So Good
They want to come back for more. Just because Bush is going to be out of office in two months doesn’t mean the great national Bush bash has to end. Ironic fly in the bitter ointment: NYT, on plans by pols to keep bashing the Bush pinata, notes the precedent set by Harry Truman allowing ex-presidents to wield presidential power and assistance subsequent admins have lent in blocking investigations:
WASHINGTON — When a Congressional committee subpoenaed Harry S. Truman in 1953, nearly a year after he left office, he made a startling claim: Even though he was no longer president, the Constitution still empowered him to block subpoenas.
“If the doctrine of separation of powers and the independence of the presidency is to have any validity at all, it must be equally applicable to a president after his term of office has expired,” Truman wrote to the committee.
Congress backed down, establishing a precedent suggesting that former presidents wield lingering powers to keep matters from their administration secret. Now, as Congressional Democrats prepare to move forward with investigations of the Bush administration, they wonder whether that claim may be invoked again.
“The Bush administration overstepped in its exertion of executive privilege, and may very well try to continue to shield information from the American people after it leaves office,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, who sits on two committees, Judiciary and Intelligence, that are examining aspects of Mr. Bush’s policies.
Topics of open investigations include the harsh interrogation of detainees, the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, secret legal memorandums from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the role of the former White House aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers in the firing of federal prosecutors.
Good thing we don’t have a war going on or an economic crisis or anything like that, so these guys have plenty of time to snoop through the sock drawers to make sure they didn’t miss anything. Meanwhile, Obama, suddenly faced with the horrible realities of actually running something, may become a Bush ally:
It is not clear, though, how a President Barack Obama will handle such requests. Legal specialists said the pressure to investigate the Bush years would raise tough political and legal questions.
Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure. Mr. Bush used executive privilege for the first time in 2001, to block a subpoena by Congressional Republicans investigating the Clinton administration.
The Washington Independent on the prospect for “Church-Pike” hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, another great idea to hamstring and distract intelligence services in wartime that Obama may discover, sort of like closing Guantanamo, isn’t the greatest idea.
Human rights groups want some drama with their national angst. Detainee Truth Commissions, please. Because fighting al-Qaeda = Apartheid.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:54 am on Thursday, November 13, 2008
4 Responses to “So Good”
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November 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
It’s simple. Bush-hatred was the jet fuel that kept the Dems running for eight years, and distracted any close investigation of their own foibles. Now they’ve got a Democratic president (an African-American at that), a Democratic-controlled Congress, and their fuel and screen (Bush) is about to run out. They desperately need to keep up the distraction from themselves.
To which I say, good luck with that.
November 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
There is also the possibility that Obama might want to fire some lawyers and interrogate some detainees himself.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Hmm… Valerie Jarret (co-chair of Obama’s transition team) told Tom Brokaw in an interview a couple of days ago that “given the daunting challenges that we face, it’s important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.”
http://media.newsbusters.org/stories/obama-spokesman-says-obama-ready-rule-day-1.html
Maybe he won’t be so worried after all about what happens after he leaves office. It’s not really a problem if you never leave, right? :)
November 14th, 2008 at 8:00 am
‘Two human rights groups urged the future Obama administration on Wednesday to appoint a well-funded commission with subpoena power to systematically examine the U.S. treatment of detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere since the 9/11 attacks.’
Maybe they ought to look into things like the Dachau massacre in WWII, and work their way up to the present.
I have endless anecdotal evidence of war crimes carried out under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, and we could probably spend a couple of years investigating John Kerry’s list of accusations re: Vietnam. Might want to look into the legality of Slick Willie’s bombing campaign against the Serbs while we’re at it. By the time the “well-funded commission” works its way through all the crimes carried out under various Democrat administartions, the war on terror will be a distant memory.