First, there’s this:
A House panel today brushed aside warnings from President Bush and voted to authorize subpoenas for political director Karl Rove and other administration officials in an inquiry into the Justice Department’s dismissal of eight U.S. prosecutors.
The Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law passed the measure by a voice vote, with some “no’s” by Republicans. No roll call was taken.
And this:
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee . . . said his committee would vote Thursday on whether to issue subpoenas for [Karl] Rove as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William K. Kelley, the deputy White House counsel.
“I do not believe in this ‘We’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,†Mr. Leahy said on “This Week†on ABC, adding: “I want testimony under oath.
Then there’s Patrick Leahy, the Clinton years:
… I do not believe we should be issuing subpoenas to the Justice Department unless that step is absolutely necessary. I appreciate the Chairman’s commitment to fulfilling this Committee’s oversight responsibilities, and I take those responsibilities very seriously myself. . . . Yet, on this clemency matter, the [Justice] Department has voluntarily sent the Committee several boxes of documents, totaling over 3000 pages . . . . The Department has also already made the Pardon Attorney available to provide an informal briefing to the Committee on clemency procedures.
[…]
I recognize that the presidential communications privilege is not absolute. For instance, in the context of a criminal case (one of the Watergate cases), the Supreme Court found that an assertion of executive privilege “based only on the generalized interest in confidentiality . . . must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.†418 U.S. at 713. In the context of a congressional investigation, the privilege would be more difficult to overcome and require a showing that the information sought to be obtained is “demonstrably critical to the responsible fulfillment of the Committee’s functions.†Senate Select Committee v. Nixon, 498 F.2d 725, 731 (D.C. Cir. 1974). This would be a difficult task in this matter given the peculiarly executive nature of the clemency process.
Patterico has much more—and a legal education to put it all in perspective.
Meanwhile, Allahpundit thinks that, despite the obvious double standard (remember, it’s only HYPOCRISY where Republicans are involved; where Dems are involved, it’s called “hardball politics”), this will play out as a victory for liberal Democrats:
[…] I think the left wins here just by forcing Bush to take it to court. It makes him look like he’s covering up even if he isn’t, and it gives them an opportunity to brandish those Nixon comparisons they like so much. If they win, great for them  they finally get to ask Rove under oath whether he orchestrated 9/11 or whatever. If they lose, they get to demagogue “the same right-wing Supreme Court that cost us the election in 2000″ etc while speculating about what the president has to hide. It’s a political windfall either way, which is why Reid and Pelosi are milking it with both hands and at least one major newspaper is already deep in the tank.
And there you have it. The pragmatism of politics that is able to play on public perception. Or, to put it more pointedly, the opportunism of politicians who are coming to rely, almost unconsciously by now, on the public’s willingness to accept as fact the spoonfed soundbites and misleading stories served up by a mainstream press that sees its role as advocate rather than objective observer.
Yet one more reason to scrap the idea of “journalistic standards” in favor of a press that is openly willing to divulge its ideological leanings, if you ask me. Which, of course, will never happen. Because while “progressives” are busy trying to shut down Fox News and bring back the “Fairness Doctrine” to compete with rightwing talk radio, one thing you won’t hear them advocating for is a re-conceptualizing of the role of the press—1) because the advantage they have in controlling public discourse is too huge to risk on anything so quaint as intellectual honesty, and 2) because there is nothing particularly “liberal” about today’s self-styled liberal progressives.
Somewhere, the ghost of Thomas Paine searches for a heroin dealer—or at least an open liquor store.
Why anyone listens to Patrick Leahy is beyond me. He has been quite open about what he is all about, and it takes a quite wilful effort to treat him as anything but unserious.
Didn’t he get shuffle off from an earlier Intel committee assignment for leaking? Committee assignments for him are mere vehicles for interviews and spin.
Didn’t he get shuffle off from an earlier Intel committee assignment for leaking?
Yes. It had to do with the Iran-Contra affair.
He should have been expelled for it, as far as I’m concerned.
Mr. Paine–May I respectfully suggest you look in Senator Kennedy’s top right desk drawer? Or left…or probably both.
Cheney had the right response to Patrick Leahy.
Frankly, I’d like to see Rove testify, just for the sport of it. He’d eat those mental midgets alive. But first, I’d like to know just what it is they think they’re investigating.
