Kennedy's amendment to raise min wage to $7.25 over 3 years had enough votes to pass, with help from moderate republicans. BUT Frist put in a poison pill - an anti-abortion piece. So there was no way the Democrats could let it pass. So they withdrew it, after it passed with 52 votes.

Then Wyoming's R- Enze, introduced a weak version - raising only a measly $1.10 over 18 months. So most republicans voted for it - Democrats against along with a bunch of wingnuts. It failed.

SO NOW…WAGE EARNERS SCREWED…DEMS HOODWINKED.

As for Bill Frist, the millionaire Tennessee sawbones, everything you need to know about this unpleasant man was contained in one short paragraph of a profile of Frist by Michael Kranish in the Boston Globe Sunday magazine for Oct. 27, 2002, when Frist was in Boston, first at Harvard Medical School and then at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Frist is an animal lover who said his decision to become a doctor was clinched when he helped heal a friend's dog. But Frist now found himself forced to kill animals during medical research. And his new dilemma was finding enough animals to kill. Soon, he began lying to obtain more animals. He went to the animal shelters around Boston and promised he would care for the cats as pets. Then he killed them during experiments. 'It was a heinous and dishonest thing to do,' Frist wrote. 'I was going a little crazy.'"

And we all wonder how animal abuse, so obvious and so horrible, can be ignored by government officials in the state of TN...

JLP