Bush Warns Dems to Take Offer in Firings

Absolutely, thanks but no thanks for such a gracious offer

Seperation of powers. It's in the constitution.

checks and ballances is as well

ThinkProgress.org has a story wherein Tony Snow and the other lying mouthpieces are trying to LIE and say their is a precedent that the WH staff doesn't testify. Only it doesn't exist. Case in point, Bill Clinton's closest staff, a total of 31 on 47 occasions testified under oath. Someone order the subpoenas. NOW.

Brad - generally speaking, I think you're right with your first statement. But the Bushies are unusual. I think they really do believe that many long-accepted checks and balances, especially those systemic restraints enforced by legislative oversight, are somehow inherently unconstitutional. A weird thing to believe but they've been very ideologically consistent about it.

Sure, it's also ver-r-r-r-ry convenient to believe Congressional subpoenas of Presidential aides are unconstitutional at a time like this. And I'm sure the "unitary executive" folks would clam up if the shoe were on the other foot, same as traditional-constitutionalist Republicans are clamming up now. But the Bushies have claimed absolute independence from the legislature from the moment they took office, and whenever they've been subjected to the tiniest amount of oversight they squeal and scratch and try to squirm out of it, like a cat in a full bathtub. And all of this started long before any investigations were on the horizon.

In fact I'd say that in this whole incident the Bushies feel totally justified for everything they've done, both legally and in pursuit of the American interest, beginning to end. The real question is whether the new Supreme Court would agree.

In fact I'd say that in this whole incident the Bushies feel totally justified for everything they've done, both legally and in pursuit of the American interest,

If you change the wording a bit so it reflects the interests of Wall Street's biggest oil and banking executives then I would agree but there is nothing to suggest that the interest of the American public or majority of voters has any place on the Bush agenda.

Bush has bankrupted the Treasury and Wall Street is looking at new highs, a separate discussion of reality vs. ecomaginary propaganda could go there, but none the less an obvious fact that the winners are corporate executives and the losers are the rest of us.

If memory serves me correctly, and it may not, mydree flagged the old "Business Plot" in another thread, and in fact, it looks like they may have gotten their chance again with the Bonesmen allied with the NeoCons.

Here's what the Major General Smedley Butler testafied to Congress, that Committee then morphed into the HUAC and went on a distractionary witch hunt for communists another way to silence the critics and keep the corporations seized for trading with the Nazi regime from getting attention and focusing on nonsense instead. Note it was HUAC that got Nixon and Reagan off to their roads to the White House as well. Some connections there, McCormack-Dickstein, later confirmed as a Soviet spy and HUAC.

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

a separate discussion of reality vs. ecomaginary propaganda could go there

I adore that sub-heading.

Forest

These are the same guys who say "If you're not a terrorist, you shouldn't be worried about having your phone tapped and your email read." Apparently they think that blade only cuts one way.

Apparently they think that blade only cuts one way.

I once heard a funny definition of a liberal - a conservative who has gotten caught.

I've also heard it said that a liberal is a conservative who hasn't gotten robbed.

Smart? Little? You're one for three on this one, Forest.

;-)

How is this better for the country?

It avoids unraveling the gnarly web of thieves and ultimately busting half of Congress for running an organized crime ring.

Greck, in all seriousness, the reasoning for Executive Privilege is for the same reason that lawyers have Attorney/Client Privilege -- it creates a certain amount of faith between the executive and his employees.

I'll tell you how. Under oath and recorded versus no oath and transcript is the difference between trying to find information versus going on a fishing expedition trying to find a scandal.

Trying to find a scandal

You don't have to try very hard when it's all over the front pages of the morning papers. The notion that this is not already a scandal went down in flames with the release of yesterday's emails. Gonzales lied under oath - now it's time to find out who asked him to do that. And why.

That's not fishing. That's reeling in.

WEll it is the AP...

Someone order the subpoenas. NOW.

