Senate Judiciary Chairman, John Conyers (D-Mich)
Now playing in a separate arena: the constitutional powers game. Amidst all the scandals of the past week or so, the House's contempt citations reminded me of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal of a few months ago.
According to White House press secretary, Dana Marino
The American people will find it baffling that on a day that House leaders are trying to put off passing critical legislation to keep us safer from the threat of foreign terrorists overseas, they are spending scarce time to become the first Congress in history to bring contempt charges against a president’s chief of staff and lawyer.
If the House had nothing better to do, this futile partisan act would be a waste of time. Unbelievably, it is being considered in place of legislation to make us safer, address concerns in the housing market, improve health care conditions for our veterans, reauthorize No Child Left Behind or open new overseas markets for U.S. goods and services, among other bills. The 'people’s House' should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers.
Yes, the left-wing blogosphere is indeed a powerful constituency?!
In a more moderate tone, John Conyers asserted,
Unfortunately, it is a step that is clearly necessary to preserve the role and constitutional prerogatives of Congress as an institution, in addition to getting to the bottom of the U.S. attorney controversy. If the executive branch can disregard congressional subpoenas in this way, we no longer have a system of checks and balances. That is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is our bipartisan responsibility to protect it.Conyers statement brings us back to our defense of the rule of law.
The Bush administration seems to be making the substantive judgment that security concerns outweigh the concerns about the firings. Let us grant that that judgment is correct. As Conyers rightly points out, however, the House handed out contempt citations for a far broader and more important reason than to discover who did what to whom: the ultimate reason rests on the need to have an accountable executive branch. We are reminded that when the Senate Judicial Committee handed out subpeonas for Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton to testify, upon Bush's direction they simply ignored it (citing executive privilege). Even if we don't care at all about this particular scandal, many recognize the good in having a principed solution to this power game.
But perhaps I am mistaken and it is better that balance of power struggles remain a power game. Are there opinions about this?
2 Comments:
The growth of the powers of the executive branch since Nixon's "Imperial Presidency" has been enormous.
Little attention is paid to the continuity of the people in the White House. Rummy and Cheney were in the Nixon WH, the Ford WH, the Bush I and Bush II White houses.
The crimes against the constitution and checks and balances are many and include Iran Contra and many other pre-W activities.
The fact that Cheney/Bush have taken it to an unheard of level makes sense for them.
They really truly see themselves as the Aristoi and solely suited to rule.
It is the most dangerous thing for the US happening in WAsington today.
You make a good point about personnel continuity. I wonder though whether we can think of the rise in executive power as a crime against the constitution. I am not at all inclined towards this way of thinking, but perhaps we should think of it as a legitimate reassertion of the powers inherent in the executive. I'm no constitutional scholar, but I don't recognize a principled way to settle the kind of balance of powers struggles that we've seen in the past 5 or 6 years. The only way any such struggle has been settled is through the assertion of power. Unfortunately for us, the assertions of power have been almost exclusively on the part of the executive. That is why the House's recent handing out of contempt charges is so significant.
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