quote:So the question remains, is the odds greater that one of these people is a national security threat, or that some one in the administration wanted to quietly silence this probe without facing the political heat of an out right command to cancel it.
And you've got no way to answer this question accurately.
Someone asked "Why is this the only time they've been stopped?" I gave another possible reason, one with as much evidence as the other one being bandied about.
Evidence, true. The only evidence we have is the public statements. But we can all judge the liklihood of a)an office in the DoJ being a real security theat vs b)a politically motivated unique and unprecedented denial of security clearance to stop an investigation.
The fact that it's unprecedented is a very strong indication that the denial of security was for political and not realistic security concerns.
Unless you agree with this, Dag :
quote: "Almost all leakers are lawyers. That's the bottom line."--former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines
quote:But we can all judge the liklihood of a)an office in the DoJ being a real security theat vs b)a politically motivated unique and unprecedented denial of security clearance to stop an investigation.
The unprecedented and unique nature of this is explained by either possibility: Either this is the first time the office has been suspected of leaks in this manner, or this is the first time someone has tried to stop their investigation via security clearance denial for political reasons.
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Yes, but the probabilities are not 50/50, Dag. We've all seen investigations stonewalled in various heavy-handed and subtle ways by people in power, and this has all the earmarks of such a stonewalling. In the end, it's subjective, of course. In the end, more than bare reported facts weight the probablility estimates for each individual--all their past experience in similar situations is nuanced into the calculation as well.
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With an administation that has, in the words of Sen. McCain, "slow-walked and stonewalled" previous investigations, and cynically used NSA leak investigations as a convenient McGuffin to do so, they have lost the benefit of the doubt in that probability calculation.
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quote:Yes, but the probabilities are not 50/50, Dag. We've all seen investigations stonewalled in various heavy-handed and subtle ways by people in power, and this has all the earmarks of such a stonewalling.
You have no basis for saying this. For one thing, we apparently haven't seen investigations by this office stonewalled in this manner before, whereas I have personally witnessed offices being cut out of the loop on mere suspicion of unprovable leaks.
quote:In the end, more than bare reported facts weight the probablility estimates for each individual--all their past experience in similar situations is nuanced into the calculation as well.
Exactly. Past experience for stopping this office = 0.
quote:With an administation that has, in the words of Sen. McCain, "slow-walked and stonewalled" previous investigations, and cynically used NSA leak investigations as a convenient McGuffin to do so, they have lost the benefit of the doubt in that probability calculation.
I don't buy this argument as adding additional weight because Bush's critics pull the trigger on it far too often. I commend to your attention once again the B.S. people here said about the lack of contempt charges against Novak, in the face of many concrete reasons why their charges were wrong.
quote:With an administation that has, in the words of Sen. McCain, "slow-walked and stonewalled" previous investigations, and cynically used NSA leak investigations as a convenient McGuffin to do so, they have lost the benefit of the doubt in that probability calculation.
Where's your evidence that these refusals weren't also based on security concerns?
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"Similar situations" goes beyond just the history of the OPR.
True, there was lots of BS spread about the Novak case. But the obvious, likely, and true judgement was that he wasn't charged with contempt because he gave up his sources to the grand jury. So is your point, what, because there was some unintelligent speculation about Novak's case therefore _____?
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: For one thing, we apparently haven't seen investigations by this office stonewalled in this manner before, whereas I have personally witnessed offices being cut out of the loop on mere suspicion of unprovable leaks.
In this sentence, you're restricting your notice of stonewalling to this particular office, while considering many previous leak cases in general. Edit: Also, you're speculating that there is a leak, with no basis in fact other than denial of clearances. Just as I'm speculating that the denial of clearance is politically motivated. It really comes down to subjective analysis of the liklihood of one or the other. I think the stonewalling is more likely because there is great motivation for the investigation to be stymied as much as possible, at least until after the Nov. elctions, to avoid further scandal. Denial of clearances is a tidy, convenient, and difficult to challenge excuse to stop the investigation. It's like a student complaining to a teacher "The dog leaked my homework! Honest!"
edit2:We apparently haven't seen this office cut out of the loop before, for any reasons. Not completely like this. So your point is weak.
quote:Denial of clearances is a tidy, convenient, and difficult to challenge excuse to stop the investigation
It's also a valid response to a possible leak.
All you've shown, over and over again, is that the known facts are consistent with both theories.
And the only reason you have for preferring one theory over the other is your judgment of the motivations of the Bush administration.
