Monday, July 23, 2007

New York Times Editorial: “Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War” (2:15 am)

The war is hardly the only area where the Bush administration is trying to expand its powers beyond all legal justification. But the danger of an imperial presidency is particularly great when a president takes the nation to war, something the founders understood well. In the looming showdown, the founders and the Constitution are firmly on Congress’s side.
(…)
Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

“Nobody stood up and said the emperor’s wearing no clothes.” (1:21 am)

William Glaberson for the NY Times reports on Colonel Stephen E. Abraham.

In June, Colonel Abraham became the first military insider to criticize publicly the Guantánamo hearings, which determine whether detainees should be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. Just days after detainees’ lawyers submitted an affidavit containing his criticisms, the United States Supreme Court reversed itself and agreed to hear an appeal arguing that the hearings are unjust and that detainees have a right to contest their detentions in federal court.

Some lawyers say Colonel Abraham’s account — of a hearing procedure that he described as deeply flawed and largely a tool for commanders to rubber-stamp decisions they had already made — may have played an important role in the justices’ highly unusual reversal. That decision once again brought the administration face to face with the vexing legal, political and diplomatic questions about the fate of Guantánamo and the roughly 360 men still held there.

“Nobody stood up and said the emperor’s wearing no clothes,” Colonel Abraham said in an interview. “The prevailing attitude was, ‘If they’re in Guantánamo, they’re there for a reason.’ ”
(…)
His road to notoriety, he says, is entirely of a piece with his biography. A political conservative who says he cried when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency, he says he has remained a reservist throughout his adult life to repay the country for the opportunities it offered his family. His father is a Holocaust survivor who emigrated after the Second World War.

“It... read more

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Feingold Proposes Censuring Bush and Cheney, Reprimand of Gonzales (11:15 am)

AP reports:

Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his “assault” against the Constitution.
(…)
Feingold, a prominent war critic, said he soon plans to offer two censure resolutions — measures that would amount to a formal condemnation of the Republican president.

The first would seek to reprimand Bush for, as Feingold described it, getting the nation into war without adequate military preparation and for issuing misleading public statements. The resolution also would cite Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials.

The second measure would seek to censure Bush for what the Democrat called a continuous assault against the rule of law through such efforts as the warrantless surveillance program against suspected terrorists, Feingold said. It would also ask for a reprimand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and maybe others.
(…)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Feingold’s proposals showed the nation’s frustration. But Reid said he would not go along with them and said the Senate needs to focus on finishing spending bills on defense and homeland security.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Reid said. “The president already has the mark of the American people — he’s the worst president we ever had. I don’t think we need a censure resolution in the Senate to prove that.”

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

NY Times Endorses Use of Inherent Contempt to Pursue Investigations of Bush Administration (2:34 am)

The editors of the New York Times state:

The White House’s extreme position could lead to a constitutional crisis. If the executive branch refused to follow the law, Congress could use its own inherent contempt powers, in which it would level the charges itself and hold a trial. The much more reasonable route for everyone would be to proceed through the courts.

This showdown between a Democratic Congress and a Republican president may look partisan, but it should not. In a year and a half, there could be a Democratic president, and such extreme claims of executive power would be just as disturbing if that chief executive made them.

Congress should use all of the tools at its disposal to pursue its investigations. It is not only a matter of getting to the bottom of some possibly serious government misconduct. It is about preserving the checks and balances that are a vital part of American democracy.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Saturday, July 21, 2007

GOP Infighting Over Iraq: Voinovich vs McCain (3:11 pm)

David Espo for AP reports:

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly nervous defending the war in Iraq, and Democrats more confident in their attempts to end it.
(…)
“Cut and run,” has largely come and gone as an insult to hurl at Democrats, as Republicans themselves contemplate a change in course.
(…)
“Today’s mission is focused on al-Qaida,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., reflecting what other administration allies in Congress say privately.
(…)
But focusing attention on al-Qaida raises familiar questions: Were terrorists present in Iraq before the 2003 invasion and what would happen if U.S. forces departed?

According to several officials, Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and McCain engaged in a brief, impromptu debate touching on that point recently at a private meeting of the rank and file.

Voinovich said the Sunni and Shiites in Iraq would together drive al-Qaida from their country if the U.S. were not there. McCain took the opposite view. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, noting that the meeting was private.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Saturday Cartoon (11:16 am)

Red Hot Riding Hood

Made for MGM in 1943, this cartoon is the first of several Tex Avery directed variants on the Little Red Riding Hood fable. (Here’s another.) These were, rather obviously, not cartoons produced to entertain children. Avery told interviewer Joe Adamson that, despite his crew having the Army in mind as an audience when they made the cartoon, the studio censor had ordered several cuts made. But a sergeant who was stationed at MGM to plan training films saw an uncensored version. And, subsequently, studio chief Louis B. Mayer got a telegram from the Army requesting the uncut version for personnel overseas. The depth and breadth of Tex Avery’s comedic genius is on full display in this cartoon, which won a spot near the top on the list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons, As Selected by 1000 Animation Professionals. Preston Blair designed and animated the “new” Red, and she was such an instantaneously popular character that studio employees managed to acquire finished animation cels before they were even shot.

Directed by Tex Avery
Animation by Irv Spence, Ed Love, and Preston Blair

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Quote of the Day (11:09 am)

“There once was a man named Vitter
Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter
But with stories of women
And all of his sinnin’
He knows his career’s in the — oh, never mind,” Kerry said.

Aaron Blake in The Hill quotes John Kerry, speaking at an event in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

WaPo Editorial Explains Inherent Contempt (2:13 am)

This is rather an interestingly timed piece of legal edification.

The director of the Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic, Frank Askin, writes in WaPo

that under historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon.

And a Supreme Court majority would find it hard to object in the face of two entrenched legal principles.
(…)
The distinction between criminal and civil contempt is well recognized. The punishment for criminal contempt is a set fine or jail term. A civil contempt punishment is framed in terms of either/or: either the defendant does X or suffers daily consequences until X is done. That concept is often explained by the aphorism that the defendant has the keys to the jail in his own pocket. He can free himself by obeying the court order. (The jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to answer questions during the Scooter Libby investigation is a recent example.)

Thus, the congressional alternative. Instead of referring a contempt citation to the U.S. attorney, a house of Congress can order the sergeant-at-arms to take recalcitrant witnesses into custody and have them held until they agree to cooperate — i.e., an order of civil contempt. Technically, the witness could be imprisoned somewhere in the bowels of the Capitol, but historically the sergeant-at-arms has turned defendants over to the custody of the warden of the D.C. jail.
(…)
So, far from being defenseless against the president’s refusal to prosecute or the threat of presidential pardon, Congress could take into its own custody defiant administration officials who refuse to cooperate with legitimate inquiries into executive malfeasance. Those targets would have the right to seek writs of habeas corpus from the federal courts, but as long as Congress could show a legitimate need for the information it was seeking pursuant to its legislative oversight functions, it would be standing on solid legal ground.

Gosh, I wonder if Harriet Miers, Josh Bolton, and Robert Duncan read the opinion section of the Washington Post?