IT is on Folks. Apparently Mr Conyers listens to Miasma. :))

It's not spin, it's reality. You need to remember, in our form of government, the president is equal to the congress which is equal to the supreme court. Each branch has its head, but none is greater than the other.

Schumer and others think they can order the president around, but they can't. They don't have the power nor the authority. That's precisely what the constitutional seperation of powers does. Furthermore, not only does the president have his own position with which to negotiate, the senate can't do squat without 61 members.

What's been lost in this whole time since the democrats became the majority is that we are not a parliamentary system. There is no prime minister that they get to place at the head of the government. The president is still the president and he still has powers guaranteed by the constitution.

If the president limited his powers to those provided by the constitution he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. But he's not top dog; at the end of the day it is congress, representing the will of the people, who are the sovereign.

James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 regarding the ability of each branch to defend itself from actions by the others:

"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates."

I suppose your point on the senate proportions is relevant. But there are few Republicans who would support Bush in this unless he can make a compelling argument for the basis of his claim of privilege.

Yeah, it's not the case that the President is intended to be equal to the Congress. The Executive Branch is counterbalanced by the other branches of government. Each gets to hold the others accountable in specific ways. It's not a council of equals, and it never has been. It's Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Whether Congress ends up being top dog is a matter of politics, not Constitutional law. In the end, the Congress get a mostly-but-not-totally final word, which ends up not being final because the President appoints judges to the Supreme Court.

In any case, Congress does get to order the Executive branch around in certain ways. And the President can veto laws and appoint a wide range of posts with fairly weak Congressional oversight (though, even here, Bush has overplayed his hand). It's pretty fair if (a) every plays their part and (b) nobody rolls over.

Have no fear, the spineless Congress issued a "Stern Warning" to the lawbreaking FBI. A war of words is on the horizon!

Either way, the testimony would look like that anyway.

I'm not sure you understand what's going on here. This isn't a matter of 'poor employment choices'. It's getting rid of people who are sworn to uphold the law for actually attempting to do so when it runs contrary to the prevailing party's wishes and desires.

If people are incompetent, they certainly should be fired. The question here is whether people were fired because they were going against the political desires of the WH. The time to fire the FPs is at the beginning of the term. This is standard practice. Matter of fact, everybody offers their resignation. After the cronies have been installed, however, if they show a little moxie and go after criminality wherever it may be, then they'd better have a darn good reason for firing them. These people are confirmed by the Senate. That means the Senate should have some say if they're fired, too.

This is not about elected officials at all, except that the fired attorneys happened to be going after criminals of the Republican persuasion.

Face it, the rightwing talk show people are trying to say this is the same as Clinton did. NOT! And, who gives a flying f— whether he did or not? That wouldn't justify it either.

If by employment practices you mean grinding an axe for Duke Cunningham, the rebribe-lican that has gotten the longest jail term in congressional history, well then...

I wasn't really talking about employment choices...I mentioned employment practices - two very different subjects. Removing a person because they ruffled feathers while doing their job correctly is illegal, and last I checked the government isn't supposed to commit illegal acts (although they can't seem to stop).

But the fact of the matter is it all comes down to elected officials.
President chooses an AG and other legal council.
Senate members approve or disapprove of choices.

If we (as a population) can't vote for ethical people, should we really be surprised when unethical activities or actions are committed.

THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!! *KICKS HIM TO A BOTTOMLESS PIT*

You sound like the fascist here. You seem to think just because you don't like Bush that gives the Democrats in the Senate the right to run the white house by remote control. If I was Bush and Congress asked me to state why I fired someone I would say "Because I want to" or "Because I can" or "It's none of your business".

Except it is our business. The preznit can fire judges, but not for political reasons. As we have already heard.. most of them had excellent job ratings. You obviously can't quite get this concept of representative democracy down. The preznit, is elected by the people, and is answerable to the people. He has utterly forgotten that.

Do you actually think the decision to fire these 8 people even made it to the president. I sure hope not. He's got more important things to do.

