Hotline After Dark -- Speak Now Or Forever Hold Up Business

"World News" led with the Obama admin. allowing big banks to repay TARP money. "Evening News" led with airline safety. "Nightly News" led with the pending sale of Chrysler.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to hold up Senate business until Congress passes legislation blocking the release of photos showing detainee abuse.

Graham went "On the Record" about their threat.

Graham: "The Senate unanimously allowed Senator Lieberman and myself to put an amendment into the supplemental bill, war funding bill, that would be outcome-determinative in court, that would allow the government to win at the Supreme Court on this issue. And the House, the Progressive Caucus, has been in revolt, and I am now being told they've stripped that language. ... The most liberal people in the House are saying they won't vote for the supplemental bill to fund the war if these photos are protected from being released."

More Graham: "And I will do anything I can to make sure that the language that Senator Lieberman and I came up with preventing these photos from being released, anything, shutting down the Senate, anything. ... Let me just say the Democratic leadership in the Senate was terrific."

More after the jump, including TARP money, health care and SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

(KATHERINE LEHR)

Graham, asked how he shuts down the Senate: "Nobody gets appointed to any position, no bill goes forward without my consent or Senator Lieberman's consent, and we freeze the Congress as far as the Senate's concerned to make sure the American people want to understand what's at stake here. We're not going to learn anything new about detainee abuse. ... But we are going to get some kids killed."

More Graham: "My message to our members of the House, Democrats in the House who believe that releasing these photos result in violence against our troops and not help us understand any more about detainee abuse, speak up. ... Speak up! ... This is not just Lindsey Graham Joe Lieberman telling you this. Commanders in the field are telling everybody in Congress and the president of the United States, If you release these photos, it's going to put our troops in jeopardy, and some of them are going to get killed. And al-Qaeda will use this against us. It's giving your enemy bullets! It is crazy. It is irresponsible. No higher purpose is served."

FNC's Van Susteren: "If you can't convince the House, the president with a stroke of a pen can do this, right?"

Graham: "They tell me that the most sure way to resolve this issue is have the Congress speak, not by executive order because that's a stronger action viewed by our courts. But I think he could, if Congress doesn't act" (FNC, 6/9).

Lieberman, meanwhile, appeared on "Your World."

Lieberman: "Senator Graham and I just said today, we're not going to just go quietly into the night. This is too important. American lives are at stake. ... We're going to basically filibuster the supplemental appropriations bill unless this prohibition on releasing photos is ended. And we'll do whatever we can to stop the Senate until we take this action" (FNC, 6/9).

PAY IT FORWARD

The admin. allowing big banks to repay TARP money was also a hot topic of discussion.

Washington Post's Appelbaum: "The banks were concerned about what Congress might do next. They said it was really the uncertainty that was plaguing them, the possibility that Congress would come along and impose new restrictions" ("NewsHour," PBS, 6/9).

Ex-House Maj. Leader Dick Armey: "Why did the banks, all of a sudden, after being so hungry for this money at the outset, become so urgent in their desire to pay it back? Because they saw the exercise of control in their business by the government, and they wanted rid of it" ("Your World," FNC, 6/9).

Author William Cohan, on Treas. Sec. Tim Geithner saying the repayments are an encouraging sign of financial repair: "It's hard to complain about returning back to the taxpayers, you know, whatever it is, the $30 billion, $40 billion, $50 billion, $60 billion that they're returning and that they owe to us, and that's a good thing. ... On the other hand, you have to ask yourself, why in the world, when we knew that the system was so badly broken six months ago, why are we in a mad rush to restore exactly the same system as quickly as possible?"

More Cohen: "Letting these banks get out of the TARP and slither away from the grasp of the government at just the moment when we need to restructure the banking system is not wise" ("NewsHour," PBS, 6/9).

Valley National Bank Chair Gerald Lipkin, on why his bank is repaying TARP money: "First of all, right after we took the money, the media turned it into a bailout, which it wasn't in our case. We are paying a lot of interest on it. So we would like to get out from paying the cost of the money. ... We have seen the economy improving. So our board felt that since it's starting to improve, we could lighten the load, payback 25 percent of the money. If it continues to improve, we will look to pay back larger portions of the money over the next coming months" ("On the Record," FNC, 6/9).

THE DEVIL'S IN THE DETAILS

Meanwhile, the debate over health care reform was prominent on the "Ed Show" last night.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), on how hopeful he is that the healthcare bill will be passed: "There is no excuse. We have the votes. We've worked together with the committees. We had a caucus meeting of all of the Democrats. True, they had a lot of questions, and they should, because this is a very complicated bill. But everyone left there saying that we've got to bring this to the American people and we're just hopeful that this would give the impetus into the Senate. And we know that the president's going to be with us every step of the way. It's an exciting historic time in our country."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), on how far Dems are willing to go to get bipartisan support: "We would like to pass a bipartisan bill. But that doesn't mean we surrender our principles. At the end of the day, we want to pass legislation that deals with the health care mess that most families and businesses are coping with. ... We want to keep the health insurance industry honest by offering a public option. Why should they fear some competition?"

Politico's Allen: "This week was a real pivot point in this debate. Until now, it's all been puppies and ice cream. Everybody's been saying they want reform. But this week we started to talk about specifics. And for the first time, big business groups, which have been in these meetings for weeks, months, at the table, wanting to save these bills, are saying they might oppose them. So the administration is very concerned about the number of players that are involved in here. This is a lot of cats to herd" (MSNBC, 6/9).

NOBODY PUTS SONIA IN THE CORNER

And Manhattan district atty Robert Morgenthau, who was a key mentor to Sotomayor, was in the "Situation Room" to talk about his ex-assistant.

Morgenthau, on recruiting Sotomayor when she was finishing Yale Law School: "She's incredibly smart, hard-working. I mean, she graduated from Princeton, she was on the Yale Law Journal, one of the top students, hard worker, nobody pushed her around."

More Morgenthau: "She worked for me for five years. ... She was always prepared. One of the assistants who came there with her in the class of '79, I said, well, she was half a step ahead of you guys. He said, no, she was a full step ahead of us. She was street smart and also an intellectual."

Morgenthau: "She had two big cases that got a lot of attention. One was the case against a so-called Tarzan burglar. He would swing down on a rope, kick in a window and he murdered three people and committed a lot of robberies. She tried him, convicted him. He got 137 years to life.
... He's still in there. And then she had another case, we lobbied together New York state's on the child pornography laws to be strengthened. ... Went to the Supreme Court on a case -- they found it was constitutional."

Morgenthau, on Sotomayor's "wise Latina woman" comment: "I think she's probably right, but, you know, she said she regrets it" (CNN, 6/9).