Archive for the 'oversight' Category

The Mission Statement of the Department of Justice is:

To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

Who knew?  And having spent the past six years protecting us from not being tortured, the Fourth Amendment, access to information, and breasts, the Justice Department under George Bush is now protecting us from Congressional oversight:

The newly elected Democratic leaders in Congress are gearing up for a broad array of oversight hearings and investigations of the Bush administration. However, they are likely to butt heads with a Justice Department intent on thwarting their efforts...

The Justice Department, which serves as legal counsel in court proceedings for other departments, has repeatedly gone beyond merely protecting its own actions from scrutiny. Even when Congress was in Republican hands, Justice Department officials advised other government departments on how to stonewall congressional review. These efforts now appear to be ramping up.

The Justice Department Legal Counsel's office recently held meetings with lawyers of other departments to discuss strategy for responding to congressional requests for documents and hearing appearances.

Whatever happened to "fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here"?  

Senator Rockefeller, now back in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is committed to taking over where former GOP Chair Roberts, well, didn't do anything.

In a pair of hearings opening today, the Committee will be actually be conducting oversight to determine if the intelligence overhaul law passed in 2004 is actually working--whether it gives the director of national intelligence the ability to integrate the spy community. Oversight. Go figure.

That includes completing an investigation into the administration's Iraq War justifications:

In an interview, Rockefeller said that finishing it is "not going to be particularly pleasant." But, he said, he will make sure that the investigation, known as Phase II, is completed.

This is the investigation that caused Harry Reid's famous 2005 shutdown of the Senate--a flashpoint of rancor between the parties in the Senate. But that's not the only issue on Rockefeller's calendar.

Rockefeller said he also plans aggressive oversight of President Bush’s detention of enemy combatants, his domestic surveillance programs and other subjects, adding that he is prepared to use his subpoena power to get the documents he needs from the administration....

"If it comes to that, yes, I will," he said. "I hope it doesn’t. But every time the president says, ‘Come counsel with me, let me hear your views about the war’ — which I’ve done — then says, ‘I’m going to do exactly what I want regardless of what the Congress says’. . . that doesn’t exactly fill me with the warmth of optimism."

Let the subpoenas begin. Rockefeller's performance as ranking member on the committee doesn't fill me with the warmth of optimism that he'll hang tough on these issues as Chairman. The CQ interview linked here also focuses on Rockefeller and ranking member Bond's efforts at bipartisanship. I'm all for bipartisanship when it leads to the committee actually doing it's job. In this environment, given the gravity and the scope of the activities and issues that have to be investigated, aggressive oversight should take priority over keeping the Republican members on board.

Or, "Why Congressional investigations ought to start with NSA spying."

Let's start with a blast from the past:

SPECTER: Now when you had the first line of review, Mr. Attorney General, by OPR, why wasn't OPR given clearance as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?

GONZALES: Mr. Chairman, you and I had lunch several weeks ago, and we had a discussion about this. And during this lunch, I did inform you that the terrorist surveillance program is a highly-classified program. It's a very important program for the national security of this country -

SPECTER: Highly-classified, very important, many other lawyers in the Justice Department had clearance. Why not OPR?

GONZALES: And the President of the United States ultimately makes decisions about who ultimately is given access -

SPECTER: Did the President make the decision not to clear OPR?

GONZALES: As with all decisions that are non-operational in terms of who has access to the program, the President of the United States makes the decision because this is such an important program -

The upshot: George W. Bush personally blocked an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) into the NSA spying program.

But let me remind you, this was not just any investigation. Remember what our friend Murray Waas told us at the time? It was that the investigation wasn't a probe into the legality of the program, but rather:

An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials -- including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft -- acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program....

It wasn't that Bush blocked an investigation directly into the program's propriety. It was that he blocked an investigation into whether or not the Justice Deparment acted properly in advising him that it was legal.

Not long ago, fellow kossack Major Danby offered a very well-received diary entitled "The Defense in the Impeachment of George W. Bush," "The Defense in the Impeachment of George W. Bush," in which he offered, among many other hurdles, this important caution:

Most importantly, the President was relying on the advice of competent counsel, the leaders of which were approved by Congress, in all of these matters. [...] Even if the President's actions were wrong here, he was acting on legal advice.  To find an impeachable offense here, you have to include that not only was the advice he was given about FISA, the AUMF, and the unitary executive wrong, but that it was so obviously wrong that the President was unreasonable to accept it.

And in general, that's true. Thankfully for the "case," (though tragically, for the country), we're dealing with a specific president, who has taken specific action which might call the applicability of this general principle into serious question.