Why? They get the same jail term if they lie when they are not under oath. The only difference is the Senators don't get to grandstand on TV.

There is another difference--the American people will not be privy to the actual statements. I think transparency demands that we have an opportunity to judge ourselves the performance of those called before Congress. This isn't a national security issue.

Well there is a drawback to that thought Spiffie. The President is right about one thing. Precedent is being made here. Don't think for a second that Republicans wouldn't relish the thought of using this issue as precedent in being able to drag White House staffers before committees at every possible chance should a Democrat be in the White House. If Bush sets down a precedent of proactive cooperation by the Executive branch then maybe that can be the default method of handling these types of issues in the future. Much better for the people in the end in my opinion - regardless of who is in office.

Releasing all that material by his own accord is a pretty bold move.

As Monica and Scooter have shown, if they can get people under oath they almost always find something to nail people on.

So be careful what you ask for here. While it maybe fun to watch people from the Bush White House go to prison for perjury or whatever they can find over legal political dismissals, it may turn into a can of worms the country doesn't need.

It might be more prudent to take the President at his word and let this thing run its course or at least see where it goes. The country faces much larger issues that need to be addressed in my mind.

We saw what happened to Clinton the final two years of his Presidency at the hands of the Republicans and it's clear the Democrats aim to make Bush's final two years much the same. I don't think it's good for the country nor for future Presidents to continue this nonsense every time the Executive branch is a different party than the chambers of Congress. But I will bet anyone that is where we're headed.

But suit yourselves. If subpoena's are the better way to handle this issue then remember that the bed is being made (or remade as the case may be).

Here's this to add to this argument.

Good point, Novanglus. From a non-partisan perspective - that is, wanting what's best for good governance more than any political outcome - there's not much in the way of a good answer for the Dems. For those of use who are fans of checks and balances, going either way will exacerbate a trend toward more dysfunctional government.

Issue the subpoenas and two bad things will happen. First, regardless of the worthiness of this particular struggle, there will be an increase in the ability of any future Congress to create an unending series of perjury traps for Administration officials. In the wrong hands that could be a massively disruptive power. And what's more, people would start expecting Congressional subpoenas and public hearings to come out of every little issue that pops up.

Second, the level of vitriol between the parties will continue to rise. I honestly don't know how how much worse it can get before we start seeing spontaneous violence in the streets...or at least spontaneous vandalism of bumper stickers and whatnot. The level of generic outrage on both sides is already too high for reasonable bipartisan political discussion in most forums, and makes needed compromise difficult.

Don't issue the subpoenas, and in a very public way the main plank of unitary executive theory goes unchallenged - that on Executive branch issues, the President basically is free to do whatever he pleases, that as long as Executive actions are not blatantly and unarguably illegal it's none of Congress' business.

That is certainly not a healthy precedent. If the Unitary Executive people had their way, Congressional oversight of the Executive would quickly diminish to irrelevance. As a direct result there would be no guarantee of continuity of the enforcement of the laws for any period longer than four years, since any President would be free to execute the laws in a totally different way than his/her predecessor, as long as the change was vaguely Constitutional. It would soon get to the point where there would be literally no limit to changes in executive behavior from administration to administration.

Turning undependability into an inherent trait of the government is bad governance in a nutshell, and if other countries' experiences count for anything, it's also a one-way ticket to economic and social instability. You just can't have the people in charge of the largest economy in the world changing their minds about how the law is enforced every four years, with no controlling oversight beyond the most trivial of issues, and that's exactly why Unitary Executive Theory should be fought against urgently.

My take is that taking "solution" #1 is plenty bad, but taking "solution" #2 would be worse. My guess is that the Dem leadership is eager to prove to its base that it's a capable opposition party, and will issue the subpoenas without hesitation. And though I'm not fond of political calculations, I won't complain about the result.

Well stated Jimmy. While I don't necessarily agree with everything you said I think that we at least think alike on this issue in some ways.

