A pocket guide to GOP corruption and Constitutional rape

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6375

A pocket guide to GOP corruption and Constitutional rape
by Weldon Berger | Mar 27 2007

If you could draw one overriding conclusion from current and past administration scandals, it might be that Republicans, at least the ones in power, have little use for democracy. They like the trappings but they distrust and fear the actual process.

The scandal now dominating the news neatly illustrates the point in several ways. First, at least some of the fired US attorneys were dismissed for not pursuing voter fraud and corruption cases against Democrats aggressively enough to suit the White House. The goal was to influence elections overtly by targeting Democratic participants in them and, more subtly and more perniciously, to call into question the legitimacy of close elections in general by using bogus or questionable investigations of specific elections to create an expectation of fraud.

Congressional oversight is another target of the scheme. The Senate is constitutionally mandated to scrutinize US attorney nominees. By using a now-rescinded Patriot Act provision to bypass the confirmation process, the administration directly attacked a fundamental democratic precept. In the administration's view, Congress has no business interfering with the executive in any fashion, and the executive has every right to bend government offices to politics rather than policy. Throughout the attorney scandal, administration officials have insisted that the practices are perfectly legitimate; it's just the explanation of them that was inadequate in this instance.

Along with the actual firings and the successful attempt to appoint the new attorneys absent Senate participation, the administration's refusal to submit to any reasonable degree of scrutiny in connection with the plot arises from that same resistance to Congressional oversight. The insistence that not only should administration officials be excused from testifying under oath but from even having their words transcribed is part and parcel of the attempt to neuter Congress (and with which the Republican Congress has been more than okay). No doubt it's meant to protect the officials from any criminal consequences of their lies, but the larger purpose is resistance on the principle that what the White House does is its own business and not that of Congress, the courts or the public.

Overshadowed by the furor about the attorneys is the FBI's abuse of national security letters, extra-judicial devices that allow the agency to collect information on anyone without judicial oversight and with the guarantee of silence from the institutions and organizations providing the information. The FBI is overseen by the Justice Department; when the latter is uniformly politicized, the former's potential for abusing an inherently dangerous tool is magnified. The letters effectively gut the judicial protections against government intrusion our citizens are meant to enjoy, and in the hands of partisans can and probably did become instruments of politics rather than of security.

The past six years have seen a near-total breakdown in our system of checks and balances. We have had an executive that doesn't subscribe to the notion, a Congress that didn't care and a judiciary that was often bypassed or, in the wake of 911, overly deferential to the executive. It's almost the perfect anti-Constitutional storm: what is supposed to be a self-regulating system became one in which ensuring the legitimacy of government became the province of a relatively few conscientious individuals rather than the institutions within which they work.

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[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. good article.

k&R

[robinlynne]

2. no way you can fit what they've done into your pocket....

[pat_k]

3. Like squatters, they are trespassing in plain sight. . .

They are laying claim to unconstitutional power through openly hostile possession. Members of Congress, who we empowered and charged with the duty of evicting (impeaching) such trespassers, are refusing to act.

From day the felonious five on the Supreme Court violated the principle of consent -- the sole moral principle on which the Constitution, and therefore the nation rests -- to install Bush in the executive office, the Constitution has been in breach. Since that day, it has been obvious to an ever increasing number of Americans that Bush and Cheney are advancing a relentless campaign to turn the American presidency into an Un-American and Unconstitutional unitary authoritarian executive with unbounded power.

By refusing to stand up for We the People, the true owners of this nation, Members of Congress have created a national crisis graver than any natural disaster or social ill. It is bigger than any international crisis. By tolerating the intolerable, they are surrendering our capacity to recover from disaster with humanity, solve our common problems in ways that reflect our common values, and serve as a force for good in the world. When the good will of the American people is cut out of the loop, no peoples, not our fellow Americans, not other nations, can look to us for help.