When are Leahy and Schumer gonna get some balls? Minuet time is over folks. Time to start handing out contempt citations. Had Leahy been willing to play the same hardball as Bush and Rove are playing, he would have had the Sgt At Arms ready and waiting after Taylor arrived. And the moment she invoked executive privilege, he should have had the SAA hold her while the comittee voted to cite her in contempt with her present.

Then Leahy should have turned to her and given her one more chance. Failing that, order the SAA to send her off in custody of the US Marshalls. Let her think about it and let the WH go to court to have the Exec Privilege heard. That would get the WH to expedite the matter, something Congress would want to see. After all, the last thing this WH wants is to have a situation where every time one of their clowns shows up on the Hill, they end up in jail.

degsme:

After all, the last thing this WH wants is to have a situation where every time one of their clowns shows up on the Hill, they end up in jail.

And if they fail to honor a subpoena by not showing up (as Miers may be doing at this very moment), then the House (or Senate) should have the Sergeant at Arms ready to take appropriate actions against the perpetrator.

Well, you two are completely correct on the law, but I think you're missing the politics. Do you really want Dems defending these arrests when they have already admitted that, when it comes to the matter being investigated (the firing of the federal attorneys) no law has been broken? That's still the matter at the heart of this, and the fact remains the attorneys were at-will employees who could be fired for any reason or no reason. Defending putting people in jail over that is going to be as harder to defend than an impeachment over perjury in a trumped up civil case -- it will probably be seen as yet another trumped up political move by Washington insiders.

Modern politics remains a matter of heroes versus villians, as it plays to the masses. The key is to look heroic, even when you're a villian. The current debate is going to end up making the Dems LOOK like villians, even when they're doing the right thing. Their being played like a violin by the Bush White House, with the only off-key note being the use of executive priviledge. What the WH should be doing is saying, "Go tell them that, yes, you informed us about all matters involved with the firing of the attorneys, and our cabinet member approved those firings." Nothing scandalous about that, because it isn't illegal for the president and his cabinet to fire the attorneys for political reasons. Whether or not its ethical is something that GW would probably say is best left to historians (or ethicists). Using executive priviledge really the only mistake the White House has made in countering the accusations.

Actually, Monica Goodling has already admitted that she broke the law by hiring people for civil service jobs based on their religious/political beliefs.

So, that's one law so far.

Standing on a soapbox and loudly

Demanding The People's Right To Know

strikes a far more heroic political figure than arguing

"Well nothing we did was wrong but on prinicple we are going to invoke Executive Privilege because the public doesn't have a Constitutional right to know even though that's not in the US Constitution

And the Response

This is THE PEOPLE'S GOVERNMENT and we are the representatives of The People of the United States

Followed by Tony Snows nasal wheedling voice

The People also elected the President of the United States, and he has a right to candid advice from his staff

And more stentorian tones

The People Spoke In the Last Election, they WANT to know the TRUTH, they DEMAND to know know the TRUTH,, This Presiden'ts approval ratings are among the worst ever. THE PEOPLE no longer have confidence in him. THE PEOPLE demand THE WHOLE truth and NOTHING BUT the truth. WHAT ARE YOU HIDING MR PRESIDENT

Sure the conservatives will be up in arms, but that's the core 33% base that Bush has now. The Independents - who are sick of this administration's gamesmanship and abandoned Bush by the millions in the last election would just lap this up.

And the Dems would come across as standing up for the little guy, and shedding light on truth, justice and apple pie.

Yes there is a risk it will backfire. Hence my point about needing some balls. Rove would do it. Hell he has done it in the past - the whole "rule as though you have a mandate" crap was EXACTLY this approach.

Yes, Degs, but Monica Goodling admitted she broke the law -- on things other than firing the attorneys.

Firing the attorneys is, remains, and will always remain a completely legal act. It would be very easy, pathetically easy, to say "Why are we being persecuted when we didn't break the law?"