Personally, I think we're heading down a road towards an Executive branch that isn't so separate but one that exists under constant Congressional oversight. Almost a wing of the Legislative branch. And I don't think that was how it was intended.

In all fairness it wasn't the Democrats that began this journey from equal branches. I think the Republicans started it during the Clinton's years. The Democrats are just carrying it to a new level in their zeal for getting Rove, Cheney, and Bush.

The precedent here could have implications for many, many years and may be hard to reverse. Congressmen seem to really enjoy power and will not likely give it up so freely once they have it.

Almost a wing of the Legislative branch. And I don't think that was how it was intended.

I think that historically, the presidency was fairly weak. It wasn't until the post-WWII period that the executive branch really exploded with the multiplication of powers, responsibilities and numbers of federal executive departments and agencies. All of that mission creep deserves, demands more oversight from Congress, not less.

The executive only has as much power to exercise through his departments as Congress gives him. Right now Congress has given him...astonishing power, from the TSA, FBI, and CIA, to the IRS, DOJ, and FDA. The power of the executive extends into every facet of American life.

The legislature is supposed to make sure that power isn't abused, or used carelessly. Strong Congressional oversight is the only real protection we have from bloated executive branch (scary thought, eh?).

Nova & Spiff - funny, I agree with both of you.

Starting with Spiffie's comment - I agree that the Presidency is historically at its apex of strength, and that Congressional oversight is absolutely necessary to make sure that power isn't abused.

But Novanglus has a good point about the deleterious effects of escalating this into a partisan war. The escalation may have started with the Clinton impeachment but it's now pretty much out of control, with both parties drawing lines in the sand as a means of pandering to their base supporters. In the process the whole government is turning into a political battleground, and if what you want is a well-functioning government, that's bad.

Take, for example, the effects of this fiasco on the future practice of nominating U.S. Attorneys (USAs). Previously, the expectation was that the position of U.S. Attorney was non-partisan, and the issue of their hirings and firings were treated accordingly. Presidents would nominate people who may have had affiliations with the President's party, but often not, and even so the assumption was always that in the execution of their duties they would place any political bias aside. Congressional oversight was technically there, but much like a fire extinguisher - only to be used in case of emergency. Now, it certainly appears that future hirings and firings of USAs will come with heavy scrutiny, especially if Congress figures out how to reintroduce the law that requires Congressional approval of USA hirings.

The expectations surrounding the selection of USAs have changed, and the position is pretty much politicized. Next will come the expectation that USAs will actually carry out their jobs in a partisan way, and down the rabbit hole we go.

A good government must be a consistent one, where the law of the land doesn't change every four years. The executive needs to execute the laws in a similar way from President to President, so politicizing the bureaucracy - which would guarantee a sea-change in the execution of the law from one party to the next - is bad news.

Bush, under the delusion of "permanent majority" babble voiced by Rove and others, has taken this need for consistency a step further by envisioning a consistently Republican government, which is an altogether different goal. In pursuit of this goal he has ironically made it a point to politicize as much of the executive apparatus as possible, fishing out potential Democratic sympathizers and casting them out, making them public examples wherever possible.

If the Dems are truly concerned about the state of checks and balances in our government instead of just obsessed about winning in 2008, they would want to de-politicize the bureaucracy. The best way to achieve this is not necessarily through subpoena power, but through political compromise. Creating a status quo that both sides can accept is the only way to de-politicize the situation.

Off the top of my head, one workable compromise:

A) Gonzales retires.

B) The fired USAs with good performance reviews are allowed to return to their jobs.

C) Congressional oversight of the USA hiring process is restored, with some unambiguous language restricting the oversight ability to instances where 1) the fired USAs were not appointed by a previous President; 2) the fired USAs do not have below-average performance reviews from an officially-recognized non/bi-partisan source; or 3) the appointed candidate to fill the position does not have qualifications or experience comparable to the departing USA.

