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WOW! Bush prevents Justice from Pursuing Contempt Charges

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by rimrocker, Jul 20, 2007.

  1. rimrocker

    rimrocker Contributing Member

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    Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings
    White House Says Hill Can't Pursue Contempt Cases

    By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Friday, July 20, 2007; A01
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902625_pf.html

    Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

    The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

    Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

    But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege.
    Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

    "A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

    The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: "It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys."


    Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

    "That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

    The administration's statement is a dramatic attempt to seize the upper hand in an escalating constitutional battle with Congress, which has been trying for months, without success, to compel White House officials to testify and to turn over documents about their roles in the prosecutor firings last year. The Justice Department and White House in recent weeks have been discussing when and how to disclose the stance, and the official said he decided yesterday that it was time to highlight it.

    Yesterday, a House Judiciary subcommittee voted to lay the groundwork for contempt proceedings against White House chief of staff Joshua B. Bolten, following a similar decision last week against former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers.

    The administration has not directly informed Congress of its view. A spokeswoman for Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the Judiciary Committee's chairman, declined to comment . But other leading Democrats attacked the argument.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called it "an outrageous abuse of executive privilege" and said: "The White House must stop stonewalling and start being accountable to Congress and the American people. No one, including the president, is above the law."

    Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) said the administration is "hastening a constitutional crisis," and Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the position "makes a mockery of the ideal that no one is above the law."

    Waxman added: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

    Under long-established procedures and laws, the House and Senate can each pursue two kinds of criminal contempt proceedings, and the Senate also has a civil contempt option. The first, called statutory contempt, has been the avenue most frequently pursued in modern times, and is the one that requires a referral to the U.S. attorney in the District.

    Both chambers also have an "inherent contempt" power, allowing either body to hold its own trials and even jail those found in defiance of Congress. Although widely used during the 19th century, the power has not been invoked since 1934 and Democratic lawmakers have not displayed an appetite for reviving the practice.

    In defending its argument, administration officials point to a 1984 opinion by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, headed at the time by Theodore B. Olson, a prominent conservative lawyer who was solicitor general from 2001 to 2004. The opinion centered on a contempt citation issued by the House for Anne Gorsuch Burford, then administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

    It concluded: "The President, through a United States Attorney, need not, indeed may not, prosecute criminally a subordinate for asserting on his behalf a claim of executive privilege. Nor could the Legislative Branch or the courts require or implement the prosecution of such an individual."

    In the Burford case, which involved spending on the Superfund program, the White House filed a federal lawsuit to block Congress's contempt action. The conflict subsided when Burford turned over documents to Congress.

    The Bush administration has not previously signaled it would forbid a U.S. attorney from pursuing a contempt case in relation to the prosecutor firings. But officials at Justice and elsewhere say it has long held that Congress cannot force such action.

    David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel's office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a "unitary executive." In practical terms, he said, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will." And in constitutional terms, he said, "the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch."

    But Stanley Brand, who was the Democratic House counsel during the Burford case, said the administration's legal view "turns the constitutional enforcement process on its head. They are saying they will always place a claim of presidential privilege without any judicial determination above a congressional demand for evidence -- without any basis in law." Brand said the position is essentially telling Congress: "Because we control the enforcement process, we are going to thumb our nose at you."

    Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers."
     
  2. insane man

    insane man Member

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    impeach the b*stard.
     
  3. mc mark

    mc mark Contributing Member

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    I'm sure our esteemed Attorney General; Mr. Gonzales, will disagree with the president's assertion of executive privilege and if compelled by congress, will faithfully execute his duties as required by law.

    How can he not?
     
  4. geeimsobored

    geeimsobored Contributing Member

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    Seriously, wtf is going on... This is almost cartoonish now. I tend to hate the overly-inflated rhetoric of some critics of the administration but no words can describe how ridiculous this has become.
     
  5. mc mark

    mc mark Contributing Member

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    What is going on is we have a president with nothing too lose anymore (19% approval in Wisconsin, the American public turned against him) and will dare congress to do anything to reign in an out of control, rogue presidency.
     
  6. No Worries

    No Worries Contributing Member

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    Nixonian flashback.

    I can't see why W is begging Congress to impeach his sorry ass, especially since they most certainly will.

    Worst.
    President.
    Ever.
     
  7. Ubiquitin

    Ubiquitin Contributing Member
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  8. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking
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    This is the right move. At this point, the Democrats are totally out of control. Bush did the right thing by stopping them in their tracks. Let's get on with the business of running the country. Let's end all of the Democrats' sour grapes initiatives. It's no wonder Congress' approval ratings are in the toilet. No one appreciates their partisan witch hunts. Let's progress forward, not go on wild goose chases for partisan reasons.
     
  9. mc mark

    mc mark Contributing Member

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    Agreed 100%

    And Madam President Clinton will have a hell of a job correcting the mistakes of the last six years.
     
