Back in the early eighties when I was working at Universal Studios, Ned Tanen, then head of production, used to tell the writers and directors on the lot regarding their work: “If one person tells you you’re drunk, ignore him. If six people tell you you’re drunk, sit down.” Evidently a rather large percentage of Americans (86!) are telling Hastert and his Congressional cronies to “sit down” on the “Separation of Powers” issue and allow the FBI to get on with the business of investigating criminality in the House.
Some defenders of Hastert, et al, have asserted that we critics “don’t understand” the “Separation of Powers.” Oh, really? The US Constitution is a complex and remarkable document, but it is not Einstein’s “unifed field theory” or the like and nowhere near as difficult to understand (and those hiding behind it at the moment are, I think it is safe to say, “no Einsteins”). We do get the principle of separation, its use – and misuse. We also get that the Constitution is a document written in 1789 when there were slaves in the country and women couldn’t vote. Regarding it as holy writ is reactionary, just as running rough shod over its ideas is foolhardy and destructive.
But speaking of foolhardy, in the Abramoff Era [But it's always been the Abramoff Era.-ed. Yes it has - and that's the point], public disgust with elected officials is growing. And in this era of the Internet, we are watching more than ever. Public corruption cannot stand.
One other thing: I watched a smattering of Constitutional lawyers attacking the FBI in front of the House Judiciary Committee. One of them was the ubiquitous Jonathan Turley. He put me in mind of one of Woody Allen’s better recent film jokes. In a mock contemporary version of Dante’s Inferno, Woody consigns to one of the lowest rungs “lawyers who appear on television” .
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15 Comments
1. Steven Mitchell:Roger, it is a rare post outside of Iraq or anti-terrorism where I agree with everything you say. Today though, you’ll get no argument whatsoever from me.
Jun 1, 2006 - 12:11 pm 2. Kevin Peters:Roger:
It’s the Congress that is trying to create a shield so high that their offices become sovereign territory that no law can touch. The feds got a warrant. They had probable cause. They tried to get the crook to co-operate. They didn’t just crash the doors down. Jefferson was obstructing justice, not the feds. They have stretched a clause that was meant to protect the legislative branch so they could vote and not have the other branches use the law to stop them from voting into a evidence get out of jail free card. What a joke.
Jun 1, 2006 - 12:46 pm 3. MarkD:Turley is a gem. I wanted to comment about one of his more inane blatherings in JWR, so I clicked through to his website. No comments, no mailto.
I lost tolerance for being the recipient of monologues long ago, so he joined the short list of people whose columns I refuse to read: Ivins, Dowd, Malveaux, Steve Young and Clarence Paige.
The only criteria for making the list are an extreme bile-to-substance ratio, or intellectual bancruptcy.
Jun 1, 2006 - 1:05 pm 4. Kevin Peters:Roger:
Jun 1, 2006 - 1:14 pm 5. ed:If congress wants to be treated as their own country then they should have got together and forced Jefferson to comply with the the feds supeona’s. ignoring his obstruction of justice and then getting pissy over juristiction is absurd. If Congress wants to have their own form of law and order then they have to start punishing their own or start letting the feds to the job for them.
Hmmm.
I must admit that the 5-6 times I’ve watched Turley try to push this separation of powers silliness I’ve been singularly unimpressed.
Frankly the one thing I’ve noticed with Turley is that he downplays the involvement of the judiciary, in the signing of the search warrant, in order to artificially play up the contention between Executive and Legislative branches.
And it’s not at all convincing.
Jun 1, 2006 - 2:15 pm 6. Mike K:There is some discussion over at NRO about early contacts between the FBI and the House in which the House chose to make a constitutional argument that subpeonas were not binding. This is even more difficult to understand as it seems that Hastert was backing Jefferson from the beginning. This is lunacy unless all those Republican Congressmen are seeking retirement.
