gonzales
I don’t think good old Al Gonzales has proven to be the sort of man I’d want as an Attorney General, but at the same time, I’ve been disgusted over the continued attempts to exploit a manufactured scandal for political gain. Today, the Wall Street Journal runs an op-ed that sums up the case against the Democratic party quite nicely:
Let’s remember how we got here. Democrats latched on to the firings in hopes of building some case that the White House had engaged in cronyism and cover-up. The Justice Department, in the spirit of cooperation, turned over 8,500 documents and made available a parade of officials for public testimony. Mr. Conyers and his counterpart at Senate Judiciary, Patrick Leahy, found nothing. So they then demanded the White House turn over privileged communications and submit high-ranking officials to public questioning. Mr. Bush invoked executive privilege, and Mr. Conyers went to Defcon contempt.
This is a constitutional issue, but you don’t have to be Robert Bork to get your head around it. The Founders created three separate (but equal) branches of government. The Constitution gave each their own powers, while also supplying checks to prevent the branches from encroaching on each other.
Congress gave itself the right to issue criminal contempt citations long ago, and bully for it, but there’s nothing in legal history to suggest that in this case it has the right to apply that power to the president or his subordinates. It’d be one thing if Mr. Conyers had proved beyond doubt that a crime had been committed. He hasn’t. Instead, this is a straightforward battle between Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege and Congress’s claim of oversight. Both sides, in theory, have a legitimate case.
The problem being, of course, that no one recognizes the veracity of the President’s claims in this particular matter, instead screeching about an “imperial” President, or making unsubstantiated, vaguely sinister tautologies about the state of the Constitution.
So the idea that Congress now gets to win this battle by simply declaring the other side criminal is bizarre. Under that twisted logic, Mr. Bush has just as much right to grant himself a similar power and hold Mr. Conyers in criminal contempt for interfering in executive-branch business. This is not, obviously, a very grown-up way of settling constitutional disputes.
But that would be chilling– and the beginning of the end of our glorious democracy!
Or perhaps we’re witnessing yet another front in the Democrat’s attempt to rule not by leadership, but by crippling their political opponents. I leave it to my readers to decide which is more likely.
