by D. Cupples | Our legislative and judicial branches of government are constitutional equals of the executive branch. President Bush seemed to forget that fact of history and law when prompting underlings to tell Congress and a court to butt out while the Justice Department and CIA investigate the CIA's possibly illegal destruction of torture tapes in 2005. Can you see the potential conflict of interest here?
Apparently, Federal District Judge Henry H. Kennedy doesn't feel compelled to bow as the Bush Administration wields its self-granted power to order equals around. Yesterday, Judge Kennedy ordered a court hearing to examine whether the CIA violated a judicial order by destroying videotapes. The Washington Post reports:
"The Justice Department had told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. earlier that he had no jurisdiction to inquire into the destruction of the tapes. It separately told lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week to delay public hearings on the tapes' destruction while the department's National Security Division and the CIA inspector general's office conducted their probe.
"Congress agreed not to hold hearings now, but Kennedy decided, without comment, to schedule the court hearing." (Washington Post)
Actually, Judge Kennedy may well have jurisdiction, because his court ordered the CIA to preserve evidence of detention and interrogation records (which would seem to include the torture tapes) as part of an ongoing court case. CIA officials destroyed the tapes about 6 months after Kennedy ordered their preservation.
Destroying evidence, especially after a court tells you not to, is a legal no-no: if you and I did it, we'd likely end up fined or jailed. Any freshman law student would know that, so it's likely that the CIA's lawyers also knew it before the tapes were destroyed.
Gun Toting Liberal commented:
"Without some 'emergency judicial activism' on the part of both the Judicial Branch and the Legislative Branch, we shall live in a country where both of the former are 'assistant managers' of the United States while the Executive becomes the “general manager”. That scenario works fine under a dictatorship but doesn’t work so well in our Oligarchical, Nanny State -slash- Police State of today.
"This isn’t about “torture” — many of us have differing opinions on that subject. It’s about OVERSIGHT. It’s about TRANSPARENCY. It’s about Constutionality.
GTL is right. Our Founding Fathers had experienced a monarchy, and they didn't like it. That's why they made sure that "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" were in our Constitution. Apparently, President Bush and his executive-branch underlings don't value our Founders' wisdom.
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