Common Sense

I have thus far refrained from writng about Purgegate, mostly because there are so many other bloggers that are covering this and I haven’t had anything substantive to add to the discussion.

I think its worth noting my opinion, though.

I see shades of Watergate in this. Everyone is making that analogy now it seems, but it is so apt. Nixon’s fatal character flaw was that he had to always try to ‘get’ his enemies before they could get him. That’s what led to the Watergate break-in. It was his subordinates who reflexively tried to exert “Executive Privelege” to keep the tapes of Nixon’s meetings about the cover up from Congress that really led to his downfall, though.

Now, many of those same people are subordinates to George W. Bush and they are doing the same thing. They’ve had 30 years to learn that you can’t keep evidence of wrongdoing secret. As long as more than one person knows something, it will leak in Washington. In fact, I think the one thing in the entire history of Washington that actually was kept secret was the identity of Deep Throat, but that leaked out, too, through Bernstein’s kids at a summer camp.

Anyway, now these same people are covering up Purgegate and they seem ready to go to the mat again on this. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten that Nixon ended up turning transcripts and the tapes over to Congress in the end. That’s the only precedent to go by here, because no one else besides Nixon has asserted that executive privelege mean that the White House absolute immunity.

I don’t think both sides really want this to go to court because a ruling from a strict constructionist should be that there is nothing in the Constitution that says there is such a thing as executive privelege. If there’s no guaranteed right to privacy in the Constitution, then they would have to really stretch their minds around this one. The fact that the precedent is that White House aides have testified before Congress after subpoenas have been issued makes it even harder to see.

Democrats have to score a touchdown on this, otherwise their base (namely, people like me) will not look very favorably on them. We put them in power and they’ve had 3 months already to do something, anything positive. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything. So they need to bulldog this issue, issue subpoenas and take it all the way to the courts if need be to compel the testimony of those involved. (Hint: Kyle Sampson is someone you really want under oath.)

The more the White House stonewalls, the more it looks like they are trying to hide something big. The more President Bush goes out to do press conferences where he doesn’t answer the big question “Why were these people fired?” the more this sticks in the news and the more they look guilty of “something.”

I doubt any big crime has been committed. It seems to me that they were well within their rights to fire these people: They serve at the president’s pleasure. The renewed Patriot Act allowed them to put people in temporarily and indefinitely without Senate confirmation. But these people couldn’t help but lie about this from the beginning. They made Al Gonzales go in front of Congress and testify that:

GONZALES: And so let me publicly sort of preempt perhaps a question you’re going to ask me, and that is: I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

I think a United States attorney who I view as the leader, law enforcement leader, my representative in the community — I think he has greater imprimatur of authority, if in fact that person’s been confirmed by the Senate.

We know that absolutely was not true. I don’t Patrick Fitzgerald is going to be pursuing a perjury indictment on him anytime soon, though.

There might not be a ‘there’ there, but there is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to warrant investigation. In this case, its the cover up again that will kill them. If they had just said ‘Yeah, we didn’t think they were toeing the line and we wanted people that would.’ They would have been fine.

But they couldn’t be honest. They had to lie about “performance reasons” so it didn’t look like a political hatchet job to get on of Karl Rove’s staffers a new job. That ruined the ability of these USAs to get new jobs, making them go very public with this. Now they are dumping some documents, but not all the relevant ones, so make it look like they are cooperating. And the president, whose had months to come up with a simple explanation other than ‘uh, we’re going to correct the problem’ and that’s all they can come up with.

The longer this goes on, the more damaging it is to the White House. And I imagine that Gonzales isn’t held up as a sacrifice to the Democrats, then they need to go for the jugular. Bite down and don’t let go. Pursue indictments for perjury against the Attorney General and anyone else we might win against, and if we can prove that President Bush asked that Gonzales or anyone else tell Congress something other than the truth, then I would seek impeachment of the president.

I’m sure that there are lots of people that wouldn’t want to see it go to that again. Three impeachments in 30 years is almost too much for the country to take. Almost.

But the Replublicans have lowered the bar on what it is acceptable to purse impeachment proceedings on. If adultery is good enough, then certainly direction to commit perjury falls under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” umbrella.

The law of politics dictates that you kick someone hardest when they are down. At the moment, the Bush White House is crouching. If they realize that Congressional Democrats have the guts to go all the way on this, they will back down. They know that those kinds of investigations will bring into the light of day all the illegal shit they know they’ve done, and they won’t want those subpoenaed. They’ll back down and we’ll invite all of their former friends to kick with us in the spirit of bipartisanship.

Some Republicans already realize this. That’s why no one is coming to Gonzales’ defense. They will probably sacrifice him before they try and stop subpoenas in court. Even a halfway decent lawyer will tell you not to rely executive privelege when both houses of Congress are controlled by a pissed off opposition. Gonzales will go just stop the hemorraghing. That is, if the other two investigations into the Justice Department don’t just outright kill them first.

