Redstate

...that the Democrats run on a program of cleaner government and less corruption, you will not be able to say that no-one ever told you that they lied.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

Believe that the democrats were using that theme for anything other than taking power?

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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

They just hoped that they wouldn't be as big of sleazebags.

After all, it does take time to build corrupt relationships with lobbyists.

they ignored the K Street cash cows?
Tell me another fable, you're *really* so good at it.

I think they were corrupt sleazebags who do anything to stay in power until their thirst for power consumed them.

Any other questions?

you've been elected or appointed to "build ... relationships" with lobbyists; they go looking for you. It is up to you whether that relationship is corrupt. If you hold power in government, you WILL be in contact with lobbyists and players some of whom are corrupt and almost all of whom are corrupting.

Unfortunately, Republicans are pretty hamfisted about their corruption; if Cunningham had been a Democrat, he'd have set himself up a bunch of nice non-profits with very hard to figure out interlocking managements and directors and really good accountants then just sat there and quietly pitched money to them to do this or that or study something or another. Then one day you'd just look around and he'd just be another millionaire Democrat congressman and nobody would think to ask just how he got to be so rich. Instead, he just stupidly took the bribes, too dumb to understand that the very lobbyists that were bribing him would be the first to rat him off if somebody made them a better offer.

In Vino Veritas

With his extensive experience in this area, Jack M.(or one of his front companies)could write the tech manual.

"Is the lesson here that since Democrats are sleazebags, its ok for Republicans?"

That's the theme in these parts

You wouldn't know a sleazebag if it crawled up your pants and bit you on your nether parts.

We don't defend crooks. We defend the right of the executive branch to have confidential conversations about executive branch activities.

You defend leftist idiots who blatantly discuss blocking judicial appointments by the executive branch in order to fleece more money or votes out of some lobbyist. Hardly comparable.

Idiot.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

You shouldn't call people stupid. Even when they persist in not listening to site moderators.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

I can only try. Some people just push me past nice into Tbone territory.

Sorry. I'll go back to trying again.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

You have to admit I'm right! :)

I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.

"...and each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the
natural course of your only life;"
-Charles Buckowski

Let me ask you specifically about the e-mails Waxman wants from the RNC that are related to the meeting in which Lurita Doan from the GSA briefed 40 GSA staffers about how to help Republican candidates win the '06 elections.

Is it ok or not, in your opinion to hand over these politically-related emails related to an action that violates the Hatch Act? (The Hatch Act prohibits partisan campaign activities on federal property.).

Using your methodology, it would be ok, because these e-mails are not related to executive matters.

It was long ago and I wasn't far enough up the food chain for it to matter much, so I don't know the fed's Hatch Act and ethics rules very well, but I'm pretty familiar with their state law analogs.

At some level in the org structure, almost every decision and action will have political overtones or be directly political; that is why you distinguish non-appointee or merit system employees from appointees. Any appointee should know how to reward friends and punish enemies and to avoid feeding hands that bite the administration. Any appointee who's any good at it knows how to do it legally.

Using a GSA-like example; if I'm head of procurement for a new Republican administration, I'm going to find a cohort of providers who are either Democrats or have cozied up to the Democrats while they were in office. This takes the form of all sorts of subtle things in the way RFPs and other bidding documents are structured so that really doing business with the government becomes limited to those with the connections to make sure that the bid comes their way. If it is a construction project all you have to do is say there'll be a union project labor agreement to ensure that no non-union, usually Republican leaning, contractors need apply. Now I can be stupid and call my contract officers in and tell them I want the contracts to go to Republicans and I want every bidder's contibutions checked as a part of the award process, or I can call my contracting officers in and tell them I want a larger universe of potential bidders and I want all "unnecessary restrictions" on bidder qualifications removed, e.g., union shop, project labor agreement, resident preference, minority preference beyond that required by law, non-profit bidder only, a Democrat favorite, etc. As an appointee, I can assure you that I would know who those bidders were giving money to, but I wouldn't be asking my merit system employees to do anything illegal by expanding the bidder pool.

There are few bright lines in this; certainly using the government to directly aid a party or candidate is illegal, but beyond that, it is all shades of gray and it really just depends on who's asking, who the press is after, and who controls any reviewing body, e.g., legislature, IG, AG, board or commission.

