DTOM, Those concepts are too simplistic for conservatives to understand; they demand that we treat King Bush like a god; he's above all the laws both domestic and international.
Showdown looms over fired prosecutors By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
39 minutes ago
A House panel cleared the way Thursday for contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers after she obeyed President Bush and skipped a hearing on the firings of federal prosecutors.
Addressing the empty chair where Miers had been subpoenaed to testify, Rep. Linda Sanchez ruled out of order Bush's executive privilege claim that his former advisers are immune from being summoned before Congress.
The House Judiciary subcommittee that Sanchez chairs voted 7-5 to sustain her ruling. The next step would be for the full Judiciary Committee to issue a finding that Miers, Bush's longtime friend and former Supreme Court nominee, was in contempt. Ultimately, the full House would have to vote on any contempt citation.
"Those claims are not legally valid," Sanchez, D-Calif., said of Bush's declaration, made Monday. "Ms. Miers is required pursuant to the subpoena to be here now."
The question grew more pressing when Bush ordered Miers to defy the committee's subpoena, unlike a lower-ranking former White House aide, Sara Taylor, who took a different approach Wednesday.
Acting under her own subpoena, Taylor appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in an attempt to satisfy both Congress and the White House and thereby avoid a contempt citation. It's unclear whether she was successful. She answered some questions while saying she could not answer others under Bush's directive. The Senate committee's ranking Republican advised Taylor that she might have been on safer legal ground had she said nothing.
Saying nothing is the strategy that Miers, on Bush's orders, adopted Thursday.
Like Taylor, Miers participated in the process of deciding which prosecutors to fire, according to e-mails released by the Justice Department. At one point, the documents showed, Miers proposed firing all 93 U.S. attorneys, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rejected that suggestion.
Democrats want to ask her under oath about the White House's role in drawing up the firing list. But Bush invoked executive privilege, saying he needed to protect the flow of advice he receives from close advisers. Additionally, he declared Miers immune from subpoenas and ordered her to skip Thursday's hearing.
Democrats were furious, declaring the White House had reached "novel legal conclusions" to justify withholding a former aide's testimony, based only on legal opinions regarding currently serving White House officials and no court rulings.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said the committee must take action on Miers' non-compliance to preserve the panel's authority.
"Are congressional subpoenas to be honored or are they optional?" Conyers asked rhetorically. "Apparently we have to run this out" to set a precedent, he added.
Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, the senior Republican on the administrative law subcommittee, challenged Democrats to submit any evidence they have to justify their "incessant investigation" that has stretched all year. He warned that without evidence of wrongdoing, any court showdown with the White House would fail.
"It's time for the majority to stop swaggering its power in this Congress," Cannon said.
Legal scholars said the issue of Miers' immunity is far from clear-cut.
An argument that Miers has to testify "is certainly as tenable as that she doesn't," University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson says.
"If I were advising the congressional committees, what I would want to argue is that they have evidence that she was involved in what might have been criminal acts; that is, subordination of civil service hiring to unlawful considerations," Levinson said.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said the White House "could not have picked worse ground" on which to fight executive privilege.
Many of the communications involve political operatives outside the White House; the White House already has offered to disclose the information but refused to do so under oath or with a transcript of the interviews. The issue is not in the sensitive areas of national security or diplomacy.
Legal scholars say it's unlikely the White House and Congress are bound for a head-on collision.
"We've been here many, many times before. This is not out of the ordinary," said Viet Dinh, the former assistant attorney general for legal policy during Bush's first term.
No president has gone as far as mounting a court fight to keep his aides from testifying on Capitol Hill, but court is just where the battle could end up absent the usual negotiated agreements of the past.
___
Associated Press writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report
Bush dismisses CIA leak as old news
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 45 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush always said he would wait to talk about the CIA leak case until after the investigation into his administration's role. On Thursday, he skipped over that step and pronounced the matter old news hardly worth discussing.
"It's run its course," he said. "Now we're going to move on."
This is the same guy who said, "anybody in my administration found guilty of a crime will be taken care of."
Where's that thread in which Brandon claimed Bush wasn't a liar?
You have to admit that he "took care of" Libby. He commuted the jail time.
The judge, a Bush appointee, just took issue with Bush's statement that the sentence was excessive. He said the sentence was at the lower end of the guidelines.
Well, there's "taken care of" and then there's "taken care of". Which do you think he meant?
David Vitter was "taken care of." I gather that he had hoes make him wear diapers. If someone here is a psychologist, please tell us what this says about Vitter.
geez louise, where did you read THAT?
Well, this thread is completely trashed--thanks folks.
The topic of the thread was what were the probably political consequences of the Shrub pardoning Libby. I have asked, more than once, that people stay on topic. Instead, you've got C.I. spamming the thread with tripe on an entire range of topics which don't have anything to do with Libby, Cheney, Plame or Wilson. You've got conservatives showing up to whine about who Clinton pardoned and why. And now you've got Advocate dragging Vitter into a discussion which never even remotely concerned itself with that clown.
This thread has become a train wreck--if that's what you mean about "life moving on," i agree with you.
Setanta wrote:Well, this thread is completely trashed--thanks folks.
