The times have changed since 1983. Back then, the Congress had a clear sense of their prerogatives. Back then, they were unanimous in asserting that the Reagan administration was stepping over their bounds.
Congress has used contempt citations for two main reasons: to punish someone for refusing to testify or refusing to provide documents or answers, and for bribing or libeling a member of Congress.
The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.
What happened today?
The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush’s former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.
The 22-17 vote — which would sanction [the] pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors — advanced the citation to the full House.
This demonstrates an appalling erosion of principle among GOP lawmakers. Ronald Reagan was not only a Republican president, unlike Bush he was a popular president. Nevertheless, in 1983, not a single Republican member of congress was willing to let him stonewall a congressional committee. Today, not a single Republican on the Judiciary Committee was willing to say the same.
What happened in the interim?
I don’t know. What do you think?
That was back before they purged the party of all but the true red meat eating zealots. We didn’t used to have idiots like Cornyn and Coburn and Bond, etc. in the Senate, we had old time legislators who guarded their power and prerogatives carefully. Most of those people are gone, replaced by the faithful (literally) party hacks.
There has also been a change in the media, as Republican power has surged over the past generation. The GOP in Congress know now that they won’t be called to account by the press for supporting Bush, so they have no reason to change.
Yeah, but unanimity one way switching to unanimity the other way? That, to me, is still shocking.
I’ve been reading a History of Collective Joy, which argues that passion inducing rituals can turn commonplace things into religious items/ beliefs.
Perhaps the passion inducing rituals of Fox News (music, vivid imagery, repetition,with us or against us rhetoric etc) right wing churches, Rush, and all the in-group private Republican events have caused the Republicans to perceive their party with religious fervor and unquestioning obedience. They may view their party with cult-like unquestioning obedience- and infallibility.
well, they better wake up soon and realize that George W. Bush is not the same thing as the Republican Party.
Web of intrigue. Let’s focus on tomorrow, this gang intends to run out the clock – personal gain before country.
Huffpost notes, “Bloomberg has just launched a website:”
Mike2008.com
Given the elephant’s disgust, should be very interesting.
“Wake up” to the fact? Hell, the lockstep Cult of Bush is the only thing keeping the peasants with pitchforks away from the gates. The GOP lives or dies as the Cult of Bush at this point, and they all know it.
It’s a self-correcting organism that has mutated out of control. If one part of the Cult stumbles, it’s either repaired or excised…that’s why you see Arlen Specter with a (D) on Fox Noise when he’s going after Gonzo. One part of the cult will correct any other malfunctioning part, whether or not it’s Fox, the White House, congressional Republicans, right-wing talk radio, wingnut bloggers, the beltway pundits or what have you.
When one gets out of line, the other parts “fix” the problem. Bush on immigration. GOP Senators on getting out or Iraq. Rush on Oxycontin. Wingnut mea culpas on the invasion. The rest of them pressure the other parts to present a united front.
They know like organs in the body, too many simultaneous failures leads to a systemic crash and death for the whole body. They know if one of them goes down, ALL of them go down.
So they all support each other. You get all the Republicans on the committee voting against contempt. I guarantee you when the larger vote is held, it will be along direct party lines, for the same reason.
To bring this mess down, we need something that hits all parts of the Cult organism at once so that the other parts are reeling before they can recover. We need critical mass, the political version of the ebola virus.
I’ve been hoping Iraq would be it, but so far the Dems are just too scared to do anything. Gonzo too appears to lack the heft…who’s going to prosecute perjury and contempt charges against him?
So how do we kill this cancer? They only way is to find something the Democrats and the people can latch onto and help us take the bastards down at once.
So far, we lack that issue.
It certainly operates like a cult in my extended family. The GOP wing refuses to even listen to any objective evidence against Bush, claiming it is all from biased sources. Only Faux News can be trusted.
No kidding. That’s why I came up with Tehanu’s Law of Opinions: The value of your opinion is directly proportional to the quality and extent of your research. I have this printed up on business cards, which allows me time to get away while they’re decoding.
This spring I finally realized I don’t bear responsibility for fixing every idiot I come across. My old boss, upon me giving him an extensive printout of opinions FROM HIS SIDE stating the the ABC “docudrama” was falsely biased against Clinton, declared he didn’t even know who these people (famous republican pundits) were.
Hence, the law.
I think that what explains it is that within Republican circles, there has been a shift in how the law is thought about. The idea that law functions as an impartial arbiter between conflicting parties is now seen as a preposterous liberal conceit. To Republicans today, everything is political. Not all of them may really believe this, but the moderates are forced to go along with it for fear of being treated as traitors by their peers.
This means that the Republicans are not really a “normal” party anymore, but must be treated as something akin to the Bolsheviks or Nazis: entering into the democratic process only to try to subvert it; all political parties other than the Republican Party are seen as inherently illegitimate. By rejecting the principle of legality, they have rejected a fundamental principle of modernity, and hence modernity itself.
