V
Voter
''What the President Ordered in This Case Was a Crime"
by John Nichols
While Judge Sam Alito's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee has
confirmed that he is not one of their number, a dwindling cadre of public
servants still take seriously the dictates of the Constitution and the
intents of it authors. And there is no more serious dictate of the document
-- and no more solidly established intent -- than the one that requires the
Congress to serve as a check and a balance against the excesses of the
executive branch. Most particularly in a time of war, the founders intended
for the Congress to question, challenge and constrain the president and his
aides so that never again would Americans be subjected to the illegitimate,
unwarranted and illegal dictates of a King George.
This mandate, so well-established and so thoroughly grounded in history and
tradition, places a particularly high demand on the chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee. It is in the House, the Constitution tells us, that
the work of holding an out-of-control president to account, must begin --
and it is on the Judiciary Committee that the process is initiated.
The committee's current chair, Representative James Sensenbrenner,
R-Wisconsin, should understand this charge better than most. After all, he
was at the center of the effort in 1998 and 1999 to impeach former
President Bill Clinton.
No matter what one thought of the Clinton impeachment process, it should
now be beyond debate that if the misdeeds of the former president required
both examination and action by the Judiciary Committee -- as Sensenbrenner
so obvioualy believed-- then the misdeeds of the current president must
surely merit a similar response.
The memory of the Clinton impeachment has already inspired the most
delicious sloganeering, beginning with the t-shirt that declares:
"Impeachment: It's Not Just for Oral Sex Anymore." But this is about more
than t-shirts and fingerpointing. As the chair of the Judiciary Committee,
Sensenbrenner has a Constitutionally-mandated responsibility to take
seriously the charges of executive lawbreaking and impropriety that are
currently in play. If he cannot execute this responsibility in a reasoned
and bipartisan manner, then he has a duty to step aside.
That is a serious choice. But, surely, the issues that are at stake demand
such seriousness -- as the American people have clearly indicated. A new
Zogby Poll shows that 52 percent of Americas believe that, if George Bush
violated the law when he ordered security agencies to engage in warrantless
wiretaps on the communications of U.S. citizens who were accused of no
crimes, the president should be impeached. So widespread is this faith that
almost one quarter of those who identified themselves as "very
conservative" expressed support for impeachment as a response to the spying
scandal.
So far, however, Sensenbrenner has allowed his partisanship to prevent him
from even beginning to execute his Constitutional duties. When Democratic
members of the Judiciary Committee demanded that the body conduct an
inquiry into illegal spying by the Bush administration, Sensenbrenner
refused them.
Because of the consequence of the issues involved, Representative John
Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the committee, convened an extraordinary
session last week without the official sanction that only the committee
chairman can convey.
"Last month all 17 House Judiciary Democrats called on Chairman
Sensenbrenner to convene hearings to investigate the President's use of the
National Security Agency to conduct surveillance involving U.S. citizens on
U.S. soil, in apparent contravention of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. As our request has since been ignored, it is our job, as
Members of Congress, to review the program and consider whether our
criminal laws have been violated and our citizen's constitutional rights
trampled upon," explained Conyers, who has played a critical role in
investigations of wrongdoing by Democratic and Republican presidents since
the days when Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House. "We simply cannot
tolerate a situation where the Administration is operating as prosecutor,
judge and jury and excluding Congress and the courts from providing any
meaningful check or balance to the process."
Members of Congress who attended the hearing -- Conyers and a half dozen
other Democrats -- heard George Washington University law professor
Jonathan Turley refer to the wiretapping ordered by Bush as ''an
intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale." Without a doubt,
Turley added, ''What the president ordered in this case was a crime," said
Turley, who bluntly told the gathering that Sensenbrenner and other House
Republicans have set a dangerous precedent by refusing to permit oversight
hearings.
Turley's comments on the troubling nature of the president's wiretapping
initiative -- and the failure of House Republicans to aggressively
investigate and challenge that initiative -- were echoed by Bruce Fein, who
served as a deputy Attorney General for the Reagan administration. In
addition to suggesting that the implausibility of Bush's claim that he was
acting within the law should be self evident, Fein warned presidential
powers must always be regulated in order to halt abuses of the moment and
to prevent the development over time of an imperial presidency that can no
longer be checked by Congress.
The Conyers hearing had an impact on the members who bothered to attend it.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, the senior Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee's panel on the Constitution, responded to the testimony
by announcing that the Judiciary Committee needs to explore whether
President Bush should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry for high
crimes and misdemeanors stemming from his authorization of illegal spying.
Sensenbrenner might well disagree with that assessment. He has every right
to such a sentiment. But he does not have a right to prevent the Judiciary
Committee as a whole from entertaining these most fundamental questions
about the abuse of presidential power. If Sensenbrenner does not recognize
this standard, then he has no place chairing the committee that is charged
with taking the lead in the application of Congressional checks and
balances -- up to and including impeachment -- as an antidote to executive
excess.
