Democrats have a long history of constructing their own petards on which to be later hoisted, due to their inability to consider the consequences of their actions beyond immediate partisan advantage. For a classic example of this process at work, look no further than the current proposal for a banana republic-style “Truth Commission†to conduct show trials of the outgoing Administration for the offenses of (1) acting aggressively to protect national security and then (2) losing an election.
The partisan nature of the enterprise is obvious: proponents are calling for a commission whose mandate is expressly limited to investigating Republicans, and control over which will presumably remain with the Democratic majority in Congress. (Not that a commission witch-hunting national security professionals in Democratic Administrations would be a good thing either, unless your goal is to drive good people from the field and make the ones who remain too timid to take action when the nation’s security is at risk).
Thomas Jefferson, the first Democratic president and the first president to take office after a change in partisan control, did not bring up John Adams on charges for having passed the Alien and Sedition Acts; Jefferson simply removed the offending policy and cleared those who had been wrongly convicted. Our history, and our tradition of peaceful transfers of power, might have been very different if Jefferson had handed Adams over to Napoleon on the grounds that Adams had abused civil liberties in the Quasi War with France.
David Rivkin, in his testimony today, points out that building such commissions as partisan weapons can in the long run have the same wholly forseeable yet unforseen blowback for Democrats as their creation of the Independent Counsel statute did, and then some . . . .
Read the whole thing.
I’ve been talking about this for awhile. Oh, hey, Kim Elton. That’s fine, if they want to have partisan investigations, just so long as they bring in a commission to establish Congress’s own role in the financial meltdown. Shortly before Bernie Sanders threw a snit over the caption to Bush’s National Gallery portrait, I emailed asking whether he wouldn’t be willing to recommend such a Truth Commission, but his people never responded.
And whom have you been toobin?
If the Patrick Leahy’s of Capitol Hill were to set out to intentionally destroy what little comity is left in the American public discourse they could hardly find a better way to go about it than this. It is such a danger that I had assumed clearer thinking Democrats would slap it down permanently long before now. That they haven’t done and that this hideous idea has a life still, makes me fear for my country far more than our current economic stress can do. Was the possibility of a policy vendetta turning to intimidation and potential criminalization foreshadowed as long ago as the public smearing of Robert Bork before the Senate Judiciary Committee? That was the first break of this magnitude that I can remember.
Hey, Dan! I think you p.m.’ed your dateline when you wanted to a.m. it? Or something?
Or rather 03/04’d it when you wanted to 03/05 it, sorry, I’m still awaking here, hence more slow and stupid than usual.
Oh, thanks, Sdferr. Naw, I posted this right after Jeff posted yesterday, not knowing. So, I didn’t get around to publishing it till this morning. It’s not that important. Yet.
Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s far more important than giving the business to Michelle Obama, however much she may deserve such business as she gets. She isn’t going to provoke violence in the streets. This criminalization of policy differences just may, if it goes far enough.
In the same opera but a different singer. Barney Frank is calling for the prosecution of those who are guilty of financial “wrongdoing”. A WTF moment.
And you and I both know Frank wouldn’t dare this if he didn’t know that he can get away with it. How does he know? He’s got nearly the entire information arm of American society in his hip pocket, that’s how.
It stinks of OJ going after the real killers, except he “finds” them and has them executed too.
Words fail to express my thoughts and feeling on these matters.
It also means he expects the worm will never turn.
If they go through with it, then they cannot allow the worm to turn. In that case O! will be a one term President…..with the term lasting 25 years.