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Whereas you refuse to factor in those motivations in any way. Or consider any other data beyond the bare facts.
It' been fun debating, but I'll have to get back to this later. Perhaps there really are 57 Communist leakers in the OPR?
edit: One last point: if leakers in the OPR are suspected, why hasn't there been an investigation of that? And how could they leak about the NSA case before they had clearance to investigate it?
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How, in the absence of any 'evidence' except speculation, can you consider these other things data Morbo?
Personally, I mistrust this latest incident as being motivated purely by security concerns. But that mistrust is about as weighty as water vapor, no matter how much I believe it.
As for why there has not been an OPR investigation...just how much publicity do you require about serious security breaches within the government before you will be satisfied?
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Dag, you are right. We don't have enough information to make a conclusive decision on whether this was a true security situation, or a politically motivated coverup.
And we never get that information.
In fact, from the Present Administration, we get very little information.
All we have left is speculation.
The press gains little from the administration other than talking points. All they have is specualtion.
All that congress gets is talking points, presidential perogative and stay the course. All they can use is speculation.
The talk about WMD came down to President Bush saying, "Trust me."
The talk about the great job FEMA was doing in those first days after Katrina were administration promises of "Trust me".
Can you understand, Dag, why people are hesitant to Trust the President?
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quote:Whereas you refuse to factor in those motivations in any way.
By "those" motivations you mean the ones you've assigned to them. You have no evidence that the administration thinks the investigation will lead to greater scandals. You've simply assumed that they have this motivation, with no evidence that they do.
The administration has consistently tried to limit who knows about this program. People have bitched about this from day 1.
quote:if leakers in the OPR are suspected, why hasn't there been an investigation of that?
There has been an investigation into the identity of the leakers. You have no idea if the OPR was investigated or not.
quote:And how could they leak about the NSA case before they had clearance to investigate it?
Because a lawyer involved in the initial planning went to the OPR for advice? You think leaks only happen from people w/ clearance?
Again, you are the one giving weight to your suppositions. I'm presenting another theory that is consistent with known facts.
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quote:Can you understand, Dag, why people are hesitant to Trust the President?
And can you understand, after hearing accusations made time and time again by people who insist they can't trust the president that have later been proved wrong, why I don't trust you to assess what the president is doing or why?
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I don't trust anyone on this board's assessment over my own, and that's all that's relevant to this conversation.
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Leaving aside what's relevant to this specific conversation, on the grounds that threads deviate all the time, who would you trust to assess the president's trustworthiness?
Stephen Colbert has the following thing to say about experts: "Pick a field that can't be verified....Security experts are in this category. They have security clearances; we don't. We can't question the expertise of the NSA because we are not in the NSA."
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Someone with particular knowledge of a particular fact which would be relevant to my making an assessment.
I seldom accept other people's opinions on the trustworthiness of another. I will except their "testimony" as to specific facts that will inform my judgment.
I can't think of a single person in the press whose judgment I trust in that way, on either side of the political spectrum.
In personal matters, there are a very few people whose intuition I'll rely on until my own tells me something contradictory or I have specific facts to judge.
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quote:Originally posted by Irami Osei-Frimpong: It's kind of like using your real name.
Bullshit. I am moral. I am honest. I am not hiding anythihgn, really.
And I use a screen name.
Anyone who wants to know my name here can find it, and the town I live in...hell, even where I work...in less than 5 min.
Perhaps your only reason for a screen name would be to hide something. That doesn't mean that there are no other reasons for others.
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The specific claim here was that this group within the Justice Department couldn't pass a background check for a security clearance, right?
Otherwise, on what basis was it denied?
So...I think Tom's question is a legitimate one. If the entity being investigated controls who can see the data-trail, then suddenly they have put themselves above the law. At least this law (the one that authorizes investigations by OPR).
IMO, Congress needs to take this on. If I understand it correctly, Congress can require an investigation by an independent prosecutor and the Admin would either have to give that person access to the information, or face "what?": Congress would just appoint someone else? Zero out the NSA's budget?
I think there's a point here where we are being told "trust us, or not, it doesn't matter." Short of impeachment, there doesn't seem to be much that Congress can really do if the Administration stonewalls.
This is just one of the many reasons why GWBush tops my list (edging out Nixon and Reagan) as the worst President in our history. Not that he has managed to gain this overwhelming power, but that he has asserted it, and used it.
