Gadfly is Marty Aussenberg, a columnist for the weekly Memphis Flyer. Marty is a former SEC enforcement official, currently in private law practice in Memphis, Tennessee. (A full bio is below the fold.) Cross-posted at The Memphis Flyer.

The latest gift Republicans have given Democrats in this, an election year, is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s refusal to initiate an investigation of the secret, warrantless NSA spying fiasco. I say “gift” because, in spite of their fecklessness in standing up to Republican domination of all three branches of government, the fact is the GOP is playing right into the Democrats’ hands (if only that were truly the Democrats’ tactic). On issue after issue, from the “Phase II” investigation of the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq (which Pat Roberts, the chair of the intelligence committee has been promising for nearly two years, per Raw Story) to investigations of Abu Ghraib, secret prisons, torture, Katrina, congressional ethics, oil company gouging, etc., the Republicans, including the president, have stonewalled and obstructed, because, quite simply, they can.

But the Democrats need to be careful not to bray too loudly about the Republicans’ cover-ups (e.g., Glenn Greenwald) lest the party in power take their protestations seriously, and actually appear to do something of an investigative nature with regard to so many of their, and their fearless leaders’, screw-ups. The Dem’s are far better off, politically, with a party that refuses to hold anyone accountable for the vast and far-reaching excesses and serial incompetence of the government they control than they would be with sham investigations which would end up being nothing more than window dressing anyway. What use would another Republican-led congressional “investigation” be, given that party’s reluctance to swear witnesses who testify before it, or to issue subpoenas to recalcitrant administration minions, as has been the case with so many prior investigations, and given the Democrats’ status as eunuchs on any investigating committee anyway. The failure to investigate, however, gives Democrats a powerful stump theme, both in the upcoming mid-term elections and in the ’08 presidential contest. Not only, they can say, are the Republicans responsible for a “culture of corruption,” they are also responsible for a culture of deceit and obfuscation.

The reality is that with the hegemony enjoyed by the Republicans, nothing meaningful would be likely to come of any investigations anyway. The only time congressional investigations have meant anything was when the parties shared power. The prime example of that, of course, is during Watergate, when the investigation that revealed so many crucial facts about the Nixon White House came as a result of the Democrats’ control of Congress. That and the fact that there were Republicans who were willing to jump on the “get Nixon” bandwagon (a “do-right” philosophy that is completely absent from the current crop of kowtowing Republicans), resulted in an investigation that actually accomplished something (most notably, the revelation of the Nixon tapes). The Democrats should hope that the Dubai ports deal doesn’t completely wake the Republicans from their robotic obeisance to their leader, or at least that it doesn’t translate into party defections on other issues (as it seems unlikely to, given the party line vote on the NSA investigation question).

The Democrats need to keep their powder dry for when it will count—the upcoming elections. In the meantime, and as I’ve predicted before, (Memphis Flyer) the only meaningful accountability this administration is likely to suffer will be at the hands of the federal judiciary which, as we speak, is handling lawsuits covering virtually every Bush/Republican excess, from the NSA debacle, (ACLU ), to prisoner abuse/torture, (ACLU) to Katrina (USA Today). I’m still holding out hope that Henry Whittington will realize he’s a lawyer, not a priest, and change his apology for getting in the way of Cheney’s shotgun into a big fat personal injury suit, since that too is the only way we’ll ever find out what really happened that fateful day on the real-life Ponderosa.

BIOGRAPHY:

Mr. Aussenberg is an attorney practicing in his own firm in Memphis, Tennessee. He began his career in the private practice of law in Memphis after relocating from Washington, D.C., where he spent five years at the Securities and Exchange Commission as a Special Counsel and Trial Attorney in its Enforcement Division, during which time he handled or supervised the investigation and litigation of several significant cases involving insider trading, market manipulation, and management fraud. Prior to his stint at the S.E.C., he was an Assistant Attorney General with the Pennsylvania Department of Banking in Philadelphia and was the Attorney-In-Charge of Litigation for the Pennsylvania Securities Commission, where, in addition to representing that agency in numerous state trial and appellate courts, he successfully prosecuted the first case of criminal securities fraud in the state’s history.

Mr. Aussenberg’s private practice has focused primarily on investment, financial, corporate and business counseling, litigation and arbitration and regulatory proceedings. He has represented individual, institutional and governmental investors, as well as brokerage firms and individual brokers, in securities and commodities-related matters, S.E.C., NASD and state securities regulatory proceedings, and has represented parties in shareholder derivative, class action and multi-district litigation, as well as defending parties in securities, commodities, and other “white-collar” criminal cases.

Mr. Aussenberg received his J.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and his B.A. degree in Honors Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Immediately following law school, he served as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow with the Delaware County Legal Assistance Association in Chester, Pennsylvania.

He is admitted to practice in Tennessee, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, before the United States Supreme Court, the Third and Sixth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the United States Tax Court, as well as federal district courts in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana. He is an arbitrator for the NASD, New York Stock Exchange and American Arbitration Association, has published articles (“Stockbroker Fraud: This Kind of Churning Doesn’t Make Butter”, Journal of the Tennessee Society of C.P.A.’s,; Newsletter of the Arkansas Society of C.P.A.’s; Hoosier Banker (Indiana Bankers Association), and been a featured speaker on a variety of topics at seminars in the United States and Canada, including: Municipal Treasurers Association of the United States and Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Government Finance Officers Association; National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, Washington, D.C. ; Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, Memphis, TN; Tennessee Association of Public Accountants, Memphis, TN (1993)

Mr. Aussenberg has two children, a daughter who is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Masters in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University and is currently a student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and a son who is a graduate of Brown University and is working with a conservation organization in Marin County, California while he decides what to do with the rest of his life.

Mr. Aussenberg is an avid golfer whose only handicap is his game, an occasional trap shooter whose best competitive score was a 92, and an even less frequent jazz drummer.