"Impeach Mukasey -- or for God's sake, at least throw the punch
As I recall from my days of youthful delinquencies, when you're eyeball to eyeball with a nasty neighborhood troll, and you know beyond any reasonable doubt that he's about to rudely inflict some dominance, the most judicious thing you can do is to coldcock the s.o.b., then stand over his bleeding proboscis and crumpled frame and let him know that that was just a warning. In short, you must first get the menacing thug's attention. And reason won't work. Not as a first option.
I offer this experiential advice to the various chairs and ranking members of Congressional oversight committees who are now eyeball to eyeball with the newest Bushie troll on the block, Attorney General Michael Mukasey. You had best coldcock him now, while you have the chance. And that means moving to impeach his sexagenarian ass -- to get his attention, if nothing else.
It didn't take Mr. Mukasey long to establish that he's right out of the Gonzales mold of executive power über alles. Surely this does not come as a surprise. After all, during his confirmation hearings he sat and cagily testified to his jurisprudential crush on presidential Iron Men, suggesting that the courts and Congress were but mere Constitutional appendages and afterthoughts when it comes to interpreting the law. They're cute, but what really gets his blood flowing where it counts is that big lug of an insensitive brute in the Oval Office.
Gentlemen, you can't reason with thinking like that. Not as a first option, anyway. So when Mr. Mukasey writes you boys slimy letters dripping with obstruction of justice -- letters declaring that his "department would not comply with Congressional requests for information [on the CIA videotape-destruction scandal]" -- then you had better come out swinging. Hard.
When he writes insultingly to the Senate Judiciary Committee that his virtuous goal is to "resist political pressure," therefore he "will not at this time provide further information," then you had better throw your best punch. Fast.
And when, through henchmen, he writes to House Intelligence Committee leaders that their prying poses "significant risks" to his own investigation -- meaning the House might uncover something of anti-administration value in a timely manner -- then you had better deck him. Flat.
Even Republican ranking members aren't happy about Gonzales' Second Coming. "We," penned Republican Peter Hoekstra, for example, along with House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes -- "are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation." They added, somewhat pathetically, that "parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work."
Actually, there is. Yet the insidious "basis" upon which the attorney general is stiffing them is one that, at long last, should be brutally confronted.
The exercise of contemporary executive-privilege assertions began innocently and nobly enough. Its origins lie in the 1950s, when that slimeball of a senator Joseph McCarthy was snooping anywhere and everywhere, witchhunting for slippery commies. He chewed up executive-branch personnel for kicks, abusing the hell out of them before his committee and demanding their papers on whims. President Eisenhower finally declared that enough was enough. He instructed his attorney general to find some legal justification -- however creative -- to put a stop to it. His a.g. did, and to a stop, it came -- along with McCarthy's career.
But, like all presidential powers left unfettered, the one of executive privilege has grown monstrously over the decades. It is now used, quite simply and blatantly, to obstruct justice -- to crush even incipient Congressional efforts in its proper Constitutional role of investigation and oversight. And Republicans under the Bush administration are getting as worried about it as Democrats. They smell a Democratic president in a year, and envision the same presidential tactics used against -- at some possible point -- a Republican-led Congress.
Hence rolling back the privilege is, for now, of keen bipartisan interest. But given that we're talking the abominably thuggish Bush administration, Congress would have to coldcock it. A bill to impeach the attorney general for obstruction of justice would be a nice touch -- one that could engender bipartisan support, and one that just might get the administration's attention.
Now, would Democrats commit such an intelligent act of self-defense -- even given a push from the notably meekless across the aisle? Ah, there's the rub."