D) The subpoenas are set aside.

Bush doesn't exactly compromise very well - escalating tension appears to be the only way he knows how to resolve issues - so I doubt this option (or anything like it) is really on the table. But if he were open to compromise, this solution would be a sure-fire winner for the sake of good government. The bureaucracy should not be the battleground for a turf war between parties. That's a recipe for ineffective government.

The escalation may have started with the Clinton impeachment but it's now pretty much out of control

I'm a lot more optimistic, I think, than you are about the state of the government. Yeah, it's bad, but it's been a lot worse in the past. The history of American politics has seen extreme and bitter partisanship by two sides since at least the Federalist/Anti-Federalist days of Adams/Jefferson. Sometimes it abates a bit when one side becomes essentially dominant (e.g. the Democratic ascendancies under Jackson and FDR), but it's always there, simmering.

At one point it was so bad, going back to Jackson, that the president essentially ignored a ruling by the Supreme Court and by this action was responsible for one of the greatest injustices in this nation's history (not to mention the thousands of deaths). At other it was so bad that at the election of a Republican president, around a third of the nation seceded. To fulfill the rule of threes, the latter part of the 60s saw riots and American cities burning. The LA riots in the mid-90s were tragic, but imagine LA times a dozen. It's bad now, but we're not as bad off as it has been.

What honest / honorable person would want to take Gonzales' place and go through a Senate Confirmation. I know I wouldn't. Would you?

spiffie - I didn't mean to imply that current levels of partisanship are comparatively worse today than ever before. That's interesting stuff to keep in mind, to be sure, but it's not something that I find especially relevant. My concerns are about my future and that of my children, and since the U.S. government has some massive hurdles to clear in the upcoming couple of decades, and it would be nice to feel like the government was prepared to make the necessary compromises to deal with these problems.

And the list of problems my generation has to fix is daunting: Social Security and Medicare, exponentially rising healthcare and education costs, outsourcing our manufacturing base and the rise of China, the unfathomable amount of debt and the unsustainably strong dollar, the possibility of climate change, the likelihood of a global energy shortfall and accompanying bear markets and spikes in international conflict, the neverending conflict in the Middle East, the continuing spread of nuclear weapons to despots with Napoleonic complexes, the still-present specter of radical insurgent/terrorist attacks on American soil, etc., etc.

And though we might hope that one enlightened party will magically banish the other from government and handle all of these problems without needing to compromise, that will not happen. The parties need to learn how to play together again, and pronto.

Our political scene is now very closely divided between two parties who increasingly define themselves as the antithesis of the other. Some call it "base strategy" but really, it's defining yourself in terms of what your opponent is not, creating political identity through opposition and outrage rather than common cause. If that trend continues, compromise between parties will soon become impossible by definition. Filibusters and poison pills will wreck every meaningful bill to come out of Congress.

Yes, that's happened before and then some. But the examples you mention all have a horrible cost attached - the Trail of Tears (American-style ethnic cleansing), the Civil War, systemic racial injustice and the lynchings and riots it spawned - and I have no interest in paying those kind of costs for problems that are utterly solvable with a little coordination and extended effort. We're not talking about civil rights issues where compromise is not a viable option. Instead we have massive practical challenges that could each have thousands of viable solutions, at least one of which should be palatable to both sides of the aisle. A solution based on compromise to, say, Medicare funding would probably be much better than the status quo as long as both parties are compromising in good faith. And considering how evenly matched both parties have been over the last couple of decades, compromise will be necessary for either party to deal with these problems effectively.

Now don't get me wrong - when it comes to compromise, I think today's Democrats are much more willing than today's Republicans. On this occasion the Republicans (Bush in particular) are the ones largely responsible for poisoning the well. But more and more, Democrats are trying to adopt the tactics of amplified outrage that the right has been using for the last couple of decades, and the politics of outrage produces a political base who punishes compromisers. As a result, that political base eventually produces a political party that does not negotiate in good faith (see today's Republicans for a primer) because it is ideologically allergic to compromise.

