Bush Puts Executive Branch Above the Law Yet Again

by Damozel | Did you know that George W. Bush is still president?  Someday, looking back, our descendants will stand amazed at a Congress---and I'm looking at BOTH parties now---too spineless to impeach him.   Though to be fair, Congress has been busy with other things during the last couple of months.  Even so, note the following:

The Bush administration has informed Congress that it is bypassing a law intended to forbid political interference with reports to lawmakers by the Department of Homeland Security....[N]ewly disclosed documents show that the Justice Department issued a legal opinion last January questioning the basis for that restriction, and that Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, later advised Congress that the administration would not “apply this provision strictly” because it infringed on the president’s powers.(New York Times)

A Republican, Arlen Specter---who has fought the good fight against the Bush Administration's expansion of its powers---called him out.

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the move “unconstitutional.” He said Mr. Bush should have vetoed the bill if he did not like the provision, and compared the situation to Mr. Bush’s frequent use of signing statements to reserve a right to bypass newly enacted laws.

“This is a dictatorial, after-the-fact pronouncement by him in line with a lot of other cherry-picking he’s done on the signing statements,” Mr. Specter said in a telephone interview. He added, “To put it differently, I don’t like it worth a damn.”(New York Times)

Shorter response of entire Bush Administration:  "Talk to the hand." 

The article continues: 

The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether Congress can pass a law that puts an executive branch official beyond the control of the president when it comes to giving information to oversight committees.

The court has, however, upheld statutes that gave regulatory agencies and prosecutors independence from presidential control. The Justice Department memorandum issued in January said that those precedents covered different kinds of situations and so did not apply, and that the restrictions Congress sought to impose on the reports by the Homeland Security Department privacy officer “must yield to the extent their application would interfere with the president’s constitutional authority to comment upon or amend” any information provided to Congress.

Several law professors said the administration’s legal theory went too far.(Read more here.)

I would think that the entire Republican party would be looking to roll back some of the "powers" of the executive as conceived  and claimed by the Bush administration and as enabled by his GOP supporters, now that it looks as if Obama just might be the next president.  Way back in December 2007 (we were so young then...so innocent!), when everyone assumed that Hillary would be the Democratic nominee, right-wing blogger Ed Morissey wrote:

Congress and the judiciary should act as the check against abuses of power of the CIA (and all other executive branch functions), and the CIA had no business destroying evidence that would allow for that kind of check, no matter how well-intentioned Rodriguez may have been.

 

If we endorse the removal of those checks, then we endorse an executive branch that can do whatever it pleases. Some may think that acceptable under current management, but if they do, they should consider the precedent left for people less acceptable to them elected to the White House.  (Tape Destruction Decision Compartmentalized)

Yep. 

The Heretik: 

As it was in the beginning....so shall it be in the end. Is anybody surprised George Bush refuses to comply with a law requiring direct reports from the Department of Homeland Security Do Not Stop at the White House to Congress? That Bush could have vetoed the law in question, but once again used a signing statement indicating he would obey the parts of the law he liked and disregard the rest of the law?  (emphasis in original)

Memeorandum has commentary.

A FEW RELATED BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS 

Oversight Committee to Hold Hearings on Fannie & Freddie

Colbert Report: We Must Give Unchecked Power to the President and His Appointees to Implement a Plan No One Understands----and NOW!

Judiciary Committee Sets Deadline for Subpoena Compliance   

Progress on those White House Subpoenas?   

Is Impeachment Coming?  Probe Begins re Falsified Documents Justifying Iraq War   

Conyers Comments on Mukasey's Unwillingness to Prosecute 

House Committee to Investigate Forged Evidence re: Iraq

Senior White House Aides Can Be Subpoenaed, Says Bush Appointed Federal Judge   

More on the Bush Administration's Policy of Political Hiring:  A Rove Connection?   

Democrats Call for Contempt Charges Against Rove   

Congress Considers The Culpability of the Bush Administration for Murder and War Crimes  (with Videos)   

 The Daily Show on the Congressional Hearings:  Let Us Relish This incredible Low Point in Democracy   

 Yet Another Attorney General Has Bush's Back (Part 2)   

 Former Attorney General John Ashcroft:  Waterboarding Isn't Torture   

 Pelosi Slams Bush: is She Gearing up to Support Impeachment?   

 Is the House Finally Ready to Consider Impeachment?

Captain Ed:  "An Executive Branch that Can Do Whatever It Pleases"

Comments

[Charles]

As I said in November/December 2000 in pleading with people to take the theft of Florida seriously, If a man will steal an election, what won't he do?