BLOG | Posted 07/11/2007 @ 11:49pm
Bush's Royal Edict: Don't Cooperate With Congress
President Bush has treated Congress with contempt for more than six years.
But the most regal executive to reign over the United States since King George III was deposed has never displayed that contempt so aggressively as he did Wednesday.
On the eve of former White House counsel Harriet Miers' scheduled testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, she was ordered by the president to defy the subpoena she had been issued by the committee.
The president's lawyers claimed that Miers has "absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony" in regard to the investigation of the administration's politicization of federal investigations and prosecutions.
According to current White House counsel Fred Fielding, Miers does not need to cooperate with congressional inquiries into "matters occurring while she was a senior adviser to the president."
That was enough for the former counsel's lawyer, George T. Manning, to notify Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Mich., that Miers would refuse to appear at Thursday's session to answer questions about the role played by the White House in forcing the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys.
Unlike former White House political director Sara Taylor, who answered a subpoena to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday but refused to answer most questions, Miers will not offer even a bare minimum of respect for the system of checks and balances that gives Congress the authority to investigate wrongdoing in the White House. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=213146 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