If the current Constitutional showdown goes to court, the Dems should be careful to make clear that the logic behind their position is one of good governance instead of partisanship. This cannot be another Clinton impeachment, playing games of gotcha through perjury traps. And more importantly, once it's done they need to live up to the logic of good governance and swear off fighting political battles on bureaucratic turf. Because if Republicans won't de-escalate the partisan bickering, the Democrats should take the lead and shame the Republicans into comity. In my eyes that's the only practical hope that we will all be able to work together in the near-term so we can adequately prepare for our long-term problems.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.

--Winston Churchill

Democrats should take the lead and shame the Republicans into comity.

This assumes that the current crop of Republicans have a sense of shame. The past six years suggest otherwise.

Thank you for actually adding something interesting to this discussion. Facts are always appreciated, by some of us, at least.

The president may of course relieve U.S. Attorneys whenever and for whatever reason, even wikipedia concedes that. Which means that this whole subpoena process would really only be a political fishing expedition

No one on the left, much less the NPOV wikipedia, argues that US. Attorneys serve strictly at the pleasure of the President.

What's at stake here is not the President's right to hire and fire, but whether AG Gonzales perjured himself. It is Gonzales who cleverly roped Rove into this controversy, and no one else.

If Gonzales had not told congress that there were no political motives for the firings, congress would have no grounds to subpoena Rove or anyone else.

As for this being a fishing expedition ... it is more like a trip to the bait shop. If Bush is successful in claiming privilege to prevent testimony under oath, they'll hang him by it in the court of public opinion when it comes to the real fishing trips over Plamegate and the other scandals. If he fails to prevent testimony under oath, then they'll use that as a precedent when he really would benefit by preventing it.

Either way Bush is a bloody idiot for resisting this kind of thing now. The obvious tactic is to pick a patsy - Sampson or similar - and then all testify under oath that he dunnit; end of story.

Seems like, this time, no one wants to take the fall. Since no one will want to tell this straight to Dubya, this should make for a rather ... politically charged ... dialogue in the whitehouse :-)

If Gonzales was asked to resign today, this would probably go away in a couple of news cycles. I can't imagine that too many Republicans in Congress are too happy about Bush digging in his heels.

It seems I spoke too soon.

United States attorneys can be fired whenever a president wants, but not, as § 1512 (c) puts it, to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding.

Let's take the case of Carol Lam, United States attorney in San Diego. The day the news broke that Ms. Lam, who had already put one Republican congressman in jail, was investigating a second one, Mr. Sampson wrote an e-mail message referring to the "real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." He said it made him think that it was time to start looking for a replacement. Congress has also started investigating the removal of Fred Black, the United States attorney in Guam, who was replaced when he began investigating the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Anyone involved in firing a United States attorney to obstruct or influence an official proceeding could have broken the law.

Details on this and other criminal liabilities for congress to investigate at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/19/opinion/19mon4.html

Anyone involved in firing a United States attorney to obstruct or influence an official proceeding could have broken the law.

This is a nebulous and lightly reasoned legal conclusion.

Please be careful about accepting the statutory interpretation of a newspaper columnist.

18 U.S.C. § 1512 says nothing about U.S. Attorneys, or employment.

The code also specifically says that the office charged with enforcement and adminstration is that of the U.S. Attorney General.

It raises an interesting issue, though -- how do we keep the U.S. Attorney's Office on the side of the People? I don't know the answer, and while I'm sure it has been addressed at least on paper, I don't know if a satisfactory answer is laid out anywhere.

What's at stake here is not the President's right to hire and fire, but whether AG Gonzales perjured himself. It is Gonzales who cleverly roped Rove into this controversy, and no one else.

This is also an interesting issue. I assume you mean perjured himself before congress.

It's related to the issue I raised above. Who prosecutes the Attorney General? At most, Congress could remove him from office.