I heart constitutional confrontation
Today, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted to give Chair Pat Leahy the authority to use a subpoena to yank Karl Rove’s ass into the committee hearing room to answer questions about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, including San Diego’s Carol Lam.
According to CBS News, Sen. Arlen Specter, the leading Republican on the committee, voted no, arguing, “I counsel my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, to work hard to avoid an impasse. We don’t need a constitutional confrontation.”
With all due respect to Specter, one of Washington, D.C.’s least objectionable GOPers, he’s totally wrong. We desperately need a constitutional confrontation. In fact, I can’t think of anything this country needs more, under George W. Bush, than a constitutional confrontation. Well, actually, one thing that’s more urgently needed is for someone to show Bush a copy of the Constitution. Apparently, he’s never seen it.
Bush’s “reasonable proposal” to offer up White House officials in private and with their hands nowhere near a Bible is almost as laughable as Bush spokesperson Tony Snow’s comments to the press about the proposal. In a hilarious display of opposite-speak, Snow said on Tuesday that having White House staffers talk to members of Congress in private and not under oath was the best way to get at the truth, and that threats to subpoena them were tantamount to partisan theater. Oh, that’s rich.
Testifying in private, without a transcript and without being under oath is nothing but an invitation to lie! What else could it be? And I think it was Newsweek‘s Richard Wolff who noted on MSNBC yesterday that it was Snow who coined the term “Defeatocrat.”
The irony is that Bush, Rove and Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales could have avoided all of this by simply telling the truth. All they had to say was, “Yes, indeed, we fired those eight people for political reasons—because they’re political appointees and we can fire them for whatever reason we want.” But Gonzales had to go and lie to Congress, leading Congress, rightly, to want to know more about what the administration is trying to hide.
In other news, doesn’t Gonzales look a little bit like a chipmunk?
A bit like a meerkat, actually, and god damn it, Dave, if you didn’t write the finest editorial about this whole mess! It’s time. Come gather ’round people, wherever you are. Time to start beating your plowshares into swords. This sumbitch will indeed be televised.
I don’t know if Gonzalez looks like a chipmunk, but he sure has got some nuts on him. And the attorney firing scandal looks like it might be the straw that breaks the chipmunk’s nuts. Our new congress is being tested on this one and is getting a passing grade SO FAR (we all recall how the wiretapping scandal fizzled out). Will we see this go to the Supreme Court? They need a test, too. Especially one that pits their branch against the executive. God, how i almost enjoy reading the NY Times front page these days.
While the similarities between the Attorney General and one of natures cutest disease carrying rodents is not limited merely to the aesthetic sphere, I believe a Constitutional crisis may not bode well for the “defeatocrats.”
I believe this president and this administration have been one of the most damaging to civil liberties and the Constitution. I believe this damage to be objective fact, not merely my own flu/fever induced opinion.
That being said, I fear that if this crisis does come to a head, a legal head, a final decision regarding so called “executive privilege” will be decided by a supreme court newly loaded with two Bush appointees. And while I agree with D.A. that this court needs a test, I fear the result will be the death knell of the bulk of Congress’ relevance. Almost as if the court will be putting into case law the effective supremacy of party loyalty over loyalty to the Republic.
While that may be the working reality, I’d prefer it not be officially codified.