Part V: No Checks, No Balances, & No Congressional Oversight
Back in the mid-1990's, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to identify potential Democratic doners.
In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only TWELVE HOURS OF SWORN TESTIMONY ABOUT THE ABUSE OF PRISONERS IN IRAQ'S ABU GHRAIB PRISON. (emphasis mine)
Controversies such as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, abuses at U.S. detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons, and the revealing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's name have gone largely unscrutinized on Capitol Hill...
Some of the recent hearings defined as oversight by panel leadership in fact serve to advance a Bush administration agenda. In addition to hearings into faith-based service providers and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, House and Senate panels have sought to expose dangers of buying imported pharmaceuticals sold on the Internet, buttressing a Republican drug-industry position that Americans should not be permitted to buy cut-rate prescription drugs outside the United States…
But the agenda was different during the Clinton administration. The government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,520 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997-2002, and ONLY ELEVEN RELATED ALLEGATIONS OF REPUBLICAN ABUSE. (emphasis mine)
--"Congress Reduces its Oversight Role," Susan Mulligan, Boston Globe, November 20, 2005.
That was a long quotation from a dense article, and I wish that were the end of it. I could move on to the next section. Unfortunately, that is only part of the picture of a lapdog Congress willing to allow a power-mad president to do pretty much whatever he pleases.
But if, say, he insists on breaking the law, as he has done many times, and he is actually caught out on it in a court of law, and the courts rule against him--well, that's what the checks and balances are for, right? To check and to balance power so this country will never have to endure the insane rule of a power-mad monarch again.
Ah, what naïve innocents those framers of the Constitution were! If they only knew! Once the courts rule against the president, this rubber-stamp GOP Congress simply changes the law to accommodate him.
Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine…It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.
Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.
"Kabuki Congress," New York Times editorial, March 6, 2006
Once in a great while though, the GOP-dominated Congress runs a little short of the majority they need to stamp out civil liberties or enable the president to break the law. In some cases, for instance, Bush wanted to appoint someone to a position of grave importance to the functioning of our government, and when he insisted on appointing a political flunky who would do nothing but harm in the position, the spineless Congress put its weak little foot down and said no.
Usually this happens right before they are scheduled to go home during a break, and they're going to have to face down their constituents, the farmers and housewives and teachers and truck drivers and office drones who glanced away from American Idol long enough to realize that their elected representatives weren't getting a damn thing done in Congress but voting themselves a raise.
So they say no, and then they go home to preen for the cameras.
And while they are gone, Bush makes an end run around another one of those pesky checks or balances and makes a presidential appointment while Congress is in recess, without their approval or vetting scrutiny.
Yes, other presidents have done this before, but not with such breathtaking arrogance or frequency as this president. Recently, he snuck in a couple of political hacks into powerful positions as public trustees over matters directly effecting Social Security and Medicare. The rules on these appointments are strict, and deliberately designed to prevent the appointments of partisan flunkies into such important positions.
But King George does not care.
In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only TWELVE HOURS OF SWORN TESTIMONY ABOUT THE ABUSE OF PRISONERS IN IRAQ'S ABU GHRAIB PRISON. (emphasis mine)
Controversies such as the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, abuses at U.S. detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons, and the revealing of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's name have gone largely unscrutinized on Capitol Hill...
Some of the recent hearings defined as oversight by panel leadership in fact serve to advance a Bush administration agenda. In addition to hearings into faith-based service providers and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, House and Senate panels have sought to expose dangers of buying imported pharmaceuticals sold on the Internet, buttressing a Republican drug-industry position that Americans should not be permitted to buy cut-rate prescription drugs outside the United States…
But the agenda was different during the Clinton administration. The government reform panel alone, for example, issued 1,520 subpoenas related to investigations of the Clinton administration and the Democratic National Committee from 1997-2002, and ONLY ELEVEN RELATED ALLEGATIONS OF REPUBLICAN ABUSE. (emphasis mine)
--"Congress Reduces its Oversight Role," Susan Mulligan, Boston Globe, November 20, 2005.
That was a long quotation from a dense article, and I wish that were the end of it. I could move on to the next section. Unfortunately, that is only part of the picture of a lapdog Congress willing to allow a power-mad president to do pretty much whatever he pleases.
But if, say, he insists on breaking the law, as he has done many times, and he is actually caught out on it in a court of law, and the courts rule against him--well, that's what the checks and balances are for, right? To check and to balance power so this country will never have to endure the insane rule of a power-mad monarch again.
Ah, what naïve innocents those framers of the Constitution were! If they only knew! Once the courts rule against the president, this rubber-stamp GOP Congress simply changes the law to accommodate him.
Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine…It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken.
Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.
"Kabuki Congress," New York Times editorial, March 6, 2006
Once in a great while though, the GOP-dominated Congress runs a little short of the majority they need to stamp out civil liberties or enable the president to break the law. In some cases, for instance, Bush wanted to appoint someone to a position of grave importance to the functioning of our government, and when he insisted on appointing a political flunky who would do nothing but harm in the position, the spineless Congress put its weak little foot down and said no.
Usually this happens right before they are scheduled to go home during a break, and they're going to have to face down their constituents, the farmers and housewives and teachers and truck drivers and office drones who glanced away from American Idol long enough to realize that their elected representatives weren't getting a damn thing done in Congress but voting themselves a raise.
So they say no, and then they go home to preen for the cameras.
And while they are gone, Bush makes an end run around another one of those pesky checks or balances and makes a presidential appointment while Congress is in recess, without their approval or vetting scrutiny.
Yes, other presidents have done this before, but not with such breathtaking arrogance or frequency as this president. Recently, he snuck in a couple of political hacks into powerful positions as public trustees over matters directly effecting Social Security and Medicare. The rules on these appointments are strict, and deliberately designed to prevent the appointments of partisan flunkies into such important positions.
But King George does not care.
posted by Deanie Mills at 8:16 PM
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