I've watched Democrat governments run campaigns on government time and equipment and fly half the government around on what were nothing more than campaign trips. They get away with it because in the press' eyes, they're good people and nobody ever questions it. If the Rs want to do something about it, they have to find a way to bring criminal charges against them, a noisy, expensive, and time consuming process. Also, a lot of Rs are constrained by the foolish notion that if you don't do it to them, they won't do it to you. Be assured that they will do it to you and won't think twice about the inherent hypocrisy. The big advantage the Ds have here is that they were in power so long that they have legalized most of the ways they funnel money to their political constituencies. For example, they have what is nothing more than a shadow government of non-profits to which they can flip almost any government function and the money that goes with it and stand up and say they're contributing to government efficiency by "privatizing" the work. Of course, that non-profit provider knows very well who he's expect to pitch some money to, and he doesn't even have to be asked or told.

In Vino Veritas

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.

I have that phrase ("Bored now.") hardwired into my brain to the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with evil vampire Willow saying that, so now I'm stuck with the mental image of Moe Lane in the outfit that she was in in that episode.

If you've seen it you know exactly what I'm talking about.

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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

I haven't seen the outfit. I haven't seen Moe Lane.

But I can still picture it in my mind.

Harry Reid on Iraq: “I say we’ve lost. Let’s bring our boys home in, oh, say 18 months. In the meantime, no more funding for them.”

Congress doesn't have any more authority to demand confidential Executive branch documents than the Executive branch has the authority to demand transcripts of closed sessions of Congress.

It's called separation of powers.

---
Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

You introduced a whole different issue. The White House demand was related to Rove and Miers testifying. Not to handing over RNC emails.

I beleive Congress has the right to subpoena executive branch materials if there's a reasonable beleif that a crime has been committed (probable cause).

Clearly, congress now considers "governing while Republican" to be a crime.

was the RNC part of the Executive branch?

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain

An Inconvenient Gate.

How's this for an inconvenient gate?

Sorry, couldn't stop myself.
-
NARF

"Inconvenient X" is too...inconvenient, and it's not really about scandal, but something's got to crash the "gate". We've allowed Boomers to recycle that disposable since 1974. It should have died like "Kerfuffle".

I'll start at the end.

Had A. G. Gonzales & Co. simply said, "We fired the eight of them for political reasons," there would be no valid legal grounds for a subpoena of the records of Karl Rove's (and others') electronic communications with, or via, the RNC.

There are no legal grounds for any of the subpoenas issued to the White House (note, I did not say DoJ) in this case due to separation of powers. Congress does not have the right to internal deliberative documents from the Executive Branch as they relate to the communications between the White House and the various government departments. Yet, subpoenas were issued anyway. The Democrats were intent on blowing this up as part of their "accountability" tour. They would've done so even more if the AG claimed political reasons for the dismissals.

When evidence came to light due to congressional investigation and media reports that DOJ officials, including Gonzales, may not have in fact told the truth, under oath, about the circumstances of the USA terminations, about the extent to which political considerations played a role in the firings, the RNC e-mail, ever so needlessly and unfortunately, became fair game.

Gonzales and co. are not accused of misleading the committee about the extent to which political considerations played a role in the firings. They are accused of being misleading about the extent to which the AG was involved in the process. Specifically, Democrats are comparing his public statements on record at the committee to his public statements to the press. So far, the only actual evidence available shows that the AG attended exactly one meeting at which the matter was discussed, and that took place after the plan was submitted to the WH for approval. Hardly a substantive role in a process that took two years to reach a conclusion.

As unethical, blatantly or otherwise, as what Senator Leahy, his staff and cronies were doing (with respect to judicial nominees) may have been, there was no evidence of anything illegal (or, sadly, even unusual) about their conduct.

There was every indication of illegal activity. NAACP supports the Democrats, ideologically and financially. Here are Senators, doing the bidding of one of their biggest constituent groups, when they are supposed to be carrying out their sacred Constitutional responsibility of advice and consent. This was coordinated strategy between elected officials and an interest group to protect an issue on which the interest group raises money and on which the interest group bases its political contribution decisions for the potential financial benefit of both. There was at least the basis for an investigation into this activity. If it was revealed that Senate Republicans were holding up a Democrat nominee from the DC Circuit so that the DC gun ban could be overturned, there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth, no matter how the activity was discovered.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

POINT #1

Congress does not have the right to internal deliberative documents from the Executive Branch as they relate to the communications between the White House and the various government departments.