The drunk analogy raises the old story about the boss who told his young executive that he could drink during lunch with clients as long as it was not vodka. When asked why, the boss told him that vodka had no odor. If he said something stupid, he wanted the client to know he was drunk. Has anyone sniffed Hastert’s breath ?
Jun 1, 2006 - 2:27 pm 7. Terrye:John Adams must be spinning in his grave.
The fact that one of the few things the two parties can actually have bipartisan agreement on is how best to hide the evidence does not say a lot for the likes of Hastert.
Jun 1, 2006 - 2:52 pm 8. BarelyFitz:We critics “don’t understand” the “Separation of Powers” – this coming from people who have such a nuanced understanding of the commerce clause…
Jun 1, 2006 - 2:52 pm 9. TM Lutas:I heard Sensenbrenner on the radio this morning and he suggested that three modifications would have rendered the search unobjectionable. Had the House attorney (attornies?) been present and allowed to present their case to the judge issuing the subpeona so that legislative materials not relevant to the case were left alone, on execution of the search, attorneys from the House and Congressman Jefferson could have been present to ensure the warrant scope was not exceeded, and that the FBI not get to solely determine what was in and out of the scope of the warrant all this kerfuffle wouldn’t have happened.
Frankly, I can’t come up with any arguments against any of it. Perhaps others can? I can certainly see how justice could be served with these restrictions and fully expect that the relevant evidence goes to the prosecutors after review and the non-relevant evidence goes back to the (soon to be ex) Congressman.
What burns me the most at this point is that there might be grounds for suppression of all the evidence from the search on the grounds that the FBI violated the rules by excluding Jefferson and/or his attorney during search warrant execution. If all this stuff is thrown out because the FBI decided to violate long-established rules of evidence somebody in the executive ought to pay with their job.
Jun 1, 2006 - 3:43 pm 10. MarkD:You mean like how we get to have an attorney present during one of those “no knock” raids on our homes?
Congress is fine with bending the Constitution. I’m getting a big laugh out of them falling over each other trying to defend a guy caught on tape taking bribes. Maybe my low opinion of them is too generous?
Jun 1, 2006 - 3:53 pm 11. Annoying Old Guy:Mr. Lutas;
The latter two of your suggestions mean provide a means for Congress to veto the warrant. Any of them would mean that Congressmen would not have to obey subpeonas or warrants if they chose to not do so. That’s the problem.
As for the first one, why didn’t Congress’ or Representative Jefferson’s lawyers go back to the judge months ago? What happens to a normal citizen, and why couldn’t that be done?
Jun 1, 2006 - 4:17 pm 12. zefal:For those who say Jefferson did not cooperate forget that he voluntarily froze his own assets.
Jun 1, 2006 - 6:49 pm 13. Robin Goodfellow:“For those who say Jefferson did not cooperate forget that he voluntarily froze his own assets.”
Haha, nice one.
Jun 1, 2006 - 7:21 pm 14. Barry Dauphin:Oh the legislative documents. I guess Jefferson should be allowed to get away with it if he wraps up his bribery money with the paper of subcommittee reports.
Jun 1, 2006 - 10:11 pm 15. dclydew:Jefferson should be prosecuted for being corrupt, indeed, I think all public servants that have used the power for their own enrichment should be rounded up and dumped in prison for a few years.
However, I do have concerns around the strong tendency that we have seen in the past few years to ignore some rules, laws, standards that have been in place for quite some time. Mr. Bush’s “signing statements” are of concern to me, as is this incident. Also of concern are the NSA program and the idea that phone companies are forewarding all of their traffic to the government. Most of these concern me, not because I think Bush is evil (I don’t… At worst he’s incompetent, at best he’s just fixated on a specfic area of the exceutive and isn’t very good at managing the political/PR side of things).
At any rate, there should be no free pass for the congressman. But, I’m not happy with the ad hoc changes to the rules we’ve all lived by for some time.
Jun 2, 2006 - 8:45 am