Madam President, if my colleague left me a message, I am unaware of that. I did look and see that he tried to call me today. I have had a million calls today and been in and out of a lot of meetings. If he left me a message, I haven't seen it on my phone, and I apologize for that. I had a lot going on today. I will say this. My staff has met with my colleague's staff on a number of occasions to discuss this. The concerns here should not be a surprise either to my colleague or to my colleague's staff. With regard to the question of whether we should just let the court decide, I understand what he said, but that is literally not what this is about. It is not about whether the court can decide whether to reopen the statute of limitations. That is not for the court. That is for Congress. That is for us to decide. The punitive reason for reopening the statute of limitations, which has been closed since 1951 for claims going back to an 1805 treaty, the purported reason for reopening it is the alleged cloud of title on the chain of title. What I am saying is that is an entirely illusory cloud on the chain of title because there is an indispensable party under rule XIX of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. You cannot litigate that. Unless the United States is a party and unless the United States has abrogated its sovereign immunity sufficiently to allow the United States to be added as an indispensable party, it cannot be litigated; thus, making any claims entirely illusory.…
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