I'm not speaking in a partisan way here, I'm making a professional judgement based on what I would advise if I was the president's public affairs guy, instead of an Army installation's public affairs guy. The flip side of this advice would be the advice I would have given Clinton the day Matt Drudge broke the Lewinsky scandal. I'd have said, "Mr. President, go in front of the camera and say that you did something wrong, and then the country will forget about it -- you wouldn't be the first 50-something executive to have sex with a 20-something employee."

The press is always going to make a mountain out of a molehill, if you conceal the molehill. That's what they've done here. What the Bush administration should have done four months ago was say, "Yes, we in the administration fired the attorneys because we had policy disagreements with them. It is legal for the president to fire at will employees over matters of policy, and we conferred fully with the Department of Justice in the dismissals." So the Bush administration is guilty of a huge public affairs mistake, covering up that which wasn't agains the law. Even if you make a mistake, as long as it's legal, never never cover it up. Now it's too late.

PR can't make everything go away. This really is a struggle about

1. What level of oversight Congress legitimately has over the Administration
2. What sort of actions are unethical vs. illegal

Remember that impachment is a political process not a legal one (ie you can get impeached for unethical behaviour in office that is perfectly legal, all that needs to happen is that enough congress-critters are willing to impeach you).

The Dems are looking to rebalance the Constitutional powers Bush has arrogated to the POTUS. And it is a two pronged approach. In the later case, they are looking to demonstrate that the GOP administration as a whole has acted far more unethically than Clinton did - yet Clinton got impeached. And in the process they are keeping the public perception of the GOP in the basement by makeing them look mendacious and incompetent. In essence the message to Bush is - keep being intransigent and we will tie you as an anchor to your party and use that to pull all of you down in 2008.

The second prong is probably the one you would consider more legitimate - and that is re-establishing the Congressional right of oversight. After all, the power of the purse and the power of legislation are hollow if you don't understand the consequences of the actions you have taken previously and if you can't have insight into what needs to be changed. In essence this is a consequence of the distortions and smoke screen that Bush used to get us into Iraq.

Congress wants to actually dig at those underlying documents and deliberations. But they cannot do so without first re-establishing the right to do so. And that is easier to do with the DoJ issue than otherwise.

And I would disagree with you about Goodling's admission. She didn't specify exactly how she "stepped over the line". Which means that she very well might have done so as part of the US Atty firing. The use of RNC messaging systems in the US Atty firing WOULD be one such example.

Well, I've always believed that oversight came in the management of the purse strings -- don't like what an administration is doing? Refuse to fund it.

I agree with you at least what the Democrats in congress are trying to appear to do, to establish or re-establish powers "lost" to the Congress under the Bush administration. I'm not certain they're well guided in this effort. I say that because, whether they like it or not, today, July 13, 2007 the country is at war. Presidential powers always expand during a war and usually contract after the war (I say usually because some of the expansion of federal government after World War II came as a result of the way it expanded during WWII). So while I see their point, and it's a valid point, I question their timing. I also question the issue they're raising. Personally, I think they could put up a much more valid fight now that they have more power in Congress simply by repealing the Patriot Act, something that should be done in any case.

I feel the Dems can dig and dig and dig again on the U.S. Attorney's firings, and they're still going to come up against the legality of the firings. Yes, you can impeach for unethical behavior, but it hasn't ever been done. Clinton was impeached for violating the law; Johnson was impeached for violating an act regarding the tenure of appointed officials. Nixon was never impeached at all. When it comes to the message that the Democrats in Congress are trying to send, they should have picked a more definable violation. When it comes to the firing of at-will employees, most U.S. citizens are at-will employees, and will recognize that legally speaking, there's no "there" there.

Bush will inevitably be tied to the Republican race next year, and the only saving grace for the Republican Party is that whomever it runs will have a more unified following than whomever the Democrats run. The infighting among the Democrat candidates has already been vicious, and we haven't even made to primary season yet. Will either Hillary or Obama settle for veep? I'd think not, and I also think both have "electibility" problems outside the Dem base, which is not by-itself large enough to elect the president. Both parties are facing difficulties this time around, even though the current headlines favor the Democrats -- a lot can happen between now and the election and headlines are prone to change on a daily basis.

