What a day. First the President made a grave error:
“The president spoke to the attorney general around 7:15 a.m. from the Oval Office,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. “They had a good conversation about the status of the United States attorney issue. The president also reaffirmed his strong backing and support for the attorney general.”
Whoops. Then he made another one:
The White House offered this afternoon to make the political strategist Karl Rove and the former counsel Harriet E. Miers available for interviews — but not sworn testimony — before Congressional investigators looking into the firing of United States attorneys.
The White House counsel Fred Fielding announced the offer after a visit to Capitol Hill today.
And he is about to make another one:
THE PRESIDENT WILL MAKE A STATEMENT ON THE U.S. ATTORNEY MATTER SHORTLY AFTER RETURNING FROM KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI AT 5:45 PM, EDT, TODAY, MARCH 20, 2007, IN THE DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION ROOM
In the meantime, the Senate repealed the Arlen Specter provision in the Patriot Act by a veto-proof 94-2 vote. No longer will Karl Rove be able to make his personal friends into U.S. prosecutors without the Senate ‘advise and consent’. We can expect the House to pass the bill easily, possibly by like veto-proof margins (although perhaps not, since the provision doesn’t strike at their prerogatives).
Meanwhile, John Conyers held a hearing today to discuss the deplorable record of the FBI in abusing national security letters. It was quite embarrassing for all (Republicans) involved.
The President continues his penchant for trying to dig his way out of trouble. Stand by your man.
If the dems blow this one- vote them out in 08. Every mother one of them.
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts03162007.html
March 16, 2007
Government Without Restraint
The Last Days of Constitutional Rule
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The Bush administration’s greatest success is its ability to escape accountability for its numerous impeachable offenses.
The administration’s offenses against US law, the US Constitution, civil liberties, human rights, and the Geneva Conventions, its lies to Congress and the American people, its vote-rigging scandals, its sweetheart no-bid contracts to favored firms, its political firing of Republican US Attorneys, its practice of kidnapping and torturing people in foreign hellholes, and its persecution of whistle blowers are altogether so vast that it is a major undertaking just to list them all.
Bush admits that he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spied on US citizens without warrants, a felony under the Act. Bush has shown total disrespect for civil liberty and the Constitution and has suffered rebukes from the Supreme Count. The evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration manufactured false “intelligence” to justify military aggression against Iraq. The Halliburton contract scandals are notorious, as is the use of electronic voting machines programmed to miscount the actual vote.
The chief-of-staff to Vice President Cheney has been convicted for obstructing justice in the outing of a covert CIA officer. Proof of torture is overwhelming, and the Bush administration has even had the temerity to have permissive legislation passed after the fact that permits it to continue to torture “detainees.” The Sibel Edmonds and other whistle blower cases are well known. The Senate Judiciary Committee has just issued subpoenas to Justice (sic) Dept. officials involved in the scandalous removal of US Attorneys who refused to be politicized.
Yet the Democrats have taken impeachment “off the table.” Many Democrats and Republicans and a great many Christians can contemplate illegal military aggression against Iran, but not the impeachment of the greatest criminal administration in US history. Far from being scandalized by what the entire world views as an unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US, leading Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination rushed to inform the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, that they, if elected, will keep US troops in Iraq.
The previous occupant of the White House could not escape being impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about a consensual Oval Office sexual affair. President Nixon and his vice president, a saintly pair compared to Bush-Cheney, were both driven from office for offenses that are inconsequential by comparison.
Liberals branded Ronald Reagan the “Teflon President,” but the neoconservatives’ Iran-Contra scandal was a mere dress rehearsal for their machinations in the Bush regime.
What explains Bush-Cheney invulnerability to accountability?
Perhaps the answer is that Bush has desensitized us. Like kids desensitized to violence by violent video games and movies and pornography addicts desensitized to sex, we have become desensitized by the avalanche of Bush-Cheney crimes, lies, and disdain for Congress, courts, and public opinion.
