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09.25 State Elections Boards Seeks Volunteers to Help Process Unprecedented Number of Voter Applications
09.18 Reviewing Danny Schechter's "Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal"
Ref. : Letters to the editor
09.30 To Joe Biden: Time for Confession
09.28 Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama
09.26 Bailout Package Must be Transparent to the American People
09.18 Possible $2 Million Donation to Support Md. Slots Sends Wrong Message
10.10 Ayers = Keating?
10.02 Project Censored's Media Democracy Advocacy
09.23 Satire: Louella Reads the Baltimore Sun
09.22 CBS Cheats on Tax Coverage
09.10 Post's Post-Convention 'Balancing' Act
09.10 McCain/Palin Campaign Relies on Lazy Thinking and Prejudice to Win
09.10 The Rising Cost of the Iraq 'Surge'
10.09 McCain-Palin Put 'Country Last'
10.07 GOP Judges Aid White House Cover-up
10.07 Voting the Fate of the Nation
10.07 Alaska GOP's Last-Ditch Palin Defense
10.07 Election '08: Here Comes the Sludge
10.02 John McCain v. The Truth
10.02 Drinking at the Public Fountain
10.01 Who won the Mississippi debate? Obama—but for different reasons than you think
09.30 The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic Attack as Bailout Goes Bust
09.29 The Resurrectionists: Beltway's Big Money Cultists Bail Out the Dead
09.29 We Have the Money
09.27 Debate Evades Dark Realities
09.26 Alaskan Officials Allege Palin Cover-up
09.24 Don’t Worry, Be Happy
09.24 Text of Draft Proposal for Bailout Plan
09.24 Hey, Government! How About Calling on Us?
09.23 Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen
09.22 The Evolution of John McCain
09.21 Palin's 'Troopergate' Battle Rages
09.19 Burning the First Amendment
09.15 Subverting Democracy Through Electoral Fraud
09.15 Military Industrial Complex 2.0
09.13 Acceptable Sacrifice: For the Right to Endorse
09.13 Why More Soldiers from Alaska?
09.12 Experience is Over-Rated
09.10 Obama Must Call for Palin's Removal from the Ticket
09.10 9/11 Plus Seven
09.10 Palin's Strange Probe of a Trooper
09.10 Dear Democrats: Integrity Won’t Win this Election
10.09 The Surge That Failed
10.08 The Orwellosphere: Anglo-American Drive to 'Total Security State' Rolls On
10.08 Justice for Yemini Sheik
10.06 The Wounded Shark: 'Good War' Lost, But the Imperial Project Goes On
10.02 U.S. Army Troops To Serve As U.S. Policemen?
09.25 Life on the Ledge
09.16 "Awakening" Into Nightmare: Seeding More Sectarian War in Iraq
10.06 Thinking About Treason
10.06 The Fleecing of America
10.03 Can a bailout succeed?
10.02 Empire of Greed
10.02 No Surprise in the Senate Bailout Vote
10.02 How Wall Street Can Bail Itself Out Without Destroying The Dollar
10.02 The Specter of Wall Street
10.01 We Need to Demand Hearings!
09.30 Surprise! Congress Listened to the Voting Public!
09.29 Thinking About Gyrations
09.29 Grand Theft America
09.26 Seizing America by Withholding the Mother’s Milk of Politics
09.26 Framing the $700 Billion Question
09.26 Bail Out NO, Buy Out YES
09.26 Just Say "No" to Any Immediate Bailout
09.26 Has Deregulation Sired Fascism?
09.25 Don't Fuel the Fire: Fire the Arsonists
09.25 America Pays the Piper, Big Time
09.24 Just Thinking Aloud Here
09.23 What Nobody's Saying: The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar
09.22 Thinking About Escalations
09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits
09.18 US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits
09.17 Creative Destruction: The Solid Core Behind the Financial Crisis
09.16 You Can't Feel Blue About the Economy If You Want To. There Are No Blue Chips Anymore
09.15 Thinking About Spotlights
09.15 U.S. Economy—Temporary Respite, Permanent Decline
10.10 Another Israeli West Bank Land Grab Scheme
09.26 Annals of Liberation: Sex is Death in a Darkened Land
09.25 New Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
09.22 Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
09.20 Filter Tips: Distortion and Demonization on the Iran Beat
09.11 Wall Street and Washington
COMMENTARY:
The Legal Pervert's Parade: Executive Privilege Über Alles
Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege...This new authoritarian claim grows out of the Congressional investigation of the illegal politicization of the Justice Department -- and the many instances of perjury that the investigation has produced, as Bush's legal perverts twisted, squirmed and lied outright under oath. Bush is frantically seeking to keep his top perverts -- such as Harriet Miers, the loyal factotum who wiped the dribble from Junior's jim-jams and handed him the state papers he didn't read (i.e., "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S.," etc.) -- from testifying before Congress about the White House machinations to fire U.S. attorneys for failing to file bogus cases against targeted enemies of the Leader. The slimy trail of this scheme leads straight to Bush's main minder, Karl Rove. Bush has already demonstrated that he is prepared to sacrifice anything -- including the nation's chief undercover operation against the spread of nuclear weapons -- to shield his porcine puppeteer. So the new assertion of authoritarian power -- yet another slashing knife attack on the dying body of the Constitutional Republic -- is small potatoes for this thug.
Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege...
Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."
"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."
Yet the assertion, when it comes, will be an important step forward in the revolutionary remaking of the American state that the Bush Regime launched with its judicial coup in 2000. For note well, this "breathtaking" assertion -- that Bush can stop any investigation of government wrongdoing simply by claiming "executive privilege" -- is not based on Bush's role as "commander-in-chief in wartime," which has been the perverted basis of previous edicts licensing torture, rendition, indefinite detention, unrestricted domestic eavesdropping and the whole sinister schmeer of Bush's Terror War policies. Even this false "justification" -- "stern but temporary measures taken as a military necessity while the nation is in peril" -- is missing in the new assertion. The new power is seen as a permanent right of the head of the executive branch: an entirely new structural role for the president, who clearly stands above legislative oversight, judicial restraint and the laws of the land.
There is nothing "temporary" about this claim. (Of course, in practice, there is nothing "temporary" about Bush's authoritarian "Commander" powers either, since he claims the "war" which justifies them will go on for decades, perhaps generations; but theoretically at least, these "wartime" powers have a time limit.) Bush is saying that any action taken by the federal government can be cloaked by "executive privilege" as a matter of course, not as a wartime exigency. The Regime has once again -- and very deliberately -- provoked a constitutional crisis of the highest order. They are very clear about what they are doing. They are overthrowing the laws, traditions and constitutional structures that have maintained the American republic -- imperfectly but steadily -- for more than 200 years. (As John Gray notes in his new book, Black Mass, the basic structure of the American system has undergone almost no fundamental change since the adoption of the Constitution, unlike the systems of almost every other state around the globe, including such bastions of tradition like the UK; indeed, says Gray, with the possible exception of Switzerland, the United States could claim to be the oldest government in the world.)
The Bush-Cheney regime wants to change all that -- and has been changing it, from the very beginning. They believe that the time for democracy and the rule of law has passed. Constitutional government and legal accountability are "quaint notions" that can no longer be indulged by a massive state with "responsibilities" for managing the affairs of the entire world -- and a myriad of "enemies" challenging this benign domination. Only a Leader-state -- run by a small, secretive cadre of dedicated elites able to operate beyond any restraints of law or outside supervision or public consent -- is supple enough to deal with the duties and challenges faced by the "world's only hyperpower." This is their vision of government. It is a radical transformation, in both substance and structure, from what we have known before. It is authoritarian. It is arbitrary. It is ruthless, corrupt, brutal and vile, but because it is clothed in modern garb, in business suits, PR-packaged, slick and airbrushed, we don't see it for the barbaric throwback that it is. As I wrote in November 2001:
It won't come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won't come with "black helicopters" or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by "the people" themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will often act in secret; for reasons of "national security," the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, the murder of "enemies" selected by the leader, undeclared war, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new "security structures" targeted at the populace. In time, all this will come to seem "normal," as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone.
Under long-established procedures and laws, the House and Senate can each pursue two kinds of criminal contempt proceedings, and the Senate also has a civil contempt option. The first, called statutory contempt, has been the avenue most frequently pursued in modern times, and is the one that requires a referral to the U.S. attorney in the District.No, these Democrats definitely have no appetite for concrete action -- as opposed to pointless stunts like their all-nighter over their "anti-war" measure that would actually guarantee the long-term presence of a substantial American force in Iraq -- which was of course one of the chief aims of Bush's invasion in the first place. (Sean O'Neill makes quick work of this ludicrous carnival here.) Their most likely response to this latest authoritarian power grab will be weeks of hand-wringing fulmination followed by months, if not years, of court action, as the matter winds its way slowly to the waiting arms of a Supreme Court dominated by Bushist apparatchiks. Meanwhile, the authoritarian regime will roll on, growing ever more entrenched, more emboldened and more radical. By the time this particular manifestation of the Bush tyranny is adjudicated, we will almost certainly be hip-deep in war with Iran -- or under martial law following another terrorist attack (of whatever provenance) -- or perhaps both.
Both chambers also have an "inherent contempt" power, allowing either body to hold its own trials and even jail those found in defiance of Congress. Although widely used during the 19th century, the power has not been invoked since 1934 and Democratic lawmakers have not displayed an appetite for reviving the practice.
And if you think this prognostication is too grim, too unlikely, or too exaggerated, then you have been sleepwalking through the last six years.
Chris Floyd is an American journalist and the Editor and co-founder of the Atlantic Free Press. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including the Nation, CounterPunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the "Empire Burlesque" political blog. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.This column originally appeared on Chris Floyd's site, and is republished here with the permission of the author.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on July 20, 2007.
