Redstate

this, of course, assuming the bonny new minimum wage

By haystack Posted in Congress — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

With the new majority raising the bar on ethics, new directions for America, and faith in Government, we should all be grateful for the lengths to which they will go to bastardize the Constitution and destroy the intended functions of the Executive branch.

I happen to have come across THIS little beauty from the Tony Snow press briefing of 25 July. Consider what the Dims are doing with YOUR money over this non-scandal, solely for the purpose of keeping bad Bush press in the fore so you won't notice that they CONTINUE to accomplish a whole lotta NOTHING in their sacred chambers:

Executive Branch Investigations or Inquiries: 300 PLUS
Requests for Documents, Interviews, or Testimony: 400 PLUS
Officials who have testified: 550 PLUS
Oversight Hearings held: 600 PLUS
Hours spent responding to oversight requests: 87,000 PLUS
Pages made available to Congress for oversight: 430,000 PLUS

Guess how many appropriations bills Congress has passed after 113 days of Senate sessions and 103 days of House sessions?

ZERO

More below the stinking fold...

Of course the dollar figure is much higher. The paper, the salaries of those who manage...the staff who coordinates...the bottom feeders in Congress and their staffs who then must receive and review and prop up the fools themselves that take their seats in front of the microphones...it's thoroughly disgusting.

To begin with, Congress has no business going to such lengths over this. As with their Liberal God, the slickster, a President can fire just whoever the hell he chooses. Whether Gonzales needs to go isn't even the point anymore.

Executive privilege has a Constitutional basis, and serves BOTH parties well. Remember Willy's dallying? Ah, well...I digress.

What, exactly, HAS the President done to accommodate Congress? From Snow:

[T]his White House, on a number of occasions, has reached out to the House Judiciary Committee and offered accommodations: First, we offered anybody at the Department of Justice who was of interest to testify under oath and on Capitol Hill, which many did. We supplied 8,500 pages of documents, including some between the Justice Department and the White House. The Attorney General, himself, and senior members of his team also went up to testify on Capitol Hill.

In addition, we offered further that we would make available any persons of interest at the White House for full interviews by members of the committees -- they'd be able to ask whatever questions they wanted to do. In each and every one of these cases, the efforts of the White House were rebuffed.

Why, I ask myself, isn't this good enough? Why can we not move on ahead now, and deal with the needs of the American people instead of the narcissists on the Hill? Simple. They have NOTHING else to offer us. Again, Snow:

[W]e have hundreds of hearings that have produced bupkis. And what has happened is that there is generated this idea of, let's go on a fishing expedition and let's haul somebody up, and let's make insinuations without having firm proof. And what that does is it creates a toxic atmosphere.

Let me mention to you that a system of checks and balances also has checks. And part of the checks are that branches of government may not raid the powers or the principles and authorities of other branches of government. They need to remain separate and equal. What we're talking about here is an attempt to take the principle of confidentiality and strip it away from the executive branch while maintaining it for the legislative and the judicial branches. That hardly qualifies as checks and balances.

Bupkis, indeed. But, in perhaps the best summary statement, he continues:

[Y]ou have laws that deny anybody the right to lie before Congress; that applies to anybody who testifies before them. There is, in fact, a guarantee that people go up and testify truthfully.

What we have been trying to avoid appears to be the one thing that is most devoutly sought by some on Capitol Hill, which is an entertainment event, rather than a calm, deliberative and respectful attempt to take a look at things that may be of concern to members of Congress.

I thought the Liberals won in '06 because their peeps devoutly believed the country was in trouble, and needed new and better Government. Seems to me all they got for their troubles was a really BAD re-run of an old sitcom which, personally, I never found funny the first time around. THEY may find this entertaining...

I am NOT entertained.

I'll give Tony the last word here. Pay close attention to who REALLY cares about the tone in Washington, and who just wants to "play" the new tone game:

[T]he legislative branch is making characterizations of documents it has not seen. On the other hand, it has had plenty of opportunities to review documents. And as you know, there have been a number of cases where people are called up to the Hill, and people say, wow, this is going to be the big one. And it turns out, nothing. They get a new tranche of documents -- man, I bet I'm going to see all sorts of names in here, and it turns out to be a bunch of nothing.

So what you're saying is that on the basis of suspicion, rather than fact, some people think that there may be smoking guns in items that in fact pass for executive privilege. I will tell you that this White House looks very carefully at documents to try to figure out which ones properly qualify as being covered by executive privilege. It is something that we take seriously, because we understand that the way in which these things are handled -- and not just for us, but subsequent White Houses -- you have to preserve the privilege, you have to preserve it in a credible way.

Back to what you said originally -- there is no fact that they would not have access to, and furthermore, there is no situation under which somebody testifying before members of Congress would not be compelled to tell the truth. If there was no transcript, they could ask the same question 48 times; they could tell them to slow down and write it on the wall in crayon if they so decided. But the fact is that you would have the opportunity to get a full hearing of what anybody said; you could vet it, you could cross-reference it against other statements. You could do a completely full investigation. And what's being deprived is a little bit of political theater.

What we've been trying to do is to create a little air of dignity in this town, where at the very beginning of this Congress there was a lot of talk about getting work done, setting a new tone. And instead what have we gotten? We have got insults, insinuations, investigations and inquisitions.