Every time King Bush claims executive privilege, he is stepping further away from our democratically based government. He has taken the privilege, an element of separation of powers doctrine as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, as a personal means of protecting himself and his cronies from legal recourse.
There are instances when executive privilege is appropriate. Such as in matters of national security. This latest use of executive privilege has more to do with protecting the identity of the person or persons who outed a CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson and nothing to do with national security. Exposing the identity of an intelligence agent of the United States, which jeopardized the lives of many other agents and their families, was a particularly heinous and despicable act of retaliation meant to hurt her husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had charged that senior officials had willfully distorted intelligence about Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium in Africa to bolster the case for going to war. Given all that is known of the character of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, this is exactly the type of childish and vengeful action that these individuals would stoop to.
The use of executive privilege, in this situation is a clear abuse of power. This situation does not meet the criteria for the use of privilege as laid out by Chief Justice Warren Burger when he opined that executive privilege would most effectively apply when the oversight of the executive would impair that branch's national security concerns. The national security concerns that were jeopardized occurred when someone callously identified Ms. Wilson as a CIA agent. This action itself should bring that person out from under executive privilege and into the judicial system for prosecution for treason. However, given the decidedly conservative slant of this Supreme Court, the point is likely moot.
Precedent has already been set for overturning executive privilege. When President Clinton exercised a form of negotiated executive privilege he agreed to testify before the grand jury called by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr only after negotiating the terms under which he would appear. Declaring that "absolutely no one is above the law," Starr said such a privilege "must give way" and evidence "must be turned over" to prosecutors if it is relevant to an investigation. But, for some odd reason, Clinton being democrat and Bush being republican seems to make a difference in how rules are applied or ignored.
Another abuse of executive power concerned protecting Karl Rove from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a probe over fired federal prosecutors. Clearly not a matter of national security.
Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe’s bastardization of democracy in his country allowed him to force opponents out of the election process and guaranteed his continued reign by threatening every individual to vote for him. He calls this democracy. Given King Bush’s proclivity to constitutional abuse and his history of twisting executive privilege for his own benefit, is it a stretch of the imagination that some future American president could conceivably do the same thing? But, we in America are much more sophisticated, less crude, in our manipulation of laws. Here, we have an entire branch of government to pull off these crimes. We have the judicial branch that backs him up at every turn, we have the legislative branch that cowers every time he demands privilege, we have a right wing conservative main stream media that favorably reports his actions leaving the unorganized alternative press and bloggers to voice the people’s decent. Is this situation really that far from Zimbabwe?
This president has done more to remind us of the reason why our forefathers designed and founded this form of government. I refer to the constitution and bill of rights, the rules of law and the moral/ethical standards upon which they are designed. We pray these conventions are strong enough to fight off dictatorship and the inherent evils of fascism. We reassert our faith in our democracy at election time. The strength of our conviction to these standards have been tested from outside forces trying to bring us to our knees. But it is the evil within our government that is doing the most damage.
A president has to hold these ideas within his/her heart in order for them to survive. It takes every politician within our system to believe in the righteousness of this system for it to have the strength to thrive. This congress and this president have lost the spirit of what the architects of our democracy had labored to define.
The president cannot undermine the laws of this land without the collusion of the judiciary and the legislature. They are all three held liable for his doing so.
Isn’t there anyone with enough power to stop this mockery, this injustice? Congress won’t do it, they have become complacent in their comfortable positions. They do not want to jeopardize their future by “stepping out of line”. Dennis Kucinich is one of the very few with the backbone to say publicly what is on the minds of so many people. Impeach Bush.
Read the comments of any blog and/or website where people voice their dissent over how this president is running this country and you will see that people are fed up with King Bush and his gang. We are powerless to do nothing more than use words to express our anger and disappointment. Our representatives pay no attention to us unless they are up for election and even then their promises amount to nothing more than lip service.
America has come around full circle to pre-revolution days of the 1700’s. We are complaining about lack of representation. There is retaliation for criticism of government methods (see also Valerie Plame Wilson, the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, etc). We complain about protection of Bush cronies from prosecution. We complain of Bush appointments of unqualified cronies to high level positions (Attorney General, Supreme Court) and we are justified in these complaints.
It will take a revolution to set this country back on the right course of government for the people. It has been designed so that every four years we Americans are given the opportunity to change our leadership and yet more and more often we are presented with individuals that only perpetuate a unified shadow government’s idea of how this nation should be governed. Behind closed doors and through the use of lobbyists, the rich and powerful under the framework of legal corporations have sloughed off the U.S. Constitution and the law in order that these individuals profit the most.
We, the citizens, don’t hold mass meetings to determine the daily running of this nation. We allow others to do it all for us without involving ourselves in the mechanics. We don’t keep ourselves informed enough concerning the inner workings of this so-called democracy. We have given up that ability. We have made it easy for the behind-the-scenes running of this nation. And then when we see the abuse that Bush has brought to the presidential office we can do nothing more than complain.
George W Bush has given us a present. He and his power abusers have shown us where the weaknesses are in this system. And it is us. It is up to us to demand better of our elected officials.
Do we want a dictator, a person or group of persons who has the ultimate power to decide what is best for our citizenry, even if it means he will break laws and issue executive privilege to protect himself and his cronies? When the question is laid out like this it presents an ugly reality. Because this is what we have. This is what our apathy in the political workings of this system has amounted to.
Politics does not hold the fascination of reality shows or sporting events or who is screwing who in Hollywood, but it is something that affects every facet of our lives, and so deeply that we cannot simply continue to ignore it. Only those people who do find politics interesting enough to run for political office learn the truth of how easy it is to control the masses. They are the ones who decide our future.
We now, at this time in our history, have the greatest number of free sources of information to keep us abreast of what our leaders are doing despite what main stream media tells us and we still bury our heads in the sand and only react to anything that threatens to take money directly out of our pockets. The political machine has gotten so good at what it does that they can extract untold billions of dollars out of taxpayers pockets, finance politicians pet projects, allow corporations to destroy the environment, give away millions in subsidies to those same corporations, arbitrarily raise product prices and blame it on some other country, and not even fear taxpayers disapproval.
I love this country and the principles upon which it was built. This is why it deeply saddens me to see it ruined by my fellow Americans who refuse to do anything other than to pop the top on a cold one and plant themselves in front of their television immersing themselves into mindless reality game shows.
We need to stand up and take responsibility for what we have allowed into the oval office. Let’s make certain that we only elect those people who truly represent us. Let’s get involved so we have less chance of being surprised by fools like King Bush.
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