Letters to the Editor
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To paraphrase Walt Kelly...
We have met the insurgents and it is us.
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So, we're back to square one.
As long as the R's in Congress continue to back Bush and his policies, nothing gets done and this psycho gets to do whatever he pleases. Somehow I don't think this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind. I don't think they envisioned this kind of a crime family.
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Executive Shield
I wonder if this means Cheney is not exempt from prosecution as he is not part of the Executive? Hmmmm....
Petra
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Running Out the Clock
Isn't it the fact of the matter that the Democrats' strategy is to run out the clock on the Bush presidency while being just oppositional enough to keep the base sullen instead of mutinous, avoid the terrifying political risks of mounting any genuine challenge to despotic powers asserted by a despised president, hope that Bush leaves office without blowing up the world first, and hope that he is replaced by a Democrat or at least by a less despotic Republican, such that the present constitutional crisis can fade away without anyone having to do anything that might significantly upset the status quo?
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just like Chavez
sounds like these guys have been paying attention to Venezuela and decide "why not us too?"
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28 U.S.C. § 1365
http://law.justia.com/us/codes/title28/28usc1365.html
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia shall have original jurisdiction ... over any civil action brought by the Senate ... to prevent a threatened refusal or failure to comply with, any subpena ...
... This section shall not apply to ... an officer or employee of the executive branch ...
http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/5182000_pjl8.htm
Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy
May 18, 2000"The civil contempt mechanism normally available to Congress under 28 U.S.C. § 1365 specifically exempts subpoenas to the executive branch."
- - Senator Patrick LeahyIs there some other way to bring a civil case of contempt?
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What will the Supreme Court Think
I suppose the ultimate acid test will be when this doctrine works its way through the courts. I take Glenn's point that Congress needs to have the political will to file such a suit--say by trying to hold Harriet Myers in contempt--but assuming it does, what will the Roberts court eventually rule?
Bush, et. al. have judged, probably correctly, that this will all happen long after they are gone, given the slowness with which all this will be played out...but still, will the neocons on the court care so much about the fate of neoconism that they rule against the power of the judicial itself? Overturn the famous maxim that it is the judicial branch's power to determine what the laws, including the constitution, are?
That will be the moment when we learn whether Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, etc., see themselves as judges and true conservatives or as ideologues in the service of the Republican machine.
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Impeachment--The Bruce Fein Argument
As conservative attorney Bruce Fein--who drafted one of the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton--warned on Bill Moyers show last Frdiay:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/transcript2.html
there's a problem here with unchecked powers that will persist beyond Bush's term in office, that conservatives ought to be very worried about.
There may not be a whole lot of principled conservatives around. But there's an increasing number of them who can foresee losing the White House in 2009. They ought to start paying attention.
But, then, if paying attention were their long suit...
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Yes, the wimps indeed need to find their backbones....
but with just less than half of the Congress still acting as administration toadies, it won't be easy. That the GOP in Congress so casually puts party before country should relegate them to the political wilderness for a generation or two, but it won't as the corporate and MSM big-wigs will continue to back them.
Is it okay to call the whole lot of them fascists yet or is it still considered shrill and not consonant with our epoch (Yeah, I have used that term before and I still think it fits the attitude of the beltway enablers)?
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Indeed!
Mr. Greenwald observes:
At this point, the blame rests not with the Bush administration. They have long made clear what they believe and, especially, what they are. They have been rubbing in our faces for several years the fact that they believe they can ignore the law and do what they want because nobody is willing to do anything about it. Thus far, they have been right, and the blame rests with those who have acquiesced to it.
And then (although earlier in the piece) the other shoe drops:
The only real question is what, if anything, we are willing to do about that.
Discuss.
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Tacit Commission
Glenn:
You are right that there is nothing revelatory in this particular story about the Bush administration. But if Congress waits too much longer, and things get much worse, when they finally DO get around to confronting the Bush Administration as they ought to, they may find themselves battling on such radical and foreign ground that they won't even have the benefit of any but the most general legal precedents. It will not be great principles like habeus corpus that bring this Administration to heel, but narrow, targeted and demonstrable contraventions of Congressionally promulgated law. And because Bush et al. are so maniacally focused on turning inches into miles, it seems to me that every Congressional failure to act, from a legal historic perspective, thus becomes an act of tacit commission. I see these headlines and I think, "here's another precedent I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life in some form or another." Just like we seem to be re-living Watergate. But I'm no expert, and I'd love to hear I'm overreacting.
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@ sysprog
Is it not relevant that Harriet Miers is a *former* executive branch offcial?
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Why?
> such that the present constitutional crisis can fade away without anyone having to do anything that might significantly upset the status quo?
Why would we want that? What good would that do us? No, we have a legal crisis here and we most definitely want it answered one way or another, not to just fade away in the hopes in never comes back. People like Bush and Cheney don't just go away when you wish real hard.
We have an elected civil servant who claims that the country is his oyster, his own personal playground where his will be done no matter what. That there is literally no crime so blatant or outrageous he could commit or order committed that he can be held accountable for should he wish not to be.
That sort of attitude is certain death for a free society. It must be shown once and for all that the Executive is merely an important part of the civil government, NOT the sole embodiment of national power. The neocons will never back down, so the only ways for this will end are if the whole top echelon get forcibly removed from power or they are allowed to complete this coup d'etat they've been working on for 6 years. If Congress, the courts, and the people refuse to do anything about it, then this country is already dead, the corpse just hasn't finished twitching.