The American Spectator

With some of the major bills moved off the floor, the Senate is expected to return in late August to prepare for the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge John Roberts, as well as to take up again major asbestos litigation that has been lingering in committee for some time. There is also talk of a large immigration bill taking shape, and a major telecommunications deregulation bill.

p> GUANTANAMO JOE br> Maybe Sen. Joe Biden has some political sense, but his staff sure doesn’t. Last week, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro gave a speech commemorating the 52nd anniversary of the assault on the “Moncada” and “Carlos Manuel de Cespedes” garrisons during the Marxist revolution. In the speech, which was largely a typical anti-American screed, Castro pounded away on the U.S. detention of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay: /p>

“One of Bush’s most cynical measures was to use the Guantanamo naval base, which the United States occupies illegally against our people’s will, to set up a concentration camp where he locks up, without trial or any kind of legal process, those whom he kidnaps anywhere in the world. And to top it all, that prison was turned into an experimental center of torture, the same as those later applied in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.”

Later, Castro cited Biden to buttress his argument: “Democratic senator Joseph Biden, of the Foreign Relations Committee, said that the Guantanamo naval base had become the ‘greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world.’”

No sooner was Castro’s speech available online than Democratic Foreign Relations committee staffers were emailing it around, seemingly proud that Biden was being taken seriously as a world leader.

“These are the same people who think John Bolton is a problem, and they think a Biden mention by Castro is a good thing,” says a Republican staffer on the committee. “That’s all you need to know.”