It’s Now or Never

by digby

Most of you have probably seen this one by Glenn Greenwald today. It seems that Arlen Specter has introduced a bill that will give give blanket amnesty to the president and his cohorts for the wireless wiretapping:I

The idea that the President’s allies in Congress would enact legislation which expressly shields government officials, including the President, from criminal liability for past lawbreaking is so reprehensible that it is difficult to describe. To my knowledge, none of the other proposed bills — including those from the most loyal Bush followers in the Senate — contained this protective provision. And without knowing anywhere near as much as I would need to know in order to form a definitive opinion, the legality of this provision seems questionable at best. It’s really the equivalent of a pardon, a power which the Constitutional preserves for the President. Can Congress act as a court and simply exonerate citizens from criminal conduct?

I have two thoughts about this. The first is that this completely takes the wind out the wingnuts’ sails about amnesty for undocumented workers.

Specter’s bill, introduced yesterday at a committee meeting, was a compromise worked out with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and designed to gather enough Republican support so it can be taken to the floor for a vote. During a conversation with Cheney yesterday afternoon first disclosed by an administration official, Specter (R-Pa.) said he arranged to have Justice Department officials begin reviewing his proposal.

Let Cheney sign on. Debate it on the merits. Let the committee vote on it. And when the Republicans like Kyl, a harsh anti-immigration guy, vote for it, spring link a jungle cat on these hypocritical scumbags.

Amnesty for Bush and Cheney but not for some poor Mexican who’s only crime was working in this country for years to make a better life??? It would be a gift.

This will, of course, require that Democratic senators have some discipline. I’m not holding my breath.

My second thought about this is on the politics of accountability. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I believe that we desperately need to hold this Bush administration accountable for this power grab or this country will come to regret it. Back when I was very young, we had another president who attempted to create an elected dictatorship. Some of those at the very top in this administration learned at the knee of that man and admit that they came into office looking to restore the doctrine of presidential power that that disgraced president had instituted.

CHENEY: All right. But in 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job. We saw it in the War Powers Act. We saw it in the Budget Anti-Impoundment Act. We’ve seen it in cases like this before, where it’s demanded that presidents cough up and compromise on important principles.

ROBERTS: And they always do.

CHENEY: Exactly, and that’s wrong.

ROBERTS: So in the end, it always comes out anyway, so why…

CHENEY: It’s wrong. And–well, but the…

ROBERTS: … go through this agony?

CHENEY: Because the net result of that is to weaken the presidency and the vice presidency.

And one of the things that I feel an obligation, and I know the president does too, because we talked about it, is to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors. We are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years.

Back in those days, I was in favor of pardoning Richard Nixon for his crimes. I thought it would be bad for the country to go through any more upheaval. I was wrong. As you can see from Cheney’s statement above, it never sunk in, despite the Church Committee, much legislation, the elections of 74,76 and 78 that the country had rejected this imperial presidency. Iran-Contra didn’t do it either. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this younger “revolutionary” generation of Republicans will not be even more adamant about restoring the ancien regime than Cheney and Rumsfeld.

It looks more and more to me as if installing Bush was a conscious decision to do this by these now grey eminences of Nixon’s administration. Cheney was, after all, a highly influential money man as CEO of Halliburton who was in charge of searching for the VP. Even more interestingly, he was the guy who put together the administration during the transition:

…Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hardline allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney’s right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.

In the short term, I think that we are going to have a hard time winning elections if we don’t finally stand up to these people and force some accountability. We don’t have to go through their underwear drawers or impeach them for private behavior. Their unconstitutional power grab is quite enough to justify thorough investigations.

I believe the public expects it. The right is mau-mauing this because they know that after they umpeached a president for his private sexual behavior they lowered the bar so low that the public will not see this as outrageous. Indeed, they know that if they can successfully intimidate the Democrats into NOT holding them accountable at the first opportunity, they will have sealed the reputation of Dems as being cowards for another generation.

I know it’s fashionable to think that the Democratic party has been losing steadily for the last 35 years because they have been too liberal and the GOP has therefore been able to portray them as soft in all the manly virtues. I would suggest that the Democrats have been losing for the last 35 years because they have failed to beat the shit out of the Republicans when they pull this crap. The GOP smells weakness and the public loses their respect for us. We’re long past the “fool me twice” phase.

In the long term, this is important because we need to save the country. This has now been going on in one form or another during my entire adult lifetime. And I’m not young anymore. There is every reason to believe that the next time they gain power, these spawn of Nixon’s will do exactly the same thing. They are stubbornly determined to change the way our system works and undermine the constitution. They did it 35 years ago and they are doing it again today. And God knows how many of these little creatures have been born in this godforsaken administration and GOP congress. We must stop this now. It’s both good policy and good politics.

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