John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered
progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more
than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison,
Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the
Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0124-26.htm
? 2006 The Nation
by John Nichols
While Judge Sam Alito's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee has
confirmed that he is not one of their number, a dwindling cadre of public
servants still take seriously the dictates of the Constitution and the
intents of it authors. And there is no more serious dictate of the document
-- and no more solidly established intent -- than the one that requires the
Congress to serve as a check and a balance against the excesses of the
executive branch. Most particularly in a time of war, the founders intended
for the Congress to question, challenge and constrain the president and his
aides so that never again would Americans be subjected to the illegitimate,
unwarranted and illegal dictates of a King George.
This mandate, so well-established and so thoroughly grounded in history and
tradition, places a particularly high demand on the chairman of the House
Judiciary Committee. It is in the House, the Constitution tells us, that
the work of holding an out-of-control president to account, must begin --
and it is on the Judiciary Committee that the process is initiated.
The committee's current chair, Representative James Sensenbrenner,
R-Wisconsin, should understand this charge better than most. After all, he
was at the center of the effort in 1998 and 1999 to impeach former
President Bill Clinton.
No matter what one thought of the Clinton impeachment process, it should
now be beyond debate that if the misdeeds of the former president required
both examination and action by the Judiciary Committee -- as Sensenbrenner
so obvioualy believed-- then the misdeeds of the current president must
surely merit a similar response.
The memory of the Clinton impeachment has already inspired the most
delicious sloganeering, beginning with the t-shirt that declares:
"Impeachment: It's Not Just for Oral Sex Anymore." But this is about more
than t-shirts and fingerpointing. As the chair of the Judiciary Committee,
Sensenbrenner has a Constitutionally-mandated responsibility to take
seriously the charges of executive lawbreaking and impropriety that are
currently in play. If he cannot execute this responsibility in a reasoned
and bipartisan manner, then he has a duty to step aside.
That is a serious choice. But, surely, the issues that are at stake demand
such seriousness -- as the American people have clearly indicated. A new
Zogby Poll shows that 52 percent of Americas believe that, if George Bush
violated the law when he ordered security agencies to engage in warrantless
wiretaps on the communications of U.S. citizens who were accused of no
crimes, the president should be impeached. So widespread is this faith that
almost one quarter of those who identified themselves as "very
conservative" expressed support for impeachment as a response to the spying
scandal.
So far, however, Sensenbrenner has allowed his partisanship to prevent him
from even beginning to execute his Constitutional duties. When Democratic
members of the Judiciary Committee demanded that the body conduct an
inquiry into illegal spying by the Bush administration, Sensenbrenner
refused them.
Because of the consequence of the issues involved, Representative John
Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the committee, convened an extraordinary
session last week without the official sanction that only the committee
chairman can convey.
"Last month all 17 House Judiciary Democrats called on Chairman
Sensenbrenner to convene hearings to investigate the President's use of the
National Security Agency to conduct surveillance involving U.S. citizens on
U.S. soil, in apparent contravention of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. As our request has since been ignored, it is our job, as
Members of Congress, to review the program and consider whether our
criminal laws have been violated and our citizen's constitutional rights
trampled upon," explained Conyers, who has played a critical role in
investigations of wrongdoing by Democratic and Republican presidents since
the days when Lyndon Johnson occupied the White House. "We simply cannot
tolerate a situation where the Administration is operating as prosecutor,
judge and jury and excluding Congress and the courts from providing any
meaningful check or balance to the process."
Members of Congress who attended the hearing -- Conyers and a half dozen
other Democrats -- heard George Washington University law professor
Jonathan Turley refer to the wiretapping ordered by Bush as ''an
intelligence operation in search of a legal rationale." Without a doubt,
Turley added, ''What the president ordered in this case was a crime," said
Turley, who bluntly told the gathering that Sensenbrenner and other House
Republicans have set a dangerous precedent by refusing to permit oversight
hearings.
Turley's comments on the troubling nature of the president's wiretapping
initiative -- and the failure of House Republicans to aggressively
investigate and challenge that initiative -- were echoed by Bruce Fein, who
served as a deputy Attorney General for the Reagan administration. In
addition to suggesting that the implausibility of Bush's claim that he was
acting within the law should be self evident, Fein warned presidential
powers must always be regulated in order to halt abuses of the moment and
to prevent the development over time of an imperial presidency that can no
longer be checked by Congress.
The Conyers hearing had an impact on the members who bothered to attend it.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, the senior Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee's panel on the Constitution, responded to the testimony
by announcing that the Judiciary Committee needs to explore whether
President Bush should be the subject of an impeachment inquiry for high
crimes and misdemeanors stemming from his authorization of illegal spying.
Sensenbrenner might well disagree with that assessment. He has every right
to such a sentiment. But he does not have a right to prevent the Judiciary
Committee as a whole from entertaining these most fundamental questions
about the abuse of presidential power. If Sensenbrenner does not recognize
this standard, then he has no place chairing the committee that is charged
with taking the lead in the application of Congressional checks and
balances -- up to and including impeachment -- as an antidote to executive
excess.
John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered
progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more
than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison,
Wisconsin's Capital Times. Nichols is the author of two books: It's the
Media, Stupid and Jews for Buchanan.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0124-26.htm
? 2006 The Nation