  10. thegary

    thegary Contributing Member

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    All the President’s Enablers
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    Published: July 20, 2007

    In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits — amazingly, they still exist — to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true.

    What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing.

    Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job.

    Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

    Sorry, but that’s not reassuring; it’s terrifying. It doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality.

    Actually, it’s not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administration’s “infallibility complex,” its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didn’t want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the “reality-based community,” asserting that “when we act, we create our own reality.”

    People who worried that the administration was living in a fantasy world used to be dismissed as victims of “Bush derangement syndrome,” liberals driven mad by Mr. Bush’s success. Now, however, it’s a syndrome that has spread even to former loyal Bushies.

    Yet while Mr. Bush no longer has many true believers, he still has plenty of enablers — people who understand the folly of his actions, but refuse to do anything to stop him.

    This week’s prime example is Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, who made headlines a few weeks ago with a speech declaring that “our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests.” Mr. Lugar is a smart, sensible man. He once acted courageously to head off another foreign policy disaster, persuading a reluctant Ronald Reagan to stop supporting Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt leader of the Philippines, after a stolen election.

    Yet that political courage was nowhere in evidence when Senate Democrats tried to get a vote on a measure that would have forced a course change in Iraq, and Republicans responded by threatening a filibuster. Mr. Lugar, along with several other Republicans who have expressed doubts about the war, voted against cutting off debate, thereby helping ensure that the folly he described so accurately in his Iraq speech will go on.

    Thanks to that vote, nothing will happen until Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, delivers his report in September. But don’t expect too much even then. I hope he proves me wrong, but the general’s history suggests that he’s another smart, sensible enabler.

    I don’t know why the op-ed article that General Petraeus published in The Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, hasn’t gotten more attention. After all, it puts to rest any notion that the general stands above politics: I don’t think it’s standard practice for serving military officers to publish opinion pieces that are strikingly helpful to an incumbent, six weeks before a national election.

    In the article, General Petraeus told us that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously.” And those security forces were doing just fine: their leaders “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months.”

    In other words, General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner. And the best guess has to be that he’ll do the same thing three years later.

    You know, at this point I think we need to stop blaming Mr. Bush for the mess we’re in. He is what he always was, and everyone except a hard core of equally delusional loyalists knows it.

    Yet Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it.

    http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/opinion/20krugman.html
     
  11. Sishir Chang

    Sishir Chang Contributing Member

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    I don't see how this can be Constitutional. I can understand citing Executive Privelage over turning over material but to say that Congress can't even issue charges.

    That's sayign that the Executive Branch can control the decisions of the two other branches which is clearly overstepping seperation of powers.

    This seems crazy too. The Federal Prosecutors swear an oath to uphold the law and not be "emmanations of the President's will." I don't like to use the rhetoric that we are heading towards dictatorship but if law enforcement officers are reduced to being servants of the President's will then that is where we are headed.
     
  12. Sishir Chang

    Sishir Chang Contributing Member

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    Consider this though. If Bush's assertions of a unitary executive hold out then a Democrat president will have the same power too.
     
  13. ymc

    ymc Member

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    Why? The Republicans will then take away such power by arguing in the same way you are arguing.

    The problem with the Democrats is that they are weak and disorganized. That's why they don't even have the balls to push for a frivolous impeachment like what the Republican did to Clinton.

    In politics, sometimes you need to get your hands dirty to get what you want.
     
  14. insane man

    insane man Member

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    well they aren't gaining back the congress in 08. so at least for two years hillary will have plenary powers. and frankly i sure as hell dont want that.
     
  15. rimrocker

    rimrocker Contributing Member

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    Greenwald...

     
  16. NewYorker

    NewYorker Ghost of Clutch Fans

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    He doesn't care about the country or anything. If Bush was found collaborating with Bin Laden, Trader Jorge would say Bin Laden was an American Patriot. Trader Jorge thinks Bush is the 2nd coming of Christ.
     
  17. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    Ok, I've been against doing this, but at some point you just have to draw a line in the sand and take a stand. That time was passed long ago. Political expediency for the sake of the greater good only holds if the country's institutions hold firm. They are not. George W. Bush should be impeached, as should Vice-President Cheney, for crimes against the Constitution. Like, yesterday. That's as simple as I can put it. I'm sure the actual language and charges will be of greater complexity.




    D&D. Impeach Bush and Cheney.
     
  18. thegary

    thegary Contributing Member

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    finally :eek: you've :eek: come :p to ;) your :D senses
     
  19. El_Conquistador

    El_Conquistador King of the D&D, The Legend, #1 Ranking
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    So basically you admit that you don't really know what you are talking about. "Crimes against the Constitution?" Nice.
     
  20. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    If you could see farther than the end of your nose, you might be concerned about this as well. Revel in your myopic paradise.



    D&D. Impeach Bush and Cheney.
     

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