The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have offered a sweeping indictment of the Bush White House’s casual approach to law-breaking in a new report, “The Constitution in Crisis.” It’s quite a document.
TPM Muckraker’s Justin Rood spoke with Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking Dem on the committee, about the report and its purpose.
“We said, ‘look, we’ll do it ourselves'” — compile a document that lists every instance of alleged wrongdoing by the Bush administration’s handling of intelligence, the war in Iraq, and retaliation against those who tried to speak out about it. “Every sentence, every allegation, every accusation that we have in this 371-page report has a citation or a reference to it of where we got it,” Conyers explained, with a hint of pride at his staff’s work.
“We’re not trying to play Department of Justice or prosecutor. We’re trying to put [these charges] on the record before too much other history blurs this,” Conyers told me. “[We are] making sure that what we see as at least a couple dozen violations of federal statute do not go unnoticed. . . . We’re trying to make sure that we have the fullest record of this, so that this won’t be the work of industrious historians ten years from now.”
I haven’t read the entire report yet — at 354 pages, it’s an ambitious piece of work — but it’s presented as a stinging indictment of a president who at times treated unambiguous laws as mere suggestions.
I seem to recall a group of lawmakers who insisted that no president is above the law. It’s a shame the “law and order” party gave up the cause on Jan. 20, 2001, isn’t it?
Post Script: I love the report, the idea behind the report, and the people who put in the endless hours to make the report a reality. But did they have to release it on a Friday afternoon in August?
Update: Because pdf files can be annoying, especially 27 meg pdf files, here’s an html version. From the intro:
Scandals such as Watergate and Iran-Contra are widely considered to be constitutional crises. They were in the sense that the executive branch was acting in violation of the law and in tension with the Majority Party in the Congress. But the system of checks and balances put in place by the founding fathers worked, the abuses were investigated, and actions were taken – even if presidential pardons ultimately prevented a full measure of justice.
The situation we find ourselves in today under the administration of George W. Bush is systemically different. The alleged acts of wrongdoing my staff has documented– which include making misleading statements about the decision to go to war; manipulating intelligence; facilitating and countenancing torture; using classified information to out a CIA agent; and violating federal surveillance and privacy laws – are quite serious. However, the current Majority Party has shown little inclination to engage in basic oversight, let alone question the Administration directly. The media, though showing some signs of aggressiveness as of late, is increasingly concentrated and all too often unwilling to risk the enmity or legal challenge from the party in charge. At the same time, unlike previous threats to civil liberties posed by the Civil War (suspension of habeas corpus and eviction of the Jews from portions of the Southern States); World War I (anti-immigrant “Palmer Raids”); World War II (internment of Japanese Americans); and the Vietnam War (COINTELPRO); the risks to our citizens’ rights today are potentially more grave, as the war on terror has no specific end point.