Our elected representatives, if not the American people, now regard as normal such heinous actions as war crimes, the rape of the Constitution, self-serving use of government office, and the constant stream of lies and propaganda from the highest offices of the executive branch.
Perhaps that is what disillusioned foreigners, who once looked with hope to America, mean when they say that America does not exist anymore.
If the notion has departed that the highest political offices in the land are supposed to be occupied by people who are honest and faithful to their oath to the Constitution, then we are far advanced on the road to tyranny.
In future history books, will Bush-Cheney mark the transition of the United States from constitutional rule to the unaccountable rule of the unitary executive who cancels out Congress with signing statements and silences critics with the police state means that are now part of the US legal code?
Paul Craig Roberts held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University and was Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He served as Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
like Kevin Phillips and Paul Craig Roberts are the most articulate and elegant in their condemnations of the Bush Imperium?
Where are the democrats?
Signed a democrat
I’ve noticed that as well. Remember having conversations about BU$hCo’s regime with my dad a few years ago, and he was really unhappy with the preznit and with the state of the GOP – there was a feeling of betrayal, that the “movement conservatives” had taken the name and turned it into something monstrous.
that Gonzales is going on a hunting trip with Deadeye Dick Cheney…
The house of cards is swiftly tumbling…who’s going to be left to pick up the pieces?
Sen. Patrick Leahy has rejected the White House offer to allow Harriet Miers, Karl Rove and other top Administration officials to have “a discussion” with the Judiciary Committee about the US Attorney firing scandal, as long as they’re not under oath.
Leahy wants sworn testimony on the record.
Good for him for standing strong.
Monitoring CNN for the President’s statement in about 15 minutes…
Leahy just said “no deal” on having Rove & Mier testify without being under oath.
“If the staff of a President operated in constant fear of being hauled in front of various committees to discuss internal actions, the President would not receive candid advice and the public would be ill-served.”
Mr. President…if your administration didn’t seem to be bending (if not breaking) the rules at every turn, and if their actions didn’t seem to be giving aid and comfort to your political cronies over enforcing the rule of law, and if we didn’t believe you were lying every time you open your mouth, then maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about your staff being “hauled in front of various committees.” And maybe if the Republican Congress had done more than a half-assed job of oversight (you know, the reason we have three branches of government), we could’ve kept this mess from getting out of hand…
That one statement of Bush’s sums up his attitude — it’s all about the executive branch, to hell with the others (especially the legislative since it’s under control of the enemy Democrats anyway)…
what an oaf!
he’s the one acting the petulant man-child
the emperor has no clothes….what a pathetic display of hubris
ITMF’sA
If they refuse to honor the subpoenas, then retract them, & reissue them for investigations for articles of impeachment.
Yep, agreed on that KH.
I’ll be calling my Sens office tomorrow morning in support of supoenas.
Oh, if wishes really were ponies. I just read your post and for a moment thought the second paragraph was a quote by Leahy! I thought, wow, finally someone has the guts to speak the truth. LOL
wants to hire me as a speechwriter, I could use a few extra bucks… lol
Political suicide by mouth.
The only hopes for the GOP now are to distance themselves as far away from der shrubbenfuhrer as they can get (moving the caucus to Nome wouldn’t hurt) and start pushing harder for a riggable election bill (pro, not con…)
Someone needs to tell W stop–digging when you’re already in a hole filling with water.
“Harm the President’s ability to get good information” is that some twisted inside joke?
See a satirical visual lampooning the Bush administration’s version of “Justice Is Served”…here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Viva indeed. Hopefully someone like the Doctor will step up and brave the craziness to chronicle it all as with Watergate and the stoppered bloodbath of Iran-Contra. I know he hates the HST comparisons, but I think Taibbi could tackle it with gusto.
One commenter indictated that there were actually two weeks of emails missing from that giant data dump on Monday evening. Does Bush actually think that the people who are following this scandal are that dumb? Could he actually have forgotten the gap in the Nixon tapes? Hard to believe.