bush: not in public, not under oath?

[Dinner]

These guys have already proved they will lie if given the chance (notice gonzo's lies about why the 8 US Attorneys were fired) so letting them spew more lies without being under oath is useless. They need to be under oath and then if they lie again they need to be held to account for it.

[Zkribbler]

Did I miss something? What is all this about advising the President?? Isn't the inquiry about why false information was given to Congress by members of the Justice Department?

Apparently, there may have some pressure applied by people working in the White House, but there is no White-House-Staff/Justice-Department privilege.

[Ramo]

It's pretty clear that Bush just wants to have the right to lie to Congress and the American people yet again.

[Dinner]

This is what a Canadian poster on another site (who works in politics in Canada) said about this:

This is outrageous hypocrisy, and rekindles my desire to see people in this administration charged with treason just for the hell of it.

The Republicans freely sent stacks o' subpoenas to Executive Branch aides over Whitewater, for example, with little thought to this bull**** notion of executive privilege. I'll never forget the absurd sight of the likes of Gene Sperling being called to testify over a real estate scandal in Arkansas. Funny how the tune changes.

I might add that there was never anything even remotely illegal or improper about Whitewater. Hillary Clinton just flipped a property for a quick profit like millions of Americans do every year. Now that was a real partisan witch hunt which ended up being a total waste of tax payer money.

What makes this investigation different from the Republican witch hunt against Clinton? This time there are a series of e-mails and memos from the White House which clearly show the White House's intent in firing at least one of those eight US Attorneys was to obstruct the corruption case against a fellow party member. That's a real crime on the books and a gross violation of trust.

If the President and/or his officials are knowingly breaking the law and committing felonies then that needs to be exposed.

[Ramo]

Another shoe drops:

Four years ago in Asheville, N.C., a lawyer filed a document that contained a scandalous accusation: The U.S. attorney general had intervened in a local bank-fraud case and prevented investigators from questioning one of Congress' most powerful members, Rep. Charles Taylor.

[...]

But many in the western part of the state recall a particular case a few years back that was handled quietly in the North Carolina mountains, when a pair of lawyers thought that Taylor, a North Carolina Republican, ought to be questioned over a loan-fraud case that involved the bank he owns.

"Essentially the question is, `Why was he not interrogated? Why was he not interviewed?'" asked Forrest A. Ferrell, the lawyer who leveled the charges in 2003. "He knew about it all and should've at least been interrogated about it."

[...]

"My information was that the U.S. attorney general in D.C. prohibited the U.S. Attorney's Office in North Carolina from interrogating Charles Taylor," Ferrell recalled last week. He'd give no other details.

"My information was confidential," he said.

[...]

In North Carolina, e-mails disclosed last week reveal that U.S. Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert of Charlotte was among those on the list to be fired. She later was removed, and said last week that she had no idea why she was targeted.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16941877.htm

I wonder how many counts of obstruction of justice we'll get up to...

[DaShi]

This administration is sickening.

[Dinner]

Sadl,y many of the Republican party loyalists still haven't figured that out. I wonder if they pay any attention to the news (beyond Fox) at all.

[DanS]

Re: bush: not in public, not under oath?

Originally posted by MarkG
assuming one can accept the private thing, why should an "honourable public servant" not be under oath?

This is just an opening position by the Bush administration on negotiation of the terms under which his staff will testify.

It was done proactively and publicly in order to frame the Senate questioning as potentially a show trial.

This is a good political move, IMO, but it looks like Gonzalez's goose is already cooked. An unusually quick meltdown, I must say.

[Zkribbler]

Re: Re: bush: not in public, not under oath?

Originally posted by DanS

This is a good political move, IMO . . .

Au contraire. Bush's insistence upon unsworn testimony behind closed doors makes it look as if he believes he has something to hide.

[Dinner]

The dye is cast and the felon in chief will now have to stop shielding his cronies or face a real legal fight which he doesn't stand much chance. A US Senate committee has voted to authorize legal orders compelling key White House aides to testify over the sacking of eight US prosecutors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6480881.stm

[DanS]

I'm not so sure that the real legal fight would turn out in the congress's favor.

The congress will talk tough, but I bet they will come to agreement with the WH in order to avoid a constitutional question.

[Lord Avalon]

Dobbs: 'Showdown' really a battle of partisan buffoons

NEW YORK (CNN) -- An incompetent attorney general, who says he wasn't fully aware that nearly 10 percent of the U.S. attorneys who work for him throughout the country were being fired and permitted the 110,000-person Justice Department that he leads to give inaccurate information at best, or simply lie about it at worst, to the Congress and the American people, has the full confidence of the president who's lost the confidence of most people.

And this is what passes for a big-time, dramatic, historic constitutional crisis in 21st century America? You've got to be kidding. This is the most partisan, politically driven administration in history, and we're all supposed to be surprised by its conduct and motivation in the firing of these U.S. attorneys? Please.

Now the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law has voted to approve subpoenas that would force chief policy adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other top presidential aides to testify publicly and under oath about their involvement in the firings.

Guess what? That little ol' subcommittee can't do much of anything to force executive branch employees to testify without the help of the very man and department at the center of this altogether silly and over-baked controversy. That's right; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or one of his U.S. attorneys would have to enforce any subpoenas refused by any of the president's aides.

This is the same Democratic-controlled Congress that millions of voters thought would be so vastly different from the last gaggle of partisan buffoons in the Republican-led 109th Congress. With almost 30,000 young Americans killed or wounded in Iraq, with a half-trillion dollars spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this Congress can do no better than publicly fulminate in futility and bray endlessly without effect on the course and conduct of the war in Iraq. Is there no sense of proportion and higher purpose anywhere in Washington?

While this president's so-called free trade policies continue to bleed the nation and the economy of millions of jobs and add to a $5 trillion mountain of trade debt, and while our public schools continue to fail a generation of young Americans, this Congress chooses to invest its energy and time in pure partisan blather and cheap political theatrics.

Is there not one decent, honest man or woman in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, in either party's leadership, who possesses the courage and the honesty to say, "Enough. The people who elected us deserve better"? So far the answer is no. Is there really any wonder that public opinion polls demonstrate that the president and this Congress share equally low approval ratings in poll after poll?

The White House is behaving with utter contempt for Congress and Congress is acting without respect or regard for this president. Could it be that, at long last, they're both right?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/03/21/dobbs.March22/index.html

A plague o' both your houses!

[Jon Miller]

What would he have Congress do? Bringing responsibility to the government seems to be what he is asking for, and this is what Congress is attempting to do. Is it that it isn't trying to bring responsibility in the right place? But bringing it in the Justice wing is the first thing that should be done, as he referenced, it is hard to oversight the rest when the Justice wing is corrupt.

I really don't see the point of this opinion peice, other than a "look, Democrats are as bad as the Republicans". Which based upon recent actions strikes me as rediculous.

Jon Miller

[DinoDoc]

Well I'm kinda at a loss to understand what the big deal (legally speaking of course) is about firing them other than Gonzo's poor response to the question of why they were fired. They serve at the discretion of the President and could have been fired for any reason. Should they all have been fired?

[DanS]

At this point, it's impossible to divide the legal aspects from the poor response. Gonzalez told the congress something that was demonstrably false. The congress gets to take its pound of flesh as if Gonzalez were lying, even if it's pretty clear that it was an administrative screwup. He really screwed the pooch for an attorney in his position. This melodrama is all around the congress taking its pound of flesh.