The non-scandal scandal goes on… and on. Is there any real reason for John Conyers to be investigating a crime that isn’t a crime? No. Oh yeah, there is one: being in office while Republican.
Let’s break this down for those who may not be following this very closely. A new scandal has erupted based on a partisan congressional investigation of a previous ‘scandal’ about a crime that isn’t a crime that is being investigated as if everything about it is a crime and/or a scandal of epic proportions. (We all knew that Democrats would somehow find a way to link Karl Rove into their smear machine eventually.)
The real scandal is how Democrats and their willing accomplices in the media get away with lying so much and so often.
Absolutely no crime has been committed. Bush can call up the Justice department and fire any one (or a dozen, or all 93) U.S. attorneys– just because it’s Tuesday –it’s not a crime. So what is John Conyers investigating?
In the end, political consideration in the appointment of federal prosecutors is not only common, it’s practically a Washington tradition. ~time.com
So to put it another way, let’s say you [insert any legal action here], about which John Conyers has suspicions and pretends to have a great deal of disgust about. He proceeds to fire up a congressional investigation. Subpoening all your phone records, all your mail, all your email, saying that he knows that there is evidence somewhere of something nefarious, “we just have to find it.”
Basically, this is precisely the kind of political sleaziness that Democrats claim they are against. But in reality they revel in it.
The uproar over the removals has grown amid allegations that some Republican lawmakers improperly contacted prosecutors about investigations and repeated misstatements by Gonzales and other Bush administration officials about the scope and nature of the dismissals. Democrats have also seized on presidential senior adviser Karl Rove’s connection to some of the firings, and on revelations last week that the White House and the Republican National Committee have lost e-mails that are supposed to be preserved under record-keeping laws. ~washingtonpost.com
So what is congress investigating exactly?
Thousands of pages of documents released by Justice have yet to explain the rationale for Iglesias’s firing. In his testimony last month, Sampson could not recall why Iglesias was put on the list, which did not happen until Nov. 7, less than two weeks after Domenici’s call to Iglesias. ~washingtonpost.com
And? Even if Bush called up Gonzales personally and told him to fire these prosecutors, it is perfectly within his perogative, just as it was within Bill Clinton’s perogative to fire ALL 93 U.S. attorneys without any explanation or rationale for their firing.
Except that Democrats claim that this is entirely different. This was an overtly ‘political act’ in contrast to firing all 93 U.S. Attorneys.
Hmm… then firing all 93 prosecutors because of their political affiliation is… not political?
She conceded that should she win the presidency in 2008, she likely would replace all of the U.S. attorneys appointed by President Bush. She said that’s merely following traditions in which presidents appoint prosecutors of their own party.
Clinton argued that the Bush administration’s firing of the eight federal prosecutors has caused an uproar because it is seen as a conservative push to shift the balance of power in favor of the executive branch.
Democrats have accused the Justice Department and the White House of purging the prosecutors for political reasons. The Bush administration maintains the firings were not improper because U.S. attorneys are political appointees. ~msnbc.msn.com
I must be missing something here. How is that different again?
If Bush can fire all U.S. Attorneys he can fire eight of them if he wants to.
Lessons from the Clintons
In short, the Bush White House should tell Conyers and his committee that his partisan witchhunt and fishing expedition will recieve no more cooperation from the Executive Branch. Period.
Push back. (Think Ken Starr.)
The Bush administration has a real problem dealing with the Democrat smear machine. They should take a page from the Clinton Administration and up the ante. Unfortunately, Bush seems to think that because he did nothing wrong that there’s no need to mount a real defense. How wrong he is.
Democrats talk a great deal about due process and how the patriot act is unconstitutional, and so on, but they don’t seem to believe it applies to them.
John Conyers believes that he should be able to subpeona anything and everything he wants despite not having any proof of a crime or reason to investigate.
“Many of us have been saying that the potential for abuse of the Patriot Act’s National Security Letter authority is almost without limit. This report demonstrates how that potential has now become a reality,” the Judiciary chairman said. “The Justice Department’s total lack of internal control and cavalier attitude toward the few legal restrictions that exist in the Act have possibly resulted in the illegal seizure of American citizens’ private information.” ~rawstory.com
If the, “potential for abuse is unlimited,” for the Patriot Act, then what kind of standards are they using to ‘investigate’ the White House? Is there any limit on Conyers?
There is. It’s called public opinion. But again, the Bush White House doesn’t seem to care about public opinion. I wish they did.