Waxman Provides Precedent for Subpoenas

[TankLV]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032207A.shtml

In a letter late Wednesday, Rep. Henry Waxman presented numerous instances in which subpoenas were used by Congress to compel the testimony of presidential staff in former administrations.

The letter outlines notable subpoenas of Clinton administration officials, and summarizes a report compiled by Waxman and his staff which details the extensive investigation of the Clinton White House by a then Republican-controlled Congress. According to the report, from 1997 to 2002, under Republican Chairman Dan Burton, the House Oversight Committee issued 1,052 subpoenas targeting Democratic Party or Clinton administration officials.

Waxman's letter and report can be viewed here:
http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070321152518-52323.pdf

[baldguy]

1. But 9/11 changed everything.

:sarcasm:

[ninkasi]

2. I love that man

I also love John Conyers. We are so lucky to have them...:loveya: K&R

[peacetalksforall]

3. I was thinking about how I would remember 1052 so that I could recall

the exact number when teaching people about this new scandal and how to ignore Tony Snow with his erroneous version of law history.

Along the way I was thinking about all the piling on and I found this article about the Magna Carta.

I thought about how we on DU have stopped talking about Abu Graib, Guantanamo, barbarian torment and torture, and the absense of lawyers, judges, courts, juries in the lives of the tormented and the torturers.

How soon we forget. We're buried in abuse of power and tricky dick slip-ins or add-ins to Senate Bills that gave our un-beloved leader and his Atty General tons of power to reshape the judicial system politically.

So that you don't forget these poor souls minus representation who are still being flown all over the planet in CIA or Blackwater aircraft and who are still getting tortured for a few more confessions at the great pleasure of a few -

please read the first three lines of this article by Michael Ratner - and if you can - also read the entire two paragraphs or go to the web site for the entire article.

The variety of atrocities being brought to us by this Honor and Integrity White House is a big demand on our time and memory. But, it's all about law and tossing (literally) our Constitution in to the tailwind of one of those rendition airplanes.

Ratner said:
"I could have titled this piece "From 1215"—which is the year of Magna Carta—"to 1214 in a Thousand Years." It took us about a thousand years to go back to the year before the Magna Carta, which is where we unfortunately find ourselves now. We’ve gone backwards, we’ve given up and ignored the key teaching of the Magna Carta: that the executive is subject to law. This administration is doing everything in its power to ignore and override the fundamental principles that have shaped law and justice for centuries.

Even though I’m a lawyer, I didn’t really recall perfectly what the Magna Carta was about. But my son was studying it in high school this last year and so I tested him on it. And all of a sudden I came across Article 39 of the Magna Carta, which essentially says, "No free person shall be jailed without a jury of his peers." This was a radical idea: what it meant was that the king could not simply point to someone and say, "You go to jail." Instead, the Magna Carta said you have to have a jury, and that’s come to mean the idea of due process, which we have embedded in our own constitution. You have to have due process of law before you can jail somebody; you can’t torture people. And there’s the idea of the writ of habeas corpus: that every single person who’s detained can walk into a court and say, "Tell me why I’m in jail." And it’s the erosion of these most fundamental rights that we’re talking about when we talk about the post-9/11 legal climate in this country."
Michael Ratner
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7503

Karl, Harriet, Al and all you others - we're saying you're not going to jail - unnecessarily. So it is OK to witness.

[LiberalFighter]

5. But but but... that's not in the Bible

The Magna Carta is an abomination of Satan. It usurps the power of the nobility.

[peacetalksforall]

6. Yes, usurps the power of the nobility and the Kingdom or KgDom.

Yes, the Magna Carta - basis for protection of the individual, but not for 21st century U.S. Americans as well as non-U.S. Americans whose lives are under attack by Americans-U.S.

Thanks, Henry Waxman.

[texpatriot2004]

4. Sincere gratitude to Waxman nm