Clinton violated no law. Had he violated the law he would have been disbarred, instead he simply had his license temporarily suspended. It turns out that under Arkansas law, lying in a deposition is not perjury unless the case actually goes to trial. And since the case was dismissed on summary judgement, it didn't go to trial and Clinton committed no crime. So the impeachment was purely for ethics violations.

Johnson's impeachment was for a violation LESS significant than what Goodling admitted to doing.

So yeah we've actually had nothing BUT political impeachments. The only actual criminal one was Nixon, but he resigned and was pardoned before that one could get out of the gate.

As for being "at war". Whom are we at war with? Iraq is a sovereign ally. Afghanistan is a sovereign ally. We have always faced terrorism. That is nothing new. Nor is there any imminent threat of invasion or insurrection, nor is any US soil occupied (in fact we are occupying soil of three sovereign nations).

So from a practical as well as a technical perspective, the USA is not "at war". And hence "war powers" do not apply. Now you could argue that TECHNICALLY we are still in a state of war with the PRK. But that would mean that every POTUS since Truman could make that claim and I don't see you supporting Clinton's claim to that post OK City (nor did the GOP Congress Critters). So no, there is no legal or pragmatic basis for the "expansion of powers".

In fact the ONLY reason that the powers were able to expand was because there was a rubber-stamp Congress in place. And that has changed.

Which brings us back to your first point - that the oversight came in the form of "purse strings". OK, but how do you know how your money is being spent without having the right to ask, investigate and verify? How do you know whether the authorizing legislation you have passed for the EPA, the EEOC, or for that new weapon system is having the intended outcomes if you don't have a right ti ask, investigate and verify?

Given that we have a long history of Congress being involved in fairly low levels of program micro-management EVEN DURING WWII, the precedent is clear- even during war Congress has oversight rights. And we aren't even at war.

Both of you made some good points and you both refuted the other's points well.

And no name calling!! Now that is what Slate should be all about.

(I do admit, sheepishly, to occasional name calling.)

Degs and I debate frequently, and I think we'd be friends IRL if it every came to a meeting, even though we disagree a lot on politics. Politics isn't everything.

Having said that Degs, Clinton may not have perjured himself in Arkansas, but his impeachment didn't take place in Arkansas, and he was impeached for lying to a jury -- perjury is the legal definition for that. In any case, the disbarment ruling came from federal Judge Susan Webber Wright, not an Arkansas court, and was based on contempt of court, which is itself a violation of the law.

I agree with you that Andrew Johnson's impeachment was bogus, but the underpinning for it was a matter of law, not politics. As with the Clinton impeachment, there was a legal peg upon which to hang the political action.

I think that's going to be hard to do with the U.S. attorney firings, because they can be fired at any time for any reason without violating the law.

As for the war, you're right, we're not "at war" in a very narrowly parsed legalistic sense of the term. Using that same sort of definition, we weren't "at war" in Korea in 1951, either, but most people think of it as the Korean War and not the Korean Police Action. American troops have a lethal mission on foreign soil, where they are being shot at and blown up with high explosives -- to the masses who based on opinion polls don't like this mission, it's a war.

I didn't ever say the Congress didn't have a right to do it's current investigation in the name of oversight. I said that the Democrats are making what I believe to be bad political move in doing so.

Clinton was not impeached for lying to a jury. It never went to jury. The claim was also that he "manipulated" a Grand Jury - but again, no criminal charge of perjury was brought in that case. So no actual crime was committed. A person is not guilty of a crime until convicted of it. Clinton was impeached without having committed a crime.

Now arguably the same is true for Nixon. The difference is that Archibald Cox was drawing up legal charges - whereas Star never did.

My point about Johnson's impeachment wasn't that he didn't violate the law. Rather that his violation of the law on Civil Service Tenure is no more serious than the Civil Service violations in the Bush WH Atty scandal that Goodling admitted to. If Johnson was impeachable, so is Bush. For almost identical "crimes".