Consider the nature of the claim Bush would be making here: that his reliance on the advice he got was entirely reasonable under the circumstances.

Then ask this: is his personal intervention to block an investigation into the propriety of the process that yielded that advice the action of a person who thinks relying on that advice was inherently reasonable?

The OPR's blocked investigation into the decision-making process behind the NSA spying program is knowledge we happen to have lucked into. But once it becomes open to question whether the president has been getting his "legal" advice properly and professionally in one key issue area, it becomes an open question in other areas, too. Was the advice the president got on detainee treatment equally flawed? Is the president equally concerned that the process by which that "legal" advice was generated remain secret? If so, why?

The same questions apply to a whole host of issues the 110th Congress intends to investigate, so the sooner we call the president's most likely defense into question, the deeper we'll be able to probe in all areas of inquiry.

I bring this up today because I note the renomination of Steven Bradbury, a Bush recess appointment now serving as Acting Assistant Attorney General, heading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Bradbury's first nomination to the post was blocked by Senators Kennedy, Feingold and Durbin, in protest of the blocking of the very investigation I'm talking about. Surely those Senators (and more) will have pertinent questions for Mr. Bradbury on the subject, should they decide to move forward with his nomination.

Via Think Progress, check out the video of Pelosi's appearance on Face the Nation this morning.

SCHIEFFER: So, you’ve told him what you don’t want to do, and that is to expand the size of the force in Iraq even on a short-term basis. But what if he decides to do that? What will be your action then?

PELOSI: If the president chooses to escalate the war, in his budget request we want to see a distinction between what is there to support the troops who are there now. The American people and the Congress support those troops. We will not abandon them.

But if the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new for him because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions. And we’ve gone into this situation, which is a war without end, which the American people have rejected.

We live in interesting times.

Will it be Bush vs. the Constitution and the rest of America?

Stay tuned.

Update by kos: Kudos to reporter Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers for ditching administration-approved language and calling it what it is:

WASHINGTON - As the applause of their first days in power fades, Democrats face the daunting reality that their reign probably will be judged not on easy tasks such as raising the minimum wage, but on how they handle the Iraq war, an issue that divides their own party and defies easy solution.

Democratic leaders oppose President Bush's expected escalation of the war this week. They urge instead a U.S. troop withdrawal starting in four to six months. And they will conduct oversight hearings on Iraq in Congress, starting Wednesday in the Senate and Jan. 17 in the House of Representatives.

As mcjoan pointed out last night, as the first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi – and the American voting public – has come a long way, fellow babies.

Perhaps it’s time for the press corps to catch up.

From the Washington Post this morning:

Catfight aftermath: Rep. Jane Harman is still quite irked that House Speaker-designee Nancy Pelosi nixed her for chairman of the House intelligence committee – and she's not exactly being stoic about it.

"Catfight?" "Quite irked?" "Not exactly being stoic?"

Arrrgh. This kind of language reduces the serious tactical political differences between the two reps to the level of a couple of women who purchased the same dress slapping each other silly in a back room over who gets to wear it to the swearing-in.

Hmmmm ... remind me again: What was Pelosi’s objection to Harman anyway? Oh, yeah (insert head slap here), it was this:

Pelosi and other liberal Democrats believed that Harman, a moderate, failed to challenge the administration's alleged abuses of intelligence.

The matter of holding the president accountable for his actions is one of the foremost – if not the foremost – issues facing the 110th Congress. To frame the Pelosi/Harman dispute as a "catfight" trivializes both the leaders involved and the underlying importance of Congress’ duty to challenge the president. See, it’s a two-fer: Belittle the players, belittle the issue.

Try this thought experiment: The next time Harry Reid puts the power squeeze on a male colleague, will it be characterized as a "catfight?" Will the squeezed senator be described as "quite irked" or "not exactly being stoic" if he fights back? I’m guessing ... um ... no.

And before everyone goes all "male chauvinist pigs!" on the Washington Post, take a deep breath and click through to the link. The columnist is a woman.

We expected as much from Fox, of course, and Fox delivered. Newshounds has a terrific blow-by-blow analysis of two hours of catty, petty Pelosi coverage, complete with one segment sporting a "Congress Catfight" banner.

Lest anyone worry that our new leadership is all about hissing and scratching in the back alleys over petty scraps of Constitutional import, BarbinMD sent me the following link this morning to reassure us that the press hasn’t completely overlooked the benefits of having a woman in power. Barb wondered if the Nevada newspapers were running similar articles about the new Senate majority leader. Really, people. You must click on the link to get the full ... how shall I say this? ... suitability of this story for this historic present moment.

Then let out a yowl or two.