closely, you might have noticed that two of the previous co-sponsors of
some version of the Dream Act were among four of the Senators that did
not cast a vote - McCain and Kennedy; the other two no-votes were Boxer
and Dodd.
I would have thought all 4 would have been definite aye votes. But,
perhaps, McCain and Dodd, in particular, were on the campaign trail and
saw the writing on the wall about the likely outcome of this vote.
Well, if you go to a roll call cast one hour before the Dream Act
cloture vote, you find three no-votes: Kennedy, Boxer, and Dodd. McCain
was there on the Senate floor one hour before the Dream Act cloture
vote.
I have yet to find any press accounts questioning why Kennedy and McCain
were gone on this cloture vote. Kennedy, it seems, was clearly not in
the building - of three roll calls that day he was absent on all three.
McCain, on the other hand, was present for two of those three - and the
one who he chose to be absent on was that Dream Act cloture vote.
Strike you as odd?
Rudy
–
Rodolfo Espino, Arizona State University
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science