Bang The Gavel

There were a couple Congressional hearings today of import, both of which deal essentially with the view of executive power and how this White House has consistently acted above the law.

First, White House political director and Rove protege Sara Taylor had a quiet day of testimony where she refused to answer the most pressing questions about the President's involvement in the firing of 8 US Attorneys late last year. By the way, the GOP talking point on this is always that US Attorneys "serve at the pleasure of the President," so how could Bush NOT be involved?

A former senior White House aide told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that she never spoke or met with President Bush about plans to fire a group of U.S. attorneys last year.

Sara M. Taylor, who left her job as the White House political director two months ago, also testified that she had no knowledge that Bush was involved in the dismissals at all.

"I did not speak to the president about removing U.S. attorneys," Taylor said. "I did not attend any meetings with the president where that matter was discussed."

In addition, if Bush was not involved in the firings at all, how can you claim executive privilege in refusing to talk about the firings? The whole basis for the claim is that a President must be able to receive candid advice from aides without it being disclosed to Congress and the public. Um, she's saying that she NEVER GAVE HIM ANY ADVICE on this matter!

I suppose executive privilege now means "anybody talking to the President, or anyone in the executive branch, or anyone related to anyone in the executive branch, and everyone they had sex with, and so on, and so on." It's the Pert Shampoo commercial theory of executive power.

Oh yeah, and when Taylor did manage to answer, she apparently revealed that she doesn't know shit about anything, as if we needed a reminder. Another former aide, Harriet Miers, is supposed to appear tomorrow, but Bush just ordered her not appear (I guess because she's not done memorizing the phrase "I don't recall").
The White House is turning the GOP into the Know-Nothing Party, in the literal sense of the term. And this in large part is because they all feel there will be no forthcoming sanctions on them, so why not act above the law and thumb their noses at investigators? Bush has a pardon pen and he's not afraid to use it.

Speaking of which, the House is holding a hearing today on the commuted sentence of Scooter Libby and Presidential clemency power. Joe Wilson gave a stirring address to kick off the hearing:

President Bush promised that if any member of the White House staff were engaged in this matter, it would be a firing offense. However, the trial of Scooter Libby has proved conclusively that Karl Rove was involved, and although he escaped indictment, he still works at the White House. We also know as a result of evidence introduced in the trial that President Bush himself selectively declassified national security material to attempt to support the false rationale for war. The President’s broken promise and his own involvement in this unseemly smear campaign reveal a chief executive willing to subvert the rule of law and system of justice that has undergirded this great republic of ours for over 200 years.

Make no mistake, the President’s actions last week cast a pall of suspicion over his office and Vice President Cheney. Mr. Libby was convicted of, among other crimes, obstruction of justice – a legal term used to describe a cover-up. The Justice Department’s Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said repeatedly that Mr. Libby’s blatant lying had been the equivalent of “throwing sand in the eyes of the umpire”, thereby ensuring that the umpire, the system of justice, cannot ascertain the whole truth. As a result, Fitzgerald has said, “a cloud remains over the Vice President.” In commuting Mr. Libby’s sentence, the President has removed any incentive for Mr. Libby to cooperate with the prosecutor. The obstruction of justice is ongoing and now the President has emerged as its greatest protector. The President’s explanation for his commutation that Mr. Libby’s sentence was excessive turns out to be yet another falsehood because the sentence was quite normal, as Special Counsel Fitzgerald noted. The President, at the very least, owes the American people a full and honest explanation of his actions and those of other senior administration officials in this matter, including, but not limited to the Vice President [...]

I would like the committee members and all Americans to think about this matter in this way: If senior American officials take time from their busy schedules to meet with a foreign military attaché for the purpose of compromising the identity of a CIA covert officer, what would we call that? Although that scenario is hypothetical, the end result is no different from what happened in this case – the betrayal of our national security.

There's a good thread on the hearing at Daily Kos.

UYPDATE: Brilliant:

"I took an oath the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.

And right after a break, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked her if she was sure about that. "Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?" Leahy asked. It was a telling exchange.

"I know that the president refers to the government being his government -- it's not," Leahy reminded her.

They really don't know anything about this country.

The End of Rule By Intimidation

Today's news on so many fronts reveals a signature moment. Not only has the chief of staff to the Vice President of the United States been convicted, but a similarly explosive story is playing out in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Justice is reasserting itself on many fronts today, and the moral of the story is that you cannot rule by intimidation, fear and bullying without it eventually catching up to you.

Scooter Libby lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury because he believed he could get away with it. He was doing so at a time where the Bush Administration felt they controlled all the levers of government and could do their business with total impunity. Since they have a sincere belief that people only listen when threatened (just look at their foreign policy), their favored method of action was intimidation.

It was intimidation that was at the heart of revealing Valerie Plame's covert status. They were backing the media off of the truthfulness of Joe Wilson's story. They were backing other CIA agents or whistleblowers off any desgins they might have on coming forward, showing by inference that their lives would be ruined if they made such a decision. The brazen nature of this initimidation necessitated a coverup that led to the verdict you saw today.

And in the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, the Bush Administration was revealed to have learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from that exercise. You need to read this email to get a full understanding of it. Essentially, the deputy Attorney General, Paul McNulty, threatened former US Attorney Bud Cummins with blackmail if he continued to criticize the Administration's efforts to purge him and his colleagues. That the Justice Department would threaten to put out damaging information about US Attorneys if they continued to speak out fits into this exact same pattern as outing Valerie Plame to get back at her husband. They've learned nothing from Scooter Libby, and they continue to operate in the same fashion. Attorney General Gonzales would only say that he could have rolled out the firings more smoothly. The only regret is that THEY HAVEN'T GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT.

In addition, yet another US Attorney has alleged that he received a phone call pressuring him to investigate a case that would benefit Republicans and damage Democrats. This time it was the chief of staff to Doc Hastings (R-WA), the former head of the HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE, calling US Attorney John McKay to look into allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial race. There's video of the McKay allegation here.

March 6 is an important day in the history of this Administration. You cannot continue to run the US Government like the mob and not expect any consequences. The walls are starting to crumble and the highest reaches of the executive branch - the Vice President, the Attorney General, the President himself - are no longer protected. This is the day that truth started to win out, and the day that begins a long march toward restoring what's left of this democracy and taking the country back from the thugs that have criminally ruled it for the past six years.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum:

It's remarkable. The Bushies quietly got a shiny new Patriot Act power to fire and replace U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval, so they went ahead and used it. Then they got called on it. So how did they react?

Well, they could have just said it was for policy reasons: they wanted people who were on board with administration policies a little more heartily, and these folks didn't make the grade. So we replaced them.

What would have happened then? A little bit of grumbling, probably. Some complaints that Bush was politicizing the office, perhaps, but since the offices are political appointments in the first place that wouldn't have gone very far. And the fired official themselves, who are all Republican loyalists in the first place, would have packed their bags and gotten other jobs. They know how politics works.

But no. This administration is so dedicated to spin and deceit that they just couldn't leave it alone. They figured maybe they could avoid any criticism by claiming the firings were for performance-related reasons. That should shut everyone up! But of course it did just the opposite. The fired attorneys, who were originally willing to suck it up and accept their political fate, were unhappy over being called incompetent. Who wouldn't be? And so the whole thing unraveled. Now it's a case of U.S. Attorneys being fired because they were too zealous about prosecuting Republican corruption, and the Department of Justice is reduced to feebly arguing that it's just a coincidence that so many of the Pearl Harbor Eight were investigating corruption cases.

It's not enough that they use little tricks to aggrandize their power. They have to insult those who they kick out the door, and threaten their careers. That's why it's backfiring.