As for "technically at war". We actually were in a sanctioned UN Action in Korea defending a treaty ally who was being invaded. That is not the case in Afghanistan nor Iraq. So setting aside the "technical" aspect

• Yes US Soldiers are on foreign soil - that does not convey War Powers upon a POTUS
• Yes US Soldiers are being killed - that does not convey War Powers upon a POTUS

Otherwise every POTUS since the inception of the nation could claim "War Powers". Which essentially obviates their distinction.

Now onto the "technical aspect". The US Constitution and the balance of powers therein is precisely "technical". Lincoln's suspension of Habeas was overturned even though there was an actual insurrection and a war. Why? because the suspension of Habeas was overly broad and did not limit itself to the immediacy of the battlefield.

By that same extension, GWB can claim "war powers" in perhaps the Gulf region and at US Soil embassies in the whole of the Middle East. But to claim more is to lay claim to power that historically NO POTUS has been granted in even circumstance of greater and dire threat to the nation.

Now I am interested in why you think this is bad politically for the Dems. Remember that they face a pretty broken economy when they take office. A quagmire that is surpassing WWII in duration and Vietnam in normalized $$ that they have been tarred with being the "cut and run" party.

I suggest that the ONLY way they can do what needs to be done and survive the 2012 election, is to lay the mess squarely on the GOP shoulders. And the way to do that is to highlight the boneheadedness of this administration's policies every chance they get while seasoning with the implications of mendaciousness.

Why do you read it as a "bad political move"? Where is their political cost?

Impeachment itself is merely the first step in a legal process -- no one is ever impeached for violating the law. One is impeached so that they can be removed from office, and then tried in Congress to determine if there is a legal violation. Clinton was impeached, and then found not guilty by the political process. Andrew Johnson was impeached and found guilty by the political process. After the end of his term, Clinton was judged in contempt of court (a violation of the law) and disbared. So it matters not a wit if Clinton violated the technical definition of perfury in Arkansas as the case ws not in an Arkansas court, and the legal penalty he faced was one that occurred after impeachment and trial on the perjury.

I was not saying that the current president was actually invoking the War Powers designated under the War Powers Act -- no president has accepted that act as constitutional, so it would be strange if that were the legal argument used by this president. I said that, as a de facto matter, the powers of the executive expand during war (and national emergency). This is because Congress is not and cannot be flexible and fast enough to respond, and because the Congress isn't the commander in chief of the armed forces. Although Lincolns suspension of habeus was overturned, it was overturned after it had already been used for a good long while, which makes my point. Lincoln felt he needed that power, and he invoked it, and only after he had done so was there any redress of the "violation."

Insofar as we're discussing the war, you are fully correct that the Dems (I should add that I mean no disrespect to Democrats by shortening the word up to "Dems," and I use "Repubs" occasionally for the other party merely to avoid typing extra letters) are right to lay it squarely in Bush's lap, and I don't regard that as a bad move. I regard their sideshow regarding the U.S. attorneys as a bad move, because it is so easily countered, and will make the Dems look like they're on a witch hunt. That's a case even a lawyer with a room-temperature IQ can make, and you can be certain that it is one Rove's operatives will make in the fullness of time (if they deign to respond -- Harriet Meiers didn't show at all, which I also think was a bad move. She should have arrived, said "Yes, we fired the attorney's after conferring with the White House, and that's legal," and left.)

So, the political cost to the Dems is that of, in addition to being painted as weak on security (the cut and run party), also being stubborn and foolish in pursuit of a non-issue. The Dems are seemingly tone-deaf on the subject of "shrill." They seemingly don't grasp that people want to be made to feel good about their country and their government and not bad. That people want to live their lives without having every move they make criticized in the name of one or another form of idealism. And they certainly have never grasped that the public at large isn't going to pay much attention to technical matters, and this debate over the attorneys is technical. This is why the one entity that has lower approval ratings in most polls than Bush has is the U.S. Congress, which is currently run by the Dems. Degs, I'm not saying the Dems are wrong to push for the investigation, at least not from a legal sense. I'm saying it's bad politics, especially if they lose as I expect they will because of the fact that firing the attorneys was legal. If they lose, "Well, the left wing extremists did another witch hunt, they investigated the Bush adminstration A-GAIN and didn't find anything A-GAIN. You'd think there's more important things they could do."

