In foreign policy, the CheneyBush Administration is criticized widely abroad for acting like an arrogant bully, threatening and often meting out rough treatment to get what it wants. Its violent behavior in Iraq is a good case in point, leading to tens of thousands of U.S. dead and wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed.
But it's not just in foreign matters that such outrageous, in-your-face behavior obtains. And the best example of this can be found in two separate, but interrelated, cases that came into view this past week.
The one with the most political and constitutional significance involves Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- and by extension the POTUS Himself -- asserting for the first time in public, through their attorneys, that they are immune from prosecution because they are above the law.
Libby recently was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame criminal case. He and Cheney and Rove are being civily sued by Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame for their having outed her as a covert CIA agent and thus endangering her (and her contacts) and ruining her career. The response by the defense legal team to the judge hearing the case, as reported by the Washington Post: ( click here )
"The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate 'policy dispute.' Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates wanted to make sure he heard them claim what he thought he heard them claim, so he explicitly inquired: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?
"That's true, Your Honor...," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division.
Richard Nixon had asserted much the same claim of absolute authority about his actions in the Watergate scandal, that when the President does something, it's ipso facto not illegal, and can't be illegal, since he's the President. ( http://www.landmarkcases.org/nixon/nixonview.html ) The U.S. Supreme Court at that time made clear that nobody, not the President and not his associates and aides, are outside the reach of the law. In addition, a conservative-led federal appeals court years later ruled that President Bill Clinton could be civily sued by Paula Jones while he was in office.
But in 2007, there's a new, more "conservative" Supreme Court, which may explain why the CheneyBushRove forces are pushing the issue of absolute presidential authority to the point of a Constitutional Crisis. They figure with Roberts and Alito on the court, they should be able to get a 5-4 decision granting the "commander-in-chief" carte blanche in "wartime."
What war, you ask? Why the Bush-proclaimed permanent "Global War on Terror," that's what war. Since that war is one being waged against a tactic, it'll never end and Bush is thus free to do whatever he wishes to do for the duration of his term.
THE ASHCROFT HOSPITAL SCENE
The scene shifts to another location on a separate matter, but with the same arrogant, intimidating approach so prevalent in the Bush White House for the past six years.
The public learned in gripping testimony last week by James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General, that in 2004 he was informed that Attorney General Ashcroft's wife -- who was by her husband's bedside in the ICU after his emergency gall-bladder surgery -- had agitatedly called the DOJ for help. She'd been alerted (Comey said he believes the call came from Bush) that two White House officials -- then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-chief-of-staff Andrew Card -- were on their way to the hospital that minute to see the Attorney General on an important matter. Because her medicated husband was still groggy and disoriented, she had restricted any calls and visitors, but that didn't seem to matter to the White House.
With sirens blaring and lights flashing, Comey and his security detail made it to George Washington Hospital and raced up the stairs. Their aim was to get to the ICU room before Gonzales and Card arrived to get Ashcroft to sign a document re-authorizing a domestic-spying operation that the DOJ had adjudged to be unconstitutional.
Ashcroft and Comey had discussed this domestic-spying program before the A.G. went into the hospital, and both had decided, as did the DOJ's legal team, that they would not, and in all conscience could not, sign the required document attesting to the program's legality. Comey, as Ashcroft's deputy, was named Acting Attorney General while the A.G. was in the hospital, and the White House had been so informed.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
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