Comments on: Mr. Hastert, sit down

By: dclydew

dclydew — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:45:35 +0000

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.

By: Barry Dauphin

Barry Dauphin — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 05:11:03 +0000

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.

By: Robin Goodfellow

Robin Goodfellow — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 02:21:56 +0000

“For those who say Jefferson did not cooperate forget that he voluntarily froze his own assets.”

Haha, nice one.

By: zefal

zefal — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 01:49:19 +0000

For those who say Jefferson did not cooperate forget that he voluntarily froze his own assets.

By: Annoying Old Guy

Annoying Old Guy — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 23:17:58 +0000

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?

By: MarkD

MarkD — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 22:53:33 +0000

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?

By: TM Lutas

TM Lutas — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 22:43:03 +0000

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.

By: BarelyFitz

BarelyFitz — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:52:26 +0000

We critics “don’t understand” the “Separation of Powers” – this coming from people who have such a nuanced understanding of the commerce clause…

By: Terrye

Terrye — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:52:00 +0000

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.

By: Mike K

Mike K — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:27:31 +0000

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 ?