I see this as a Constitutional crisis. My take on it is that we actually may need to rethink the whole Executive branch of goverment and maybe do away with the concentration of power in one single individual.
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quote:So...I think Tom's question is a legitimate one.
On what basis is it a legitimate question? I'm stating that I won't take a random internet poster's assessment of something I can assess myself.
The purpose of OPR is to investigate potential wrongdoing by justice department lawyers. It is NOT the appropriate venue for an investigation fo the type being demanded here.
In fact, since having a colorable argument for the legality of the NSA program and presenting it honestly and completely would probably exculpate any DoJ lawyer of wrongdoing, any report they conducted would be exactly the kind of thing Tom hates. It would be much of the same stuff Tom's been taking me to task for doing.
quote:Congress can require an investigation by an independent prosecutor
First, due to the lapse of the special prosecutor statute, Congress would have to pass a bill to appoint a special prosecutor, which means 2/3 if they wish to act without the president. Or Congress could investigate themselves - their powers are quite broad to do so.
quote: and the Admin would either have to give that person access to the information, or face "what?"
Then they go to court to get access. If denied, then impeachment.
quote:Short of impeachment, there doesn't seem to be much that Congress can really do if the Administration stonewalls.
This has always been true.
quote:My take on it is that we actually may need to rethink the whole Executive branch of goverment and maybe do away with the concentration of power in one single individual.
You may be right. I hope that if this occurs, it is done with an eye to the structural realities, not the temporary political alignment. The powerful executive and the administrative state which makes it so powerful are a direct result of a concerted effort by new dealers to reign in the court's oversight over the executive and to allow vastly broader delegation of power from Congress to the Executive.
This was done because they wanted the executive to be able to make substantive decisions that seriously affected the rights of individuals and businesses without having to get congressional approval each time and without being subject to serious judicial review.
Although the courts have created a doctrine that allows more extensive review of administrative review than originally intended, the Presidency now is orders of magnitude more powerful than it was prior to the New Deal, and 90% of that change happened by the time Truman became President.
Every bit of what you have objected to with regard to Bush is predictable based on the presidency created during FDRs terms. I hope the next time someone makes a substantive structural change to the government with such far reaching effects, the people responsible look past whether the changes help them accomplish their immediate goals. And not labeling those who raise such structural concerns as obstructionists or apologists will be nice, too.
quote: I'm stating that I won't take a random internet poster's assessment of something I can assess myself.
More precisely, you're stating that you prefer your speculation to someone else's speculation. Part of the problem here is that we're at least three levels away from anything resembling actual data; we're speculating on why people might have speculated on a leak that prevents them from providing information to people speculating about low-quality speculation.
Which is the beauty of the "I don't have to tell you" strategy. Because the people who care about the truth can't actually get at it, and can even be forced into defending the administration based largely upon appeals to authority.
If there's no one you can consider a valid source who isn't obviously a tool of the administration, the administration wins.
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quote:More precisely, you're stating that you prefer your speculation to someone else's speculation.
Of course. This isn't news, it's common sense. Just as you prefer your speculations to mine.
It should be noted, however, that I, unlike most of the others speculating on this aspect of the thread, have not decided that the other theory is more likely. I have proposed a single theory - one of many I could propose - as to the motive for denying OPR's security clearance.
In addition, I've seen too much such speculation based on the premise that "Bush would do that for political reasons" that's been actively disproved to rely on it, against both Clinton and Bush.
quote:If there's no one you can consider a valid source who isn't obviously a tool of the administration, the administration wins.
Which means that we should use the available means for investigating.
quote:Which is the beauty of the "I don't have to tell you" strategy. Because the people who care about the truth can't actually get at it, and can even be forced into defending the administration based largely upon appeals to authority.
No, they are simply not forced to accept what several of you are using as a basic premise in your analysis: that if there's a nefarious reason for an action of the Bush administration, it's likely the true one.
And, I'm forced to point out once again, OPR's investigation would provide none of the answers any of you seem to want.
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quote:Which means that we should use the available means for investigating.
Have you been calling your Congressperson on this issue? I live in Madison; my Congressperson's getting tired being the only person on the Hill advocating the sort of investigation you've recommended. What other methods, short of assassinating Congress and replacing them with individuals more concerned with ethics, would you recommend that could possibly address this issue in a timely manner?
quote:OPR's investigation would provide none of the answers any of you seem to want.