I agree with you 100%. Fuck this pretense already. Most of the people that read this site can see clearly the ideological bent of the self proclaimed objective media they read, but unfortunately, a great deal of Americans are just too freaking dumb and can’t. Wasn’t “objective” news coverage a relatively new idea? Can’t we go back?
TW: I go for the Balvenie Doublewood this weekend! I have gone without it for too long.
As a political junkie, I too, would like to see the sport of Rove poking the Dems in the eye.
However, as a believer in Separation of Powers, I like it better for the Executive Branch to tell the Legislative Branch to go scratch.
The flip-side of this coin, ye lefties, would be for the Justice Department to start hauling the staffers of Democrat Congressmen in for questioning–just ‘cuz.
Or to use an existing phrase: the criminalization of policy.
That’s uncommonly perverse, not pragmatic. It’s like taking Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy to a societal level.
Which is what I thought would be the proportionate response all along, until I realized that the goal is just to kick up dirt and hopefully get something like what they got out of Libby. In other words, the theatrical aspect of the whole thing is the goal. Pointing out little things like lack of a crime or ethics violation are nice, but don’t really address the matter at hand.
Call it unfair, call it the Dems “setting the tone”, but there you go.
It’s called Assmunchausen’s Syndrome.
The guy who should be in front of a grand jury testifying why his staffers illegally sought Michael Steele’s credit report? That Schumer?
That “D” after the name has to be kryptonite.
And how. I made the mistake yesterday of pointing out on a messageboard that you’re going to get either a rightward or (much more frequently) a leftward tilt based on which news organization you choose – immediate denial. No discussion of the fact, just demands to cite examples (which were ignored or said to come from biased sources) and trite nonsense like “reality has a well-known liberal bias”.
Could someone cram about 4 bottles of paxil down Allahpundits throat – I swear the guy is in a perpetual state of eeyore-ness. He, of course, is oblivious to the fight energizing the base, which does what? Win elections.
I believe Bush can still win this by demonstrating the “righteous indignation” that Clinton used to use so well (do you remember the candor he exuded when he said “I did not have sexual relations…blah, blah).
If Bush plays the martyr by showing the amount of vitriol the Democrats have been spewing against him, the troops, the war effort, he can ride a wave of sympathy that Americans always feel for underdogs.
Show a couple pics of the soldier being burned in effigy (Portland?), show Sheehan marching with Socialists (ANSWER); compare that to troops securing Iraq, the pics of Al Qaeda leaders that have been whacked, and Iraqis on patrol in their own countries. Pictures will capture the short attention spans of Americans.
I don’t see what the contradiction is. Subpoenas are ncessary. At least if we are to believe the president when he stamps his feet and says they won’t go testify. So that means subpoeana away. It actually would be interesting to see the executive privilege argument. The case for breaking it is weaker than in US v. Nixon, but then again, we are told that the president was not apprised of these matters. WIts hard to imagine just how the executive privilege is being infringed if this doesn’t involve the president.
But I’ve seen progressives advising that we need an ideological—but not partisan—press. Some liberal blog. I forget if it was atrios or johsh marshall or someone like that. Way back when i remember hearing Chomsky bemoaning the loss of a labor press, pointing out that now it is basically the voice of business.
*snort*
The targets of the subpoenas work in the White House. That’s all the involvement the President needs, since this is about the Executive Branch, not merely the person of the President.
Where did you find your definition of executive privilege to include the whole executive branch? It’s not in the constitution, so we can’t look there. In US v. Nixon, the claim was about communications with the president. Which to me would mean that things that don’t involve the president have a lower, if no privilege. If it applied to the entire executive branch, that would basically invalidate all of the freedom of information act.
Yeah! What HE said!
Perhaps I misspoke—but the President’s close aides should certainly have a higher level of privilege than, say, the admin clerk at your local Social Security office, n’est-ce pas?
Well it is a step that we aren’t talkign about executive privilege being something that belongs to the entire executive branch. It’s about the president. Specifically, communications and advice to the president. Which means to me that it’s not an issue of executive privilege if the president was not advised. Which is why i’m wondering where people are getting their definitions of privilege from. Congress has at least something in the constitution giving them privilege, which gives us some direction as to contours: the speech and debate clause. But I’d like to see where people go for guidance on executive privilege.
Mojo links to a cute article with so many misunderstandings that it is hard to see where to begin criticising. Lets just start with ‘co-equal’ not meaning ‘the same.’ Perhaps even more basically, one can start with “co-equal” not being in the constitution.