But you are always telling us what trash our posts are.
That is a lie, and you, therefore, are a liar.
Take you Vitter and sexual titilation, and your stupid strawmen, and go trash someone else's thread.
Setanta
Setanta wrote:The topic of the thread was what were the probably political consequences of the Shrub pardoning Libby. I have asked, more than once, that people stay on topic. Instead, you've got C.I. spamming the thread with tripe on an entire range of topics which don't have anything to do with Libby, Cheney, Plame or Wilson. You've got conservatives showing up to whine about who Clinton pardoned and why. And now you've got Advocate dragging Vitter into a discussion which never even remotely concerned itself with that clown.
This thread has become a train wreck--if that's what you mean about "life moving on," i agree with you.
Maybe it's Bush fatigue, but the legal consequences of Bush's actions is what is important for the protection of the Constitution.
BBB
Care to explain how that is relevant to the political consequences of the Shrub's action? Try not to reply by spamming the thread with five or six mind-numbing copy and paste jobs in a row.
Believe me, if i could shut this thread down, i'd do it in a heartbeat.
I've seen you participate in many threads which have wandered from their original topic, Set. Why such animosity towards that happening in this one?
Just wondering
Cycloptichorn
If the author of any such thread has complained, i have either complied or left. On several occasions in this thread, i have asked people to stay on topic. Only a handful of people have had the courtesy to reply. But what really frosts my gonads is that someone like C.I. shows up with his idiotic copy and paste screeds, which he could easily have posted in any one of the threads on the subject of Libby in which the thread's author had not asked a specific question, and had not complained about being off topic. Advocate, for god's sake, is now obsessed with Vitter's willy to the point that he's posting about it in this thread--despite having his own thread on that topic. Then Aunt Bee shows up--the Queen of the thread killing copy and paste jobs.
Basically, with C.I., Aunt Bee and Advocate, you've got three obsessive Bush haters who can't shut up, and don't give a rat's ass if their posts are pertinent to the topic. Dog knows there are any number of places for them to puke up their hatred without trashing this thread. I started this thread a month before the Shrub commuted Libby's sentence. It got a little, a very little, response. Then the Shrub commutes Libby's sentence, and the hysterical Bush haters descend, just after i've gotten rid of the "oh yeah, well what about Clinton?" crowd.
I'd say that after all these years, i'm just fed up with people who can't carry a coherent train of thought in their heads for 24 hours in a row because they as so eaten up with their hatred of the Shrub.
Sorry. I realized that this was your thread and your right to complain so I removed my last response about life moving on.
Setanta wrote:If the author of any such thread has complained, i have either complied or left. On several occasions in this thread, i have asked people to stay on topic. Only a handful of people have had the courtesy to reply. But what really frosts my gonads is that someone like C.I. shows up with his idiotic copy and paste screeds, which he could easily have posted in any one of the threads on the subject of Libby in which the thread's author had not asked a specific question, and had not complained about being off topic. Advocate, for god's sake, is now obsessed with Vitter's willy to the point that he's posting about it in this thread--despite having his own thread on that topic. Then Aunt Bee shows up--the Queen of the thread killing copy and paste jobs.
Basically, with C.I., Aunt Bee and Advocate, you've got three obsessive Bush haters who can't shut up, and don't give a rat's ass if their posts are pertinent to the topic. Dog knows there are any number of places for them to puke up their hatred without trashing this thread. I started this thread a month before the Shrub commuted Libby's sentence. It got a little, a very little, response. Then the Shrub commutes Libby's sentence, and the hysterical Bush haters descend, just after i've gotten rid of the "oh yeah, well what about Clinton?" crowd.
I'd say that after all these years, i'm just fed up with people who can't carry a coherent train of thought in their heads for 24 hours in a row because they as so eaten up with their hatred of the Shrub.
I think that's a pretty good answer, though I would say that discussion of Libby's commutation and the effects it will/did have are relatively pertinent to the topic.
Cycloptichorn
Don't worry about it, EOE--i'm just venting at this point, because i consider this thread a total loss. I am, however, fed up to the gills with the people who can't carry on a rational conversation because they are eaten up with their hatreds. I am also sick of seeing threads trashed by long copy and paste screeds by the same type of people. I had no partisan motive in this thread, but it has become impossible (it possibly always was impossible) to discuss any political topic here from a non-partisan stance.
Cycloptichorn wrote:. . . though I would say that discussion of Libby's commutation and the effects it will/did have are relatively pertinent to the topic.
I agree completely--and i have discussed that with you and others. What the f*ck does C.I.'s copy and paste screed about the fired Federal Prosecutors have to do with the commutation of Libby's sentence? What the f*ck does Advocate's obsession with Vitter's sexual indiscretions have to do with this topic? What does Aunt Bee's personal belief that the Shrub is responsible for a host of illegalities have to do with the topic of this thread?
In fact, when EOE commented that there is "taken care of" and then there is "taken care of"--it was actually one of the first on topic remarks in pages--not that it did a hell of a lot of good amongst the shouted rants of the "i hate Bush" crowd.
Right now, i'm just trying to be sufficiently unpleasant so as to kill the thread, which has become an embarrassment and an irritation.
