Also at DKos.
Oh, what a tangled web. Historians may reflect that the Bush administration’s downfall was its blind faith in the power of the lie. The current controversy over the firings and hirings of U.S. Attorneys could be the brouhaha that collapses the Bush administration’s card house of deceptions.
The Final Straw?
As sins of the Bush administration go, the firing of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons is a relatively venial one. Compared to lying its way into an optional invasion of Iraq that the neoconservatives had been pushing for since January of 1998, long before Bush the younger threw his hat in the ring, firing a few federal prosecutors for not playing ball with the administration is the relative equivalent of snitching cookies.
And yet, Attorney-gate may prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s proverbial back.
The judiciary committees of both houses of Congress have passed measures authorizing issuing of subpoenas against Karl Rove and other high level administration officials regarding the firing of eight federal prosecutors. The White House responded by offering to allow the officials to testify behind closed doors under the conditions of no oaths and no transcripts. Senator Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) described the offer as “nothing, nothing, nothing.”
We can see where this is heading–hardball negations will take place to try to avoid having subpoenas actually issued. If the negotiations don’t work, subpoenas will fly. The administration will claim executive privilege to ignore the subpoenas. Congress will charge them with contempt, and the mess will spill into the federal courts.
In military art terms, this kind of jostling is called “peripheral warfare.”
As best we can tell, the administration didn’t do anything illegal by firing those eight U.S. attorneys except lie about why and how they did it. But that’s not what Attorney-gate is really about. It’s about the Iraq war, and it’s about the limits of executive privilege.
If Congress can coerce Rove and other administration high-rollers into public testimony under oath over Attorney-gate, it can call the entire unholy gang in to testify on the run up to Iraq, the domestic surveillance program, the Patriot Act abuses, and the entire laundry list of the Bush cabal’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
That would fracture the Republican Party even further than it already is. GOP pols would have to either abandon the neoconservative cabal that has infested it or go down with the ship.
That’s precisely why I think aggressive pursuit of open, under oath testimonies by administration luminaries in front of congress is a good thing. We need a vibrant two-party system. What we most certainly don’t need is a conservative party dominated by militaristic maniacs.
Thursday afternoon, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee has sent a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding saying words to the effect of “is that your final offer?”
Tucker’s bobble-heads thought the Senate committee might settle for an agreement in which the Bush boys and girls might testify on record as long as they don’t have to testify under oath.
What. The. Hell?
What’s the point of having someone testify if they don’t promise to tell the truth?
Then again, what do oaths mean to members of the Bush administration? They all took oaths to uphold the Constitution, and look how that turned out.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
I’ve been arguing a similar line of reasoning at work.
Bush can hire and fire at will the USATs. So, on it’s face there’s nothing wrong with it. But, as part and parcel of the way they do things, it just felt all along like there was something else behind it.
So, the congress tosses subpoenas into the public mix. Then Bush makes what I feel was a huge tactical mistake by offering Rove and Meirs for private chats. That offer, in my mind, makes the whole exec priv line of defense useless in that he essentially waived EP by offering them up. I guess they can split hairs and claim that EP applies to the subpoenas, but that’s not likely to gain much traction in the public discourse, I think. It does not matter if technically/legally there was no implied waiver of EP, I think the public will see it that way. Plus it allows the congress to flip one of my most hated republican lines, re “If they have nothing to hide, why should having their phone records library records, etc searched?” Well, if Rove/Meirs/et al have nothing to hide, why invoke EP? It just does not make sense on the face of it. It’s duplicitious and deceitful on its face.
I think the congress wants a fight over the EP issue. If congress wins and the EP stuff is waived by the courts, Bush could still ignore it and destroy the Republican party for quite some time to come or he can cave in. If he caves in, then I think it will rain subpoenas in DC.
I say let the subpoena rain fall!
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/22/navarrette/index.html
you know its a cover-up when this columnist starts pulling the “race” card for Gonzo. You might not notice it but the writer seem to “victimize” poor Gonzo and this is all because he is Latino..sounds like Justice Thomas saying “this is a high-tech” lynching.