But we have already know that for some time.
We did already see this, in the more wingnuttery comments about exterminating liberals. People don’t say this in polite company, but when you are with the libertarian right, it almost comes to the same thing. The Republicans under the Southern leadership and the College Republicans have become a revolutionary party. No doubt about it. Some of the true conservatives are now getting nervous, as they should, because they are beginning to understand that their wealth might not protect them either. It’s pay to play all the way now, for everyone.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The GOP representatives on the Judiciary committee are the worst of the worst, but I’m not holding out much hope that a full house vote will be any different.
I am a little surprised that they so unanimously embraced their own corruption and lawlessness in this vote, though. But as you say, the media won’t call them on their destruction of the Constitution, so why should they stop? This morning at the car repair, I saw that rag USA Today had the Gonzo Senate appearance story hidden on the third page today, and they appeared to have left out Specter’s evisceration of Gonzo. And we know that’s bullshit, but how many people read that paper and think it’s news?
And why the hell is congress going on a month-long vacation while all this is going on? Can you imagine what’s going to happen in their absence?
What happened?
We have allowed ourselves, through our own fear, laziness and apathy to be willingly led by a dangerously corrupt and authoritarian political leadership who have delivered us closer to a fascist state than at almost any other time in our history.
We have totally lost the true connection of what it means to “be an American”.
We have rightfully become, in the eyes of most of the world, a pathetic country populated by a significant number of pathetic people.
We have willingly given up our rights, liberties and responsibilities as citizens in the pursuit of “security”.
We have sold our country’s collective soul to the devil.
In the end, I fear, we will get exactly what we have earned through our actions.
I haven’t willingly done any of that.
I think Mike means in a collective sense.
yeah, I know he means it in a collective sense, but I don’t deserve any of this.
Who does?
Agreed, Boo. There are untold numbers of Americans who have done none of these things, who have fought for true democratic principles and do not deserve the ramifications. But as a country we will all suffer because of those who have supported and enabled these things.
Makes it all the more imperative that everything be done as quickly as possible to stem the tide of what is going on right now. Our Congress adjourning for the August recess before taking up the contempt citations is one symptom of our problems.
It just doesn’t seem like there are enough people taking these things seriously. We really are, and have been for some time, at a crisis point. And yet, the more we see circumstances change, the more things stay the same. I just don’t get it.
Short answer : Conservatives can’t govern effectively, so they’ve had to pull out all kinds of dirty tricks in order to hold on to their offices and power. In doing so, they’ve become tangled in a web of crime and corruption that will be exposed if every single one of them doesn’t stick together and keep up the facade.
A kewpie doll for ejmw, who just answered booman’s question concisely and accurately.
The GOP is basically employing (and subverting) Franklin’s adage to his comrades in the american revolution: “we must hang together, or we shall assuredly hang separately.”
“What happened in the interim?”
In the interim, the administration started a massive illegal spying programme, on their own representatives and senators as well as Democratic ones. If anyone starts being difficult, they get a friendly visit with threats of embarrassing revelations of their personal life.
(Just a guess 🙂
When the FISA court says that you can spy on anyone and take 72 hours to justify it, what other conclusion can you come to ?
That is why these Bush cultists want to change the law.
Neofascism has come into full flower but most were too busy watching Dancing With the Stars to notice.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."principal, booman? i thought you didn’t get along with principals
they’re all in decline.
I told my boy the sweatshirt story yesterday…he’s going off to an outward bound trip on Friday. He was mucho impressed with you, BooMan.
I am not sure the situations are that analagous. Lavelle was not citing executive privilege at the instruction of the White House. Lavelle had been discharged from the EPA and was facing investigation of charges of wrongdoing related to the EPA’s Superfund program to clean up hazardous waste sites.
Interestingly, some of the investigation focused on whether the EPA was timing clean-up activity to maximize electoral benefits. Certainly, Congress was looking into whether the White House played a role, but NEXIS searches do not reveal the administration advocating Lavelle no-show the hearing.
The more analagous case is Anne Burford who was cited for contempt at the end of 1982 for refusing under President Reagan’s orders to turn over EPA documents Congress had requested. The vote for a contempt citation was 259 for and 105 against, with 55 Republicans joining 204 Democrats to vote against the Administration. Four Democrats joined 101 Republicans in opposing the citation. Certainly more bipartisan, but far from unanimous.
I think the short answer to your question is “Newt Gingrich”. He led the charge to charge to change the passivity of the then Republican minority. This actually worked in the sense that it got the republicans elected. But it changed the character of the congress. Gentlemanly old folks like Bob Michel went by the wayside, now only bomb throwers remain.
The majority of the Republicans in Congress today are “conservatives without consciences,” as John Dean would say. Nothing more, nothing less –