What's odd is that you're assuming the "answers" we want are in fact a way of "getting" the administration. At this stage, I'm happy for any insight into the functioning of the administration at all. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Have you been calling your Congressperson on this issue? I live in Madison; my Congressperson's getting tired being the only person on the Hill advocating the sort of investigation you've recommended. What other methods, short of assassinating Congress and replacing them with individuals more concerned with ethics, would you recommend that could possibly address this issue in a timely manner?
What would YOU recommend, Tom? A coup? I'm at a loss as to what you think should be done with this, since whenever I suggest the things that can be done legally, you somehow manage to turn that into a implied or explicit attack on my credibility.
Please, once and for all, what do you want done right now that doesn't involve magically making someone in the administration change their mind?
quote:What's odd is that you're assuming the "answers" we want are in fact a way of "getting" the administration.
No, I'm not. I'm not even sure how you read that into the quoted sentence.
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quote: Please, once and for all, what do you want done right now that doesn't involve magically making someone in the administration change their mind?
Well, I've called for impeachment before, and you've never passed up the opportunity to mock me for it. But I said then, and I'll say now, that violating one's oath of office seems like a perfect reason to get impeached.
That said, I can't imagine this Congress doing that, either.
Which is a great reason to revisit this whole "checks and balances" thing.
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quote:But I said then, and I'll say now, that violating one's oath of office seems like a perfect reason to get impeached.
And to discuss this, one needs to determine if one has violated the oath. Since I'm assuming you're referring to the upholding the Constitution portion of that oath, that would involve discussing those issues that you call me gutless and evil for discussing.
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The thing is, I'm not sure that violating the letter of the Constitution is the only way in which the Constitution can be violated. Surely it is conceivable that someone could despoil every principle outlined in the Constitution without technically going outside the fuzzy boundaries created by legal precedent?
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quote:The thing is, I'm not sure that violating the letter of the Constitution is the only way in which the Constitution can be violated. Surely it is conceivable that someone could despoil every principle outlined in the Constitution without technically going outside the fuzzy boundaries created by legal precedent?
An impeachment is a criminal prosecution. Do you want criminal prosecution to be available against you for violating the "spirit" of the law when you haven't violated either the "letter" or interpretive precedent.
Beyond that, you are sorely mistaken if you think my analysis has been about the letter of the constitution. It's an almost laughable claim.
Nice emphasis, by the way. Your derision of the idea of precedent and rule of law is quite clear. It's scary, of course, and also intensely impractical.
But if you want to turn impeachment and removal into nothing more than the ability for Congress to thwart the electorate because they don't like what the president has done and come up with some way to describe that act as violative of the spirit of the constitution, I guess I'll just remain glad that you have only one vote.
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quote:I'm stating that I won't take a random internet poster's assessment of something I can assess myself.
My problem is, I think, the same as one you've mentioned repeatedly -- that we do not have the information to make an assessment.
I would've been happy to see the OPR investigation go forward AND still have other investigations happen as well.
Here's the bottom line for me -- before we decide that warrantless searches are a good and necessary thing, I believe we should be having a full and open discussion of it. This, to me, is such a radical departure from the way I understood our system of government to work -- and the protections I thought were guaranteed to citizens -- that I really want more than an assurance that there's nothing unconstitutional about it.
I want it probed and picked at from every angle.
And THEN, and only then, if we reach some sort of consensus that it is necessary and valid, and can be accomplished without leaving too large an opening for abuse, would I agree that it should be given a trial. And at that, the trial should have some limits and oversight.
What we have now is nothing of the sort. It's more of a "can we do it? There's nothing to stop us" kind of thing from what I see. A very few people decided it was necessary. They didn't have anyone outside to review it. The same people sit down every 45 days to decide if they still think its necessary. Or so they say. Again, they don't even have to disclose the records of those conversations even happening.
It's not such a great stretch to FEAR the worst. It's not that I even have to assume it, or believe GWB's Administration capabile of abuse. It's enough that I fear that abuse. And it wouldn't matter who was in the White House, I would still fear the abuse. And even if the Bush Administration is being very careful and not abusing the program, we have nothing to guarantee that the next occupant of the White House won't abuse this power. There's no check, no balance except the ultimate ones -- the ones that require the internal government equivalent of the "nuclear option." If stopping something requires that we paralyze our government in time of war...well shoot, then we are all going to sit there gazing at our navels while what we all thought were rights are simply erased.
All the President (any president) has to do is ensure that we're at war with SOMEONE at all times in order to make it too dangerous to deal with their abuses.