Au contraire. Executive privilege (what I think you are talking about) applies, under the most generous of interpretations, only to advice and consultation received by the president himself. That's it. White House staff, like Karl Rove, do not enjoy any such protection, are not covered by executive privilege, to the extent they are communicating with anyone other than the president (and BTW, many of Rove's communications were outside the Executive Branch, namely with the RNC).

The best Rove and his ilk can argue in court is that the request made by Congress is too broad and/or not germane to the investigation being undertaken by the legislative branch, that Leahy and the others are on a "fishing expedition." They may or may not make that argument, but I doubt it will fly given the abundant evidence that the firings were indeed carried out for politicial purposes. But as for your blanket assertion that "Congress does not have the right to internal deliberative documents from the Executive Branch as they relate to the communications between the White House and the various government departments," you are just plain wrong.

If Gonzales had said the firings were a consequence of politics, that the president simply no longer wished the USA's to serve in his administration, and left it at that, there would have been a hue and cry, but Congress would have much, much less of an argument that it should be allowed to see Karl Rove's e-mail. This gets back to a more fundamental point. If you want to replace political appointees - supposedly good Republicans who have political aspirations and egos in their own right - like that, you should line up new jobs for them so that they resign voluntarily and are taken care of. Bad things happen when you humiliate people by publicly firing them for crass political reasons and then, when pressed, falsely claim that the reason you did so was that they were incompetent. Both the DOJ's strategy and tactics in this regard were completely boneheaded!

POINT #2

Gonzales and co. are not accused of misleading the committee about the extent to which political considerations played a role in the firings. They are accused of being misleading about the extent to which the AG was involved in the process.

I have no idea where you are getting this formulation. Here's how The New York Times depicted the situation on April 13th: "The Democrats’ investigation into the political e-mail accounts grows directly out of the inquiry into the firing of the United States attorneys. When the Justice Department turned over documents to Congress, they showed that, contrary to the White House’s initial assertions, Mr. Rove and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, seemed to be involved in planning the dismissals." Congress has every right to be interested in (and to subpoena documents related to) such matters especially if there is strong evidence it has been lied to.

POINT #3

There was every indication of illegal activity [with respect to Senator Leahy's conduct vis a vis judicial nominations].

Absolutely nothing you describe in the remainder of the paragraph after this statement amounts to a crime. Nothing. Period.

1) Okay, so the Congress has the right to see or subpoena the deliberative communications of White House staff, but not the actual advice they give to the president, huh?. How do you think that advice is formulated? Do staffers pick it out of the air? Do they pick it off the advice tree on the South Lawn? No, they discuss among themselves the issues at hand. And they discuss it with outside groups. They think it over, kick it back and forth, and eventually boil it down to a finished product for the boss. If Congress has access to the ingredients, then they have effective access to the finished product, which you contend it doesn't have access to. IANAL, but I respectfully submit that you are wrong in your interpretation.

2) Your original point on this was that Gonzales, "may not have in fact told the truth, under oath, about the circumstances of the USA terminations" I took you to be referring to his assertion that he played a limited role in the firings. Now you are arguing that the misleading information concerned Rove's and Miers's involvement. Which is it? As or Gonzales, I stand by my formulation. He has said that he played a small role in the firings and the available evidence backs that up.

3) Nothing you have described in any of your descriptions of this phony scandal thus far amounts to a crime either. I am not buying the perjury before Congress line, and we already know that it is perfectly legal for the president to fire every US Attorney for political reasons. The scenario I described has a helluva lot more indications of potential criminal activity in it than this so-called scandal does. Period.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

I will not debate the contours of executive privilege with you any further. However, I do believe you should take "the perjury before Congress line" a lot more seriously. It's very much for real (and it justifies many of the subpoenas Congress is thinking of dropping on the WH and the RNC).

Thanks for your opinion. Enjoy being in the minority for the foreseeable future.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman