Orrin Hatch's worst nightmare: the Feingold hearings begin
Arlen Specter is chairing Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Russ Feingold's censure motion now. Bruce Fein, the GOP counsel during Iran Contra, just testified. John Dean is yet to come. This is C-SPAN must-see TV...
While the discussion of the proposed censure of President Bush has largely focused on the Democrats' hesitance to take a position, today's debate actually reveals failures by Congressional leaders in both political parties. Republicans refuse to investigate their President's misconduct while Democrats keep waiting for Godot, hoping for investigations that will never happen.
Many Democrats are stalling on censure with an old Washington tactic: Demand an investigation and wait. While Congressional inquiries can be valuable, they should not substitute for taking a stand. Yet it is the Republicans who control Congress and its investigatory committees. Their failing is graver than inaction -- they are abdicating their constitutional duty to conduct meaningful oversight of the Executive Branch.
Couldn't say it better. At the end of the day, censure is the barest minimum Congress can do to assert itself in the face of what John Dean just called an unprecedented grab for executive power for its own sake. The Congress must lay down a precedent for future occupants of the White House: the president cannot unmake the law, nor can he ignore it, or the Congress. If they fail to take even this small step, this Republican Congress is contributing to its own irrelevancy.
Now to the hearings. The witness list for the hearing is as follows, and let's start with the fact that the hearings are stacked, three witnesses to two, in favor of the president:
For censure (requested by Sen. Feingold):
Bruce Fein, former GOP counsel during Iran Contra;
John Dean, White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon, author, Worse than Watergate;
For the president (probably requested by Hatch, or by Specter):
Lee Casey, a former Justice Department official and currently partner, Baker & Hostetler law firm in Washington, D.C. ;
John Schmidt, Partner, Mayer Brown Rowe Maw LLP Chicago, Illinois -- a Democrat who was the number three associate attorney general in the Clinton adminstration and who says he has "no bias in favor of the president," but who believes Bush had the authority to order the wiretaps;
Robert F. Turner, Associate Director, Center for National Security Law University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA and a man well on-record as supporting the president's position, not only on domestic surveillance, but on the expansion of presidential power;
Update: After the opening statements, Specter came right out of the box slamming Dean and Fein, saying they had not demonstrated that the president exercised bad faith with Congress. Orrin Hatch may not have to say much if Specter keeps up this way.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
