The President 1) Has Something To Hide; Or, 2) Has His Back Up
I'm actually a bit tired of the Congressional hearings into the firings of the U.S. Attorneys, whenever that was.
Today Sara Taylor, a 32 year old political director in the White House who reported to Karl Rove until she resigned last month to pursue "private opportunities," kind of testified but invoked "executive privilege" and refused to answer any questions about deliberation concerning the firings within the White House, at the direction of Fred Fielding, Counsel to the President.
Also today, Fielding wrote to the Senate and House and told them that Harriet Miers, probably the most unqualified nominee for appointment to become a Justice of the Supreme Court that I know of, former Counsel to the President (before Fielding and after Alberto Gonzalez, now the Attorney General) would not appear at all in response to a subpoena for Thursday, having invoked "absolute executive privilege." I haven't done any research but I didn't know there was a superlative to privilege. I always thought you had it or you didn't; but, I'm not a lawyer for the Executive Branch, and those people have access to concepts of law that us ordinary guys aren't privy to. (There is such a thing as conditional privilege in the law, but I don't think that has any application here.)
You may recall that the White House has offered to let Congress talk to Rove and Miers, in private, without a recording or transcript, and not under oath. The offer was rejected. I'm not going to go legalistic here; but, my conclusion is that high-ups in the White House acted illegally, in a very politically embarrassing way, and/or the President is just flat tired of dealing with the Democrats now running Congress and is going to play out the string until something diverts their attention, figuring he has nothing to lose in the short, and maybe, the long term.
7 comments:
Why all the obfuscation? And if people can talk, why does it matter if they are under oath? Would they lie in the one case, and not lie in the other? Although after the Scooter thing, I don't know why they care if they lie under oath - clearly there are no consequences for doing so.
I'm tired of all this bullshit. Next president, please. It doesn't matter who gets elected, I don't see how we could possibly do worse.
I'm with "fermicat", totally tired of this inept, weak, incoherent clown in the Oval Office.
But firing competent U.S. attorneys and replacing them with sycophants for political reasons really sucks. If this was done, it needs to come out and people need to be punished.
The last thing we need is a herd of prosecutors and judges beholden to the executive and a new radical right version of justice - "our ends justify the means".
The president has said over and over that he believes in "strict interpretation" of the constitution.
Ask him to point to the part about "executive privilege."
I don't know. People tell me I'm biased against the President and I try to not be that way. I don't believe it is because I vote Democrat because in the aftermath of 9-11 I felt he was remarkable.
Till we heard less and less about Bin Laden and more and more about Saddam.
I believe we are seeing shades of Watergate here. I believe after the outcry and talk of impeachment of Clinton after his affair was revealed (when the only one who really had the right to "impeach" him over that was his WIFE), that our former whiskey and cocaine loving President Bush needs to be held accountable. FOR SO MUCH MORE.
But...I usually get told I'm not thinking clearly because I'm a Democrat or the mom of a war veteran. So what do I know?
(BTW, I'm back, Dave. Sometimes law classes pay off. :)
See, I think Shrub is actually The Man Who Would Be King...
The President is entitled to hire and fire U.S. Attorneys at will.
It has long been the tradition to replace all, or nearly all, of the U.S. Attorneys at the start of a second term and replace those political appointees (which is what they are) with other political appointees.
This President only replaced eight.
(His immediate predecessor replaced lots more than eight.)
But all this President had to do was say what I just said... but, of course, he didn't. And neither did his underlings. Oh, no, they had to be all secretive and deny everything... and invent "performance" issues that only cranked people out of shape.
So "investigations" -- purely for political reasons -- were begun.
Remember our discussion about lying to the Feds? That's probably what's in play now, don't you think?
And fermicat -- you don't see how we could possibly do worse? What scares me is that we probably will both see it, as it happens.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I may not hit all the points of your comments; but, here's what I think, and to start, I'm going off topic from the original post.
George W. Bush, our current President is the most ineffectual PR president in my memory. I have vague recollections as a kid of JFK and can move forward from there.
GWB whines. When whining doesn't work he stonewalls. Sometimes he reverses stonewalling and whining.
I at a point quit with Clinton, God, I am about to have differentiate between Bill and the Bitch; but, Bill, however much he was lying was believable given the lawyers' "laugh test." The test?
Never make an argument in court that makes you laugh while in progress. Bad form. GWB either never heard of this rule or is a sociopath.
To go back to my original point in this comment to my post, there are times that I actually agree with the idiot and hear what he has to say about what he thinks, and then say to myself, "he's and idiot, I agree with what he wants to do and he doesn't even know how to make a cogent argument to support his position."
Fermi's point in the first comment, and Curmudgeon's in the last, I fear that Cur is right. I see no one that I have any trust in that wants to be GWB's replacement, and I fear, without going into the basis of my fears, that the next, God help us all, woman, or man, will be just as bad, inept, weak, and hopefully less incoherent. The last phrase was for LF.
Pols and lawyers are famous for situational ethics. Thomas, there are legit reasons for privilege. The current stupidity isn't one. Monica and Cur, I'm not sure that we have a Watergate on our hands, but we may well have an unannounced "Scooter" problem on our hands: If we say nothing, we have less chance of being indicted for lying.
Finally, Judi, I liked the movie with, who was it? Shrub is nowhere as good an actor as, damn, I can't remember the name!
This should qualify as a post. Thanks, all of you, for stopping by and talking with me.
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