I have acknowledged my biases against President Bush. But that doesn't mean that I can't also take the long view on something like this. That even if he has reined in his own people, this time, the next guy might not be even that strong, or aware.
That's what worries me most. That in a few years or decades, we really could end up with a secret police in this country and everyone will be sitting there scratching their heads trying to reconstruct how the hell it happened. But by then it'd be too late.
And thanks for the info on FDR. I knew a bit about the expansion of the Supreme Court in order to sway that group. I didn't know the rest of it.
And really, culturally we have this hero meme that makes us believe that one man, vested with power, can somehow save us. We're stupid that way.
And, as you said, short-sighted.
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See, I don't think it's at all clear that it has to be -- and I think history shows that, at the level we're talking about, it almost never is. If the flap over Clinton proved anything, in fact, it proved that you can be pretty much impeached at will, provided enough people dislike you.
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Which means what with regards to how we should feel about using impeachments for that purpose?
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Nothing at all. If you're uneasy using impeachments for anything but criminal prosecution, that's your prerogative.
Personally, I would rather use impeachment for every little thing under the sun, because I hate the executive branch as it's implemented in American politics. And because I think it's much easier for an ignorant electorate to hold an impeachment-happy Congress to account than for them to be expected, every four years, to remember whether the current consensus on their favorite news channel tells them that they can trust their president.
Still, if you'd rather that impeachment be reserved for proven felonies or something, that's fine; that history disagrees doesn't mean that you're not right about the way it should be.
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Given that there have been...what, two?...impeachments in US history, what history says about how they should be used is minimal indeed. It's happened exactly twice against Presidents, seventeen times in all.
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As I said. As I understand it, there's pretty much no mechanism in place to prevent Congress from impeaching a sitting president at their leisure; we are merely supposed to take on faith that they are acting as agents of the law instead of partisan legislators. Barring a Supreme Court case to specifically rule out any partisan action, what impeachment is "for" is very much up in the air.
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Then saying that history disagrees is misleading. You should say that history is silent on the subject.
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quote:As I said. As I understand it, there's pretty much no mechanism in place to prevent Congress from impeaching a sitting president at their leisure; we are merely supposed to take on faith that they are acting as agents of the law instead of partisan legislators. Barring a Supreme Court case to specifically rule out any partisan action, what impeachment is "for" is very much up in the air.
The Supreme Court will almost certainly not touch impeachment except for enforcing the bare rules: majority House, 2/3 Senate, in that order.
So, yes, Congress can impeach for absolutely whatever it wants. Just as, technically, the Supreme Court can strike down a law as unconstitutional for whatever reason it wants.
Still, that's not taking it on faith. We get to evaluate the entire House and 1/3 the Senate pretty much each time they do it.
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Which is my point. I would rather we impeach willy-nilly and evaluate our House and Senate on the quality (and perhaps quantity) of that decision than force people to decide, once every four years, whether they can actually trust their secretive executive branch. In fact, you can almost argue that this is what happened with the Clinton impeachment. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Amen to that. I wish I had enough faith in our electorate and our elected officials to think that we're capable as a country of implementing anything explicitly.
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quote:Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania, Chairman United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary Washington, DC 20510-6275
June 7, 2006
The Honorable Richard B. Cheney The Vice President Washington, DC
Dear Mr. Vice President:
I am taking this unusual step in writing to you to establish a public record. It is neither pleasant nor easy to raise these issues with the Administration of my own party, but I do so because of their importance.
No one has been more supportive of a strong national defense and tough action against terrorism than I. However, the Administration's continuing position on the NSA electronic surveillance program rejects the historical constitutional practice of judicial approval of warrants before wiretapping and denigrates the constitutional authority and responsibility of the Congress and specifically the Judiciary Committee to conduct oversight on constitutional issues.
On March 16, 2006, I introduced legislation to authorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to rule on the constitutionality of the Administration's electronic surveillance program.
Expert witnesses, including four former judges of the FISA Court, supported the legislation as an effective way to preserve the secrecy of the program and protect civil rights. The FISA Court has an unblemished record for keeping secrets and it has the obvious expertise to rule on the issue. The FISA Court judges and other experts concluded that the legislation satisfied the case-in-controversy requirement and was not a prohibited advisory opinion. Notwithstanding my repeated efforts to get the Administration's position on this legislation, I have been unable to get any response, including a "no".
