It's another Watergate every day with these bloody people
posted by Liberal Eagle at 2:55 PM
And I do mean "bloody" in the literal sense.
To recap former Deputy Attorney General Comey's testimony:
Leaving aside, for now, the jaw-droppingly sordid tale of Bush trying to get a drugged-up and hospitalized John Ashcroft to sign off on a program he had already said he would never sign off on...people, this is pretty much the dictionary definition of an impeachable offense. I would say almost certainly not the only one Bush has committed...but now we have sworn Congressional testimony from one of Bush's own high political appointees at Justice to the effect that the president knowingly committed an impeachable offense, for years, despite the fact that most of his own Justice Department was so convinced it was illegal they were prepared to resign en masse.
And yet, it's taken the press years to express any outrage or anything worse than mild dissatisfaction over this or any other Bush transgression. And I still frequently hear people who should know better say "yes, well, Clinton lied under oath too; they all do it."
I've been thinking a lot about why it seems to be so much harder for people to get as outraged over scandals that involve illegally spying on the American people, lying the nation into a war, firing prosecutors for failure to politicize their offices, etc. than to get angry that Clinton didn't want to say on the witness stand that he was having an extramarital affair. I mean, Bush has lied for years about breaking the law with regard to matters of substance, and of direct relevance to people's lives. Clinton lied once in response to a totally inappropriate question, about a matter that had nothing to do with anything.
Here's what I think the difference is: there really was no high-minded excuse Clinton could offer. He got caught red-handed doing something most people would agree is sleazy and unethical, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with our lives or his job performance. So there's kind of an instinctive angry response.
Whereas Bush, I'm sure he and his supporters would say, lied in the service of the greater good. Broke the law to keep us safe from the big scary terrists. "He only lied to us with our best interests at heart" shouldn't be a mitigating factor, but I get the feeling it instinctively is for some people. It explains why Oliver North, whose felony conviction for lying about illegal sales of weapons to Iran to fund a right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua (also illegally) was only overturned on a technicality, was able to rehabilitate himself: people think "well, the things he did, he did out of a genuine patriotic interest in the good of the nation."
But, look. This president has violated the law, the constitution, and the trust of the nation. Called on it by his own Department of Justice, he ignored them and kept doing what he was doing. His administration feels perfectly free to ignore congressional subpoenas.
If there are no consequences for doing this, why shouldn't future presidents act like monarchs? Our system only works if there are consequences for this sort of executive power grab.
The nation will be damaged, maybe permanently, if Bush is not held to account for his actions over the last six years. Impeach the bastard. Now.
To recap former Deputy Attorney General Comey's testimony:
(i) he, OLC and the AG concluded that the NSA program was not legally defensible, i.e., that it violated FISA and that the Article II argument OLC had previously approved was not an adequate justification (a conclusion prompted by the New AAG, Jack Goldsmith, having undertaken a systematic review of OLC's previous legal opinions regarding the Commander in Chief's powers);
(ii) the White House nevertheless continued with the program anyway, despite DOJ's judgment that it was unlawful;
(iii) Comey, Ashcroft, the head of the FBI (Robert Mueller) and several other DOJ officials therefore threatened to resign;
(iv) the White House accordingly -- one day later -- asked DOJ to figure out a way the program could be changed to bring it into compliance with the law (presumably on the AUMF authorizaton theory); and
(v) OLC thereafter did develop proposed amendments to the program over the subsequent two or three weeks, which were eventually implemented.
Leaving aside, for now, the jaw-droppingly sordid tale of Bush trying to get a drugged-up and hospitalized John Ashcroft to sign off on a program he had already said he would never sign off on...people, this is pretty much the dictionary definition of an impeachable offense. I would say almost certainly not the only one Bush has committed...but now we have sworn Congressional testimony from one of Bush's own high political appointees at Justice to the effect that the president knowingly committed an impeachable offense, for years, despite the fact that most of his own Justice Department was so convinced it was illegal they were prepared to resign en masse.
And yet, it's taken the press years to express any outrage or anything worse than mild dissatisfaction over this or any other Bush transgression. And I still frequently hear people who should know better say "yes, well, Clinton lied under oath too; they all do it."
I've been thinking a lot about why it seems to be so much harder for people to get as outraged over scandals that involve illegally spying on the American people, lying the nation into a war, firing prosecutors for failure to politicize their offices, etc. than to get angry that Clinton didn't want to say on the witness stand that he was having an extramarital affair. I mean, Bush has lied for years about breaking the law with regard to matters of substance, and of direct relevance to people's lives. Clinton lied once in response to a totally inappropriate question, about a matter that had nothing to do with anything.
Here's what I think the difference is: there really was no high-minded excuse Clinton could offer. He got caught red-handed doing something most people would agree is sleazy and unethical, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with our lives or his job performance. So there's kind of an instinctive angry response.
Whereas Bush, I'm sure he and his supporters would say, lied in the service of the greater good. Broke the law to keep us safe from the big scary terrists. "He only lied to us with our best interests at heart" shouldn't be a mitigating factor, but I get the feeling it instinctively is for some people. It explains why Oliver North, whose felony conviction for lying about illegal sales of weapons to Iran to fund a right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua (also illegally) was only overturned on a technicality, was able to rehabilitate himself: people think "well, the things he did, he did out of a genuine patriotic interest in the good of the nation."
But, look. This president has violated the law, the constitution, and the trust of the nation. Called on it by his own Department of Justice, he ignored them and kept doing what he was doing. His administration feels perfectly free to ignore congressional subpoenas.
If there are no consequences for doing this, why shouldn't future presidents act like monarchs? Our system only works if there are consequences for this sort of executive power grab.
The nation will be damaged, maybe permanently, if Bush is not held to account for his actions over the last six years. Impeach the bastard. Now.
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