Precedent

This should have been titled, "Depressing".

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7373

Precedent
by Brian Morton | May 10 2007


I have friends, fierce Democrats, who still are pounding the drums for the impeachment of George W. Bush or, at a minimum, Dick Cheney. I tend to tell them, with a resigned tone in my voice, that it's not likely to happen. If anything, I tell them, most of the main players in this administration are likely to walk scot-free come January 2009.

Why, you may ask? What makes this Political Animal, as forthright a liberal as you'll find in print, so utterly resigned to the possibility that the whole crew may get away with it: Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the outing of Valerie Plame, Katrina, Walter Reed, the U.S. Attorneys scandal, the growing Hatch Act scandal--the whole enchilada?

Because it's becoming readily apparent that the end result of the whole process, likely hatched years ago in the fertile mind of Karl Rove, was to game the system, from start to finish. A "holistic criminality," if you will.

snip//

Now that the unthinkable has happened--both the House and Senate in Democratic hands--the fail-safe mechanisms are kicking in. Subpoena orders to the Justice Department from the House are being ignored, and personal subpoenas to testify, such as the one issued to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are simply refused. Who is responsible for putting the teeth in legislative subpoenas? Why, that would be Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department.

Recall the last time this happened, when a Democratic Congress tried to enforce a subpoena on a recalcitrant GOP administration malcontent--Ronald Reagan's director of the Environmental Protection Agency, the late Anne Gorsuch Burford. She was eventually found in contempt of Congress, the end product of refusing a subpoena. Yet once again, enforcement of a ruling of contempt of Congress is relegated to the Justice Department. And should there be an appeal to the courts, well, the courts historically have felt that these types of interbranch squabbles are best dealt with by negotiation between the two branches themselves.

Stalemate, advantage executive branch. Throw in a few dozen pardons in December 2008 and it's game over. And the saddest part of all: The next Republican to land in the White House will claim the whole thing as precedent. Heaven knows what might happen then.

that something is happening without actually causing anything to happen . . . lots of investigations, subpoenas, testimony, smoke, mirrors -- and everything stays the same . . .

seems they've learned how to make us think the boat is rocking when, in reality, it's sitting high and dry on a sandbar of illusion . . .