The Administration's obligation to provide sufficient information to the Judiciary Committee to allow the Committee to perform its constitutional oversight is not satisfied by the briefings to the Congressional Intelligence Committees. On that subject, it should be noted that this Administration, as well as previous Administrations, has failed to comply with the requirements of the National Security Act of 1947 to keep the House and Senate Intelligence Committees fully informed. That statute has been ignored for decades when Presidents have only informed the so-called "Gang of Eight," the leaders of both Houses and the Chairmen and Ranking on the Intelligence Committees. From my experience as a member of the "Gang of Eight" when I chaired the Intelligence Committee of the 104th Congress, even that group gets very little information. It was only in the face of pressure from the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Administration reluctantly informed subcommittees of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and then agreed to inform the full Intelligence Committee members in order to get General Hayden confirmed.
When there were public disclosures about the telephone companies turning over millions of customer records involving allegedly billions of telephone calls, the Judiciary Committee scheduled a hearing of the chief executive officers of the four telephone companies involved. When some of the companies requested subpoenas so they would not be volunteers, we responded that we would honor that request. Later, the companies indicated that if the hearing were closed to the public, they would not need subpoenas.
I then sought Committee approval, which is necessary under our rules, to have a closed session to protect the confidentiality of any classified information and scheduled a Judiciary Committee Executive Session for 2:30 P.M. yesterday to get that approval.
I was advised yesterday that you had called Republican members of the Judiciary Committee lobbying them to oppose any Judiciary Committee hearing, even a closed one, with the telephone companies. I was further advised that you told those Republican members that the telephone companies had been instructed not to provide any information to the Committee as they were prohibited from disclosing classified information.
I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the Committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some point. This was especially perplexing since we both attended the Republican Senators caucus lunch yesterday and I walked directly in front of you on at least two occasions enroute from the buffet to my table.
At the request of Repubican Committee members, I scheduled a Republican members meeting at 2:00 P.M. yesterday in advance of the 2:30 P.M. full Committee meeting. At that time, I announced my plan to proceed with the hearing and to invite the chief executive officers of the telephone companies who would not be subject to the embarrassment of being subpoenaed because that was no longer needed. I emphasized my preference to have a closed hearing providing a majority of the Committee agreed.
Senator Hatch then urged me to defer action on the telephone companies hearing, saying that he would get Administration support for my bill which he had long supported. In the context of the doubt as to whether there were the votes necessary for a closed hearing or to proceed in any manner as to the telephone companies, I agreed to Senator Hatch's proposal for a brief delay on the telephone companies hearing to give him an opportunity to secure the Administration's approval of the bill which he thought could be done.
When I announced this course of action at the full Committee Executive Session, there was a very contentious discussion which is available on the public record.
It has been my hope that there could be an accommodation between Congress's Article I authority on oversight and the President's constitutional authority under Article II. There is no doubt that the NSA program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which sets forth the exclusive procedure for domestic wiretaps which requires the approval of the FISA Court. It may be that the President has inherent authority under Article II to trump that statute but the President does not have a blank check and the determination on whether the President has such Article II power calls for a balancing test which requires knowing what the surveillance program constitutes.
If an accommodation cannot be reached with the Administration, the Judiciary Committee will consider confronting the issue with subpoenas and enforcement of that compulsory process if it appears that a majority vote will be forthcoming. The Committee would obviously have a much easier time making our case for enforcement of subpoenas against the telephone companies which do not have the plea of executive privilege. That may ultimately be the course of least resistance.
We press this issue in the context of repeated stances by the Administration on expansion of Article II power, frequently at the expense of Congress's Article I authority. There are the Presidential signing statements where the President seeks to cherry-pick which parts of the statute he will follow. There has been the refusal of the Department of Justice to provide the necessary clearances to permit its Office of Professional Responsibility to determine the propriety of the legal advice given by the Department of Justice on the electronic surveillance program. There is the recent Executive Branch search and seizure of Congressman Jefferson's office. There are recent and repeated assertions by the Department of Justice that it has the authority to criminally prosecute newspapers and reporters under highly questionable criminal statutes.
All of this is occurring in the context where the Administration is continuing warrantless wiretaps in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and is preventing the Senate Judiciary Committee from carrying out its constitutional responsibility for Congressional oversight on constitutional issues. I am available to try to work this out with the Administration without the necessity of a constitutional confrontation between Congress and the President.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Have you been calling your Congressperson on this issue? I live in Madison; my Congressperson's getting tired being the only person on the Hill advocating the sort of investigation you've recommended.
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