A Thread That Is Running Thru CIA Leak, Mier's Withdrawal, Bush Speeches

[kentuck]

And what does it mean?

In the last few days, Bush has been vociferously arguing that the separation of powers keeps him from turning over documents to the Jusdicial Committee. But is that who he is really concerned about turning over documents to and what do we know about the request for documents?

Then when we read Miers' withdrawal statement this morning, we see two or three different references to "executive privilege" in regards to documents. First impression might lead one to think she had some assistance with her statement?

And is there any connection with the indictments that are expected to come down today or tomorrow? Do we know if Fitzgerald has asked for any documents from this White House? But, we should entertain that possibility with so much recent emphasis on "executive privilege".

[Demeter]

1. I'd Bet Money On It

Bush is going down, and so is everyone behind him.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I sure as hell hope you're right!

Won't that be a sight if it does happen?

[Richardo]

2. Secrecy has been SOP since Day One - January 20, 2001

John Dean lays it all out in "Worse that Watergate"

From changing the FOI Act to how docs are released from Presidential Libraries - it's all about keeping shit secret.

[Inland]

4. Secrecy and privilege....two concepts that Bush relies on, reflexively.

I don't know if they are consciously thinking of the indictiments, but unconsciously, the Bushies are always going to look for the two tools that have served them well in the past: secrecy, whereby they hide the truth including but not limited to their own sins, and privilege, whereby standards that are applied to everyone else are not applied to them.

[EC]

5. I'm beginning to think ** may be named as a

co-conspirator (or something) or there is some reason to keep his consults with Mier's secret...I don't think it's just his usual secrecy, I think he's scared...

[MI Cherie]

6. On C-SPAN ...

... a caller said the documents involved proof of the special treatment "W" received to avoid service in Vietnam.

:shrug:

[Francine Frensky]

7. You just fell hook, line, and sinker for the right wing strategy

the right wingers who didn't like Miers had this planned as an "excuse" for bush from about a week ago. there was an editorial in a newspaper somewhere that outlined this strategy.

To use it to our advantage, we should press that this makes * look guilty as heck.

[Lexingtonian]

8. remember the key idea of the Nixon Presidency

The essential idea was to subvert democracy and return to a feudal power arrangement.

The whole intent of a constitution- any constitution- is to supplant a monarchy with a set of institutions that each have one of the powers the monarchy incorporates into one person. Judicial, legislative, advisory, executive.

If you're Nixon in 1974 or Cheney in 2005, the project of collapsing the institutions involved into the hands of an ever smaller group of people is pretty far advanced, and appointing lackeys and cronies who can be made lackeys into key positions is the order of the day. It's not an accident that the present Administration and federal government top offices fill up with character-devoid minions like Hastert, Frist, Miers (attempted), Rice, Snow, Roberts (sort of), and Bush himself. The reins of power run through corruptocrats and psychos that can be controlled by higher-ups directly, i.e. Rumsfeld, DeLay, Santorum, Norton, Scalia/Thomas, etc. People who don't go along or interfere with the scheme get bullied and canned- Powell, Lott, Tenet, O'Neill, DeIulio, Chaffee. Information is power and gets increasingly restricted. Over time fewer and fewer people are in the know and power concentrates more and more in their hands. At some point it's all down to one set of hands.

We have only the slightest idea of what a 'victory' it was for Cheney to be able to conceal the Energy Policy papers from public scrutiny entirely- that ruling gave him the kingship. It's not us, even, that the principal victory was won over- it's that he could use the ruling to evade scrutiny from Congress and other branches or agencies in the executive branch.

When the electorate turns ever more against you and the scheme of concentrating power and arbitrary/ego-run, i.e. regal government, there is a choice. One is to admit that the Constitution is sovereign after all and dissolve the scheme...and NHL tournaments will be held in hell that year.

The other is the Nixon route as Watergate progressed. Try to fob off the electorate, try to fend off the efforts by Congress and the courts and federal agencies and state governments to take back their power (and then some) piecemeal and brutishly and via back doors. But the pressure mounts in the electorate, "backbone" develops, the overreaching is pushed back and itself broken, and crimes put the Imperial Presidency on the defensive entirely and force it back within constitutional bounds- but the crimes further demand the destruction of the power of the people who committed/enabled them. In the end there is a point where "But I am the King and I can and must rightfully crush you, you lesser beings cannot actually force me to account" is the central attitude. There was that lawyer for Nixon in front of the Supreme Court in the tapes matter who dejectedly told his counterparts before oral arguments: 'My President wants me to stand before this court and claim that he has powers greater than Louis the Sixteenth under the federal Constitution, and I'm supposed to do it with a straight face'. (I paraphrase, but that was the gist of it.)

It's an anti-Constitutional concept of governance, entitlement, and power. It gets crushed by The People turning against it and using the mechanisms of the Constitution to do so.

It could well be that one or another of the scandals going on- the Plame thing, the DeLay thing, the torture policy matter- ultimately comes down to a challenge before the Supreme Court about some documentation of things they refuse to be held accountable for that Cheney and Bush are withholding or concealing. That is where this Imperial Presidency thing leads: into an endgame of whether the Presidency is accountable to the public for the way it used its powers (i.e. to commit crimes) or "executive privilege" to destroy the evidence for the crimes is somehow a higher good. A Supreme Court has to come down 9-0 against this perversion of "executive privilege" and governance.

These are all Nixon people in the heart of the White House. Evading accountability has been a priority from the start- look at how they dealt with the media from Day One. They know that "executive privilege" is the central tenet of their theory of power- every time someone serious wants to hold them to account, they wield it against them. It's the thing that they so desperately craved in 2000 that Democrats did not.