I have thus far refrained from writng about Purgegate, mostly because there are so many other bloggers that are covering this and I haven’t had anything substantive to add to the discussion.

I think its worth noting my opinion, though.

I see shades of Watergate in this. Everyone is making that analogy now it seems, but it is so apt. Nixon’s fatal character flaw was that he had to always try to ‘get’ his enemies before they could get him. That’s what led to the Watergate break-in. It was his subordinates who reflexively tried to exert “Executive Privelege” to keep the tapes of Nixon’s meetings about the cover up from Congress that really led to his downfall, though.

Now, many of those same people are subordinates to George W. Bush and they are doing the same thing. They’ve had 30 years to learn that you can’t keep evidence of wrongdoing secret. As long as more than one person knows something, it will leak in Washington. In fact, I think the one thing in the entire history of Washington that actually was kept secret was the identity of Deep Throat, but that leaked out, too, through Bernstein’s kids at a summer camp.

Anyway, now these same people are covering up Purgegate and they seem ready to go to the mat again on this. It’s almost as if they’ve forgotten that Nixon ended up turning transcripts and the tapes over to Congress in the end. That’s the only precedent to go by here, because no one else besides Nixon has asserted that executive privelege mean that the White House absolute immunity.

I don’t think both sides really want this to go to court because a ruling from a strict constructionist should be that there is nothing in the Constitution that says there is such a thing as executive privelege. If there’s no guaranteed right to privacy in the Constitution, then they would have to really stretch their minds around this one. The fact that the precedent is that White House aides have testified before Congress after subpoenas have been issued makes it even harder to see.

Democrats have to score a touchdown on this, otherwise their base (namely, people like me) will not look very favorably on them. We put them in power and they’ve had 3 months already to do something, anything positive. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of anything. So they need to bulldog this issue, issue subpoenas and take it all the way to the courts if need be to compel the testimony of those involved. (Hint: Kyle Sampson is someone you really want under oath.)

The more the White House stonewalls, the more it looks like they are trying to hide something big. The more President Bush goes out to do press conferences where he doesn’t answer the big question “Why were these people fired?” the more this sticks in the news and the more they look guilty of “something.”

I doubt any big crime has been committed. It seems to me that they were well within their rights to fire these people: They serve at the president’s pleasure. The renewed Patriot Act allowed them to put people in temporarily and indefinitely without Senate confirmation. But these people couldn’t help but lie about this from the beginning. They made Al Gonzales go in front of Congress and testify that:

GONZALES: And so let me publicly sort of preempt perhaps a question you’re going to ask me, and that is: I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

I think a United States attorney who I view as the leader, law enforcement leader, my representative in the community — I think he has greater imprimatur of authority, if in fact that person’s been confirmed by the Senate.

We know that absolutely was not true. I don’t Patrick Fitzgerald is going to be pursuing a perjury indictment on him anytime soon, though.

There might not be a ‘there’ there, but there is certainly enough circumstantial evidence to warrant investigation. In this case, its the cover up again that will kill them. If they had just said ‘Yeah, we didn’t think they were toeing the line and we wanted people that would.’ They would have been fine.

But they couldn’t be honest. They had to lie about “performance reasons” so it didn’t look like a political hatchet job to get on of Karl Rove’s staffers a new job. That ruined the ability of these USAs to get new jobs, making them go very public with this. Now they are dumping some documents, but not all the relevant ones, so make it look like they are cooperating. And the president, whose had months to come up with a simple explanation other than ‘uh, we’re going to correct the problem’ and that’s all they can come up with.

The longer this goes on, the more damaging it is to the White House. And I imagine that Gonzales isn’t held up as a sacrifice to the Democrats, then they need to go for the jugular. Bite down and don’t let go. Pursue indictments for perjury against the Attorney General and anyone else we might win against, and if we can prove that President Bush asked that Gonzales or anyone else tell Congress something other than the truth, then I would seek impeachment of the president.

I’m sure that there are lots of people that wouldn’t want to see it go to that again. Three impeachments in 30 years is almost too much for the country to take. Almost.

But the Replublicans have lowered the bar on what it is acceptable to purse impeachment proceedings on. If adultery is good enough, then certainly direction to commit perjury falls under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” umbrella.

The law of politics dictates that you kick someone hardest when they are down. At the moment, the Bush White House is crouching. If they realize that Congressional Democrats have the guts to go all the way on this, they will back down. They know that those kinds of investigations will bring into the light of day all the illegal shit they know they’ve done, and they won’t want those subpoenaed. They’ll back down and we’ll invite all of their former friends to kick with us in the spirit of bipartisanship.

Some Republicans already realize this. That’s why no one is coming to Gonzales’ defense. They will probably sacrifice him before they try and stop subpoenas in court. Even a halfway decent lawyer will tell you not to rely executive privelege when both houses of Congress are controlled by a pissed off opposition. Gonzales will go just stop the hemorraghing. That is, if the other two investigations into the Justice Department don’t just outright kill them first.