That's the political cost.

Impeachement is POLITICAL not a criminal process (legal doesn't have meaning in this context). And Clinton was not disbarred (he would have been had he committed a crime). Instead his Bar License as Suspended through Jan of 2006, so Clinton can again practice law in Arkansas if he so chooses. IOW Clinton was not impeached for any criminal act. Not only is impeachment a political act, but in the case of Clinton it was purely a politically trumped up charge as well (especially ironic given the history of the GOP Impeachment managers).

As to the flexibility and speed of Congress - there is nothing going on in the world that requires that sort of "speedy action" on the part of the POTUS. The main reason that Bush was able to arrogate the powers to the POTUS was because the GOP beleived that they could get away with allowing Bush to act this way and that they would be able to retract those powers in the case of a Dem win of the WH at some later point in time. They never expected to get booted from controlling Congress that soon.

Lincoln's use of Habeas suspension had no more salubrious effect than the Japanese interment of WWII. And that latter will be how history will judge the mess that Bush has made of Camp X-Ray. There never was a need for Bush to have these powers. It was just that the GOP Congress was way too compliant.

As for your analysis of the Atty scandal. I think you are listening too much with the ears of someone who supports the GOP. The core 35% that continues to support Bush would hear Barbara Streisand's crooning as "shrill". It isn't playing as "shrill" to any but the GOP.

It isn't a scandal that makes people feel bad about themselves. It is a scandal that makes people feel bad about the GOP. And while it doesn't make them feel better about congress in general, it does make them less likely to listen to GOP candidates credulously. And THAT is the goal, and it is rather effective in that. And there is no political downside.

There is nothing for them to "lose" in this case. We already have found out that Goodling and others in the Justice Dept violated the law in using party affiliation in hiring and promotion. We have already seen the RNC Email mess succesfully portrayed as "missing minutes of silence". Even if the GOP were to turn over all of the missing emails, the same criticisms they leveled at HRC over the Rose Law firm emails would come back to haunt them. And if they can't or don't, then the RNC comes across as having something to hide. Which means that no senior operative in the RNC can run for office at this point. That's pretty crippling.

Worse yet, if a court rules in 2008 that the RNC email system should be subpoenaed, think of what that will do to the IT department for the RNC right in the middle of a nasty campaign.

No this is an issue that "keeps giving" to the Dems at many many levels, and with no political downside except to the core GOP stalwarts.

For instance, if Meiers had shown up and said

"Yes, we fired the attorney's after conferring with the White House, and that's legal,"

and then refused to answer anything more, Leahy would simply ask -

Ok, if it was legal, why are you unwilling to tell us the details? What are you hiding? We already have testimony that hirings and promotions were sometimes done illegally at Justice - why should we believe you now?

Nah, this is the scandal that keeps making the GOP look bad to everyone but the GOP. In fact the "technical" nature of "At will" employment is what the public won't care about. Too many in the public are familiar with someone being fired or demoted unjustly by hostile management.

Most of this, especially our discussions of the legal/political matter of impeachment, is not central to this issue. If Meiers had shown up and gotten the response you suggest "Why won't you tell us the details," the correct response is, "Internal personnel matters of the executive branch are not the business of the legislative branch. Mr. Leahy, in short, it's none of your business."

But as I said, it's a technical debate and the not-politically-interested folks (most of the U.S. and about a third of the population that votes) aren't interested or following it. Go to the grocery store and ask the cashier what he or she thinks of the matter -- my guess is you'll get a blank stare.

Which is why I continue to believe this matter isn't playing for the Dems as they think it is. They can run, and pretty much are running, against the war successfully. The attorney scandal isn't playing with the U.S. public. Bush's approval low, but Congress's approval rating is even lower. The approval rating of Congress was at 14 percent in late June (the most recent data I could find -- Gallup, 6/20/2007). The public isn't happy, to the extent its following the congress's moves under Democratic control.