| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
29 May 2007 10:19:02 AM |
| Object: |
Republicans are deaf, dumb and blind to GOP crime. |
From The Indianapolis Star, 5/29/07:
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/OPINION/705290326/-1/LOCAL17
Republicans see no evil
By Eugene Robinson
Still think the U.S. attorneys scandal is just partisan froth whipped
up by disingenuous Democrats?
Still think Alberto Gonzales is in any way, shape or form qualified to
serve as attorney general?
Still think the name Monica brings to mind a stain (so to speak) on
the Democratic Party but suggests nothing about Republican malfeasance
and hubris?
Then you must be a Republican member of the House of Representatives.
Everyone else who was listening last Wednesday had to be flabbergasted
as Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee lobbed softball
after softball at witness Monica Goodling.
This was after Goodling had already fessed up to applying a political
litmus test for career Justice employees.
I repeat: career employees, not political appointees.
Only loyal Republicans should bother to apply.
The deaf and blind Republicans on the committee apparently missed that
part of her opening statement.
They also missed the part when she accused Gonzales' former deputy,
Paul McNulty, of telling untruths to Congress -- and, in the process,
hanging Goodling out to dry.
Those dogged GOP interrogators did, however, manage to elicit from
Goodling the startling disclosure that she believes she is a good
person, and also the revelation that while she might have broken a few
laws, she didn't set out to do anything illegal.
All she did, in the influential Justice position that was inexplicably
given her, was what Alberto Gonzales and George W. Bush wanted her to
do -- place loyalty to the president above all else in decisions on
hiring and firing.
Doesn't every White House try to impose its priorities on the career
federal bureaucracy?
Yes, but not every White House has the Bush crowd's contempt for the
very idea of professional government.
To them, it's just one vast bowl of alphabet soup.
What difference does it make if an unqualified hack is put in charge
of something called FEMA?
The Justice Department is special, though, because it can be such a
powerful tool for rewarding friends and punishing enemies.
Decisions about which alleged crimes and alleged criminals should be
prosecuted are among the most sensitive any government can make.
Now that a Democratically controlled Congress is back in the business
of oversight, we have learned that Bush's first attorney general, John
Ashcroft, could be prickly in his dealings with the White House.
Sometimes when the White House pushed, he pushed back.
Ashcroft felt loyal not just to Bush but also to the Constitution and
basic principles of justice.
Apparently, no such conflict perturbs the dreams of Ashcroft's hapless
successor.
Did all this fly over the heads of the Republicans on the Judiciary
Committee?
Of course not.
But House Republicans evidently have made the cynical political
calculation that to acknowledge reality would be to grant the
Democrats some sort of victory.
This, apparently, must be avoided at all costs.
So Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., asked Goodling:
Why all the fuss about the eight U.S. attorneys whose dismissals
sparked this entire probe?
His probing follow-up:
"Isn't this an exercise of legitimate executive power which
practically every president up to including the current one exercises
all the time with officials within the executive branch subject to his
appointment?"
Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., was equally incisive in his questioning of
Goodling:
"Analogously, doesn't a president have a right when he appoints an
attorney general to expect him and the people in the Justice
Department including civil servants to use the emphases that the
president wants -- to make the decisions in terms of priorities that
the president wants? And isn't that an appropriate thing, and is that
the kind of thing that you did while you were in the department?"
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., ventured that the whole investigation "seems
to be about the attempted criminalization of things that are vital to
our constitutional system of government, namely the taking into
consideration of politics in the appointment of political officials
within the government. . . . Is there anything illegal about the
president being served at his pleasure by the people he believes would
be best?"
The service of justice went unmentioned.
How long will congressional Republicans close their eyes, cover their
ears and try to pretend that it's the Democrats who are being
shamelessly partisan?
_________________________________________________
Typical Republican criminality.
Harry
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
