Booman Tribune.

How?

Meteor Blades:

Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, had been seeking a veto-proof vote on the bill. But it became clear that he wasn't going to be able to get those votes unless he removed a provision requiring the president to certify that Iran has not directly engaged in or supported terrorist actiivities that had harmed Americans. And so the certification mandate was removed.

That—together with other changes in a so-called manager's amendment hammered out between Corker and the committee's ranking Democrat Ben Cardin in the past few days, with advice from members of both parties on and off the committee—turned what was expected to be an afternoon of fiery debate into a short session notable mostly for top members praising each other for working together to alter the bill to make it more widely palatable.

Despite the vote, not everybody was happy with the results. There were as many as 50 possible amendments that had been hinted at in the past couple of weeks by members of the Senate panel. But only one was actually introduced Tuesday. That was by Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso. He sought to reinsert language from the original bill mandating the no-terrorism certification.

Cardin said he opposed that amendment because there is no way the president could make such a certification. Including this as a requirement for signing an agreement would kill it, he said, and give Iran justification for saying diplomacy doesn't work and blame the United States for the result. He pointed out that such certification has nothing to do with the nuclear negotiations underway. Moreover, he added, there are separate sanctions imposed on Iran relating to terrorism and human rights violations that would be unaffected by any nuclear agreement.

Corker added that the bill has stronger compliance reporting requirements on terrorism than any previous agreements. While certification would not be required, the president would have to report back to Congress every 90 days on any Iranian involvement in terrorism.

Barrasso's amendment failed on a 13-6 vote, with no Democrats in favor but at least some Republicans, including Corker, voting "no" only reluctantly.

It sounds like Obama and the Democrats were able to find a way to make lemonade from the lemons. The Congressmen and Senators who are scared to death of AIPAC and think that Iran must always be our enemy get to show how tough they are, and Obama gets to go ahead and try to get a deal.

Unfortunately, we know that this isn't the end of it. They're going to keep trying to put poison pills in anything Obama tries to do... :-(

Cheers,
Scott.