By Dana Milbank
Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A02
For years, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a genial former wrestling coach, has stood on the sidelines
as President Bush seized power from a quiescent legislative branch. But this week, with the unlikeliest of provocations, the speaker has hit the administration with the political equivalent of a three-quarter face lock Russian leg sweep.
...
Suddenly, all the issues that seemed so pressing a few days earlier -- war spending, immigration, gas prices -- were on the back burner. Emerging from the meeting of House Republicans, GOP spokesman Sean Spicer said members were willing to come out and talk about oil drilling; not a single journalist accepted the offer.
The newfound passion for congressional prerogatives has amused Democrats,
who have complained for years about what they say is the administration's contempt for congressional authority. The White House has stiffed requests from Congress on such key issues as probes of Hurricane Katrina to the eavesdropping programs at the National Security Agency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052502102.html Out of all offices of all the crooks in all the Capitol halls, the feebs chose to toss the office of the only
Democrat under federal investigation. If I had to guess, I'd say they were banking on establishing precedent -that they assumed the R's would roll over if a D was the target- before they continued trampling all over the legislative branch with more raids.
It's true that the Republican congress has allowed the WH to trample on our liberties. But if the executive branch is allowed to dissemble this protection, established over centuries of governmental evolution (see
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article01/21.html -scroll down to "speech and debate") a future Democratic congress will never have the means to operate independently enough to retrieve that power from the executive.
In explaining the seriousness of this new power grab, Hardin Smith at
FDL introduced me to the Constitutional term "speech and debate".-
Whether it is fear of their own offices being searched next — or this was a wake-up call as to the repurcussions of allowing the boy king to always get his way on our constitutional system of government, I have no idea. But in standing up to the President and the Executive Branch on this, they are correct.
...
The separation of powers question comes in because the FBI entered Jefferson’s office — in a Congressional office building — at a time when Congress was in session to conduct the investigation.
This triggers a confrontation under the
"speech and debate" clause in the Constitution. The question on the validity of the warrant will be, I think, whether or not there was some triggering piece of information that Rep. Jefferson was attempting to use his office as a means to hide illicit information and/or to shield himself and whether that was the basis for obtaining the warrant....
(Unlikely for the next 45 days, of course, as Bush has sealed the findings of the search -RS)I mean, honestly, the timing is a little weird and I wonder what they needed from the Congressional office that they didn’t already have with their videotape of Jefferson allegedly accepting a bribe, the videotape of him allegedly removing said money from the back of the briber’s car and taking it to his own and then the alleged finding of the cash in his freezer. Why raid his Congressional office when you have a case that seems pretty darn solid? There are investigative reasons to do so — but it was a truly unprecedented move, and one that ought to have required very extraordinary circumstances before it was executed.
I suppose my confusion arises from the fact that Duke Cunningham, former representative from California who has now plead guilty to bribery charges, wrote out a "bribe menu" on his Congressional office stationary…and they didn’t search his office. And Tom DeLay has been running a virtual KStreet ATM machine for the GOP out of his office…and it hasn’t been raided. Or the fact that Bob Ney’s office has remained intact. Or…well, you get the picture.
...
Either way, though, the Speaker and the Minority leader, as well as the Senate leadership are absolutely correct in standing firm on their "speech and debate" rights to no searches. This was put into place to prevent the sorts of abuses of the King going into the houses and/or offices of his political enemies to gin up a case against them (sound like any Administration we know?) — and they are absolutely correct to fight any weakening of this protection tooth and nail.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
