‘We don’t work for the president’

September 8, 2006

It’s after Labor Day, the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is around the corner, and the Bush White House is in the midst of its third “major public relations offensive” on Iraq and the president’s vision of a war on terror. Given the speeches, legislative proposals, and debates, this was supposed to be a successful week for Bush and his team — except it’s not working out that way.

The president’s military tribunal plan, for example, is going nowhere fast, thanks to some steadfast Republican opposition.

President Bush’s campaign to sharply limit the courtroom rights of suspected terrorists ran into opposition yesterday from key Republican senators and even top uniformed military lawyers, who said it would violate basic principles of justice.

The military lawyers told a House panel that they particularly object to Bush’s bid to allow terrorism suspects to be convicted on secret evidence that is withheld from the defendants, an objection embraced by at least three prominent members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said in an interview that he takes very seriously the testimony of the uniformed lawyers. He also said Bush was “unwise” to come close to threatening Congress in his Wednesday speech. “We don’t work for the president,” Hagel said.

Well, at least the White House can count on progress on the president’s plan on warrantless-searches, right? Wrong.

President Bush’s support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the committee’s chairman, said the bill stalled because of election-year obstructionism.

“We have seen the incipient stage of filibuster by amendment,” the Pennsylvania Republican testily declared as he called off a vote to move his bill to the Senate floor. “Filibuster by speech, filibuster by amendment. Obstructionism.”

Specter has a point. To hear Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee tell it, lawmakers should discuss, question, and consider changes to a controversial power-grab by the White House, as if they were senators or something.

And while we’re at it, Bush’s proposed interrogation rules for detainees aren’t exactly going over well, either.

Karl Rove probably drew up the plans for the week differently. Indeed, after Wednesday’s White House speech on military commissions, pundits were praising the president’s cunning political skills.

Instead, what we’re left with is a president whose agenda in Congress is going nowhere and whose party no longer expects their president to lead. It ain’t pretty.

Those are some cunning political skills!

Oh you mean the Presnit did’t mean for it to kill all his inititatves?

  • And his free two-day propaganda spree courtesy ABC seems more and more to be still-born.

    Darn, couldn’t happen to a nicer tyrant…

  • Hey CB,

    Also, didn’t the Senate abort going forward on Bolton nomination this week? What happened?

  • All members of Congress, repeat after Chuck, “”We don’t work for the president.” Heck, Dem’s ought to print up lapel buttons.

  • This is what, a three-week session before the break for campaigning?

    Choose your sports analogy. The Republicans will…

    a) run out the clock.
    b) take a knee.
    c) employ the “four-corners” offense.
    d) ice the puck.

    This has less to do with standing up to the President than it does avoiding any votes of consequence.

  • All the president’s men, Rove and Cheney anyway, seem to have forgotten something about the American voter: We hate liars (strike one). We hate losers (strike two). And all politics is local, meaning the only thing the Quagmire calls up at election time is revulsion (strike three).

  • Huzza for Hagel.

    A Raspberry for Specter.

    And here’s hoping for ulcers for Rove 😉

    I’m particularly pleased with the former Clintonistas standing up to ABC. I suspect the edits won’t really help, but at least they will have been warned when a flood of defamation suits hit.

  • “Instead, what we’re left with is a president whose agenda in Congress is going nowhere and whose party no longer expects their president to lead. It ain’t pretty.”

    Quite right. It is FRIGGIN GAWGEOUS.

    I am hoping to see a long-held dream come true: Bush throws a full out, flat on the floor, kicking and screaming tantrum as the cameras roll. Of course, BushBaby is more likely to order tanks to fire on the Capitol if he doesn’t get his way, so perhaps I should forget that dream.

  • I have to say, I was relieved when Bush revealed his ‘plan’. I always have harbored that secret worry that they have Osama hidden away in a cell somewhere, waiting for that October Surprise to ‘capture’ him…

    But when they come out with a plan as desperate as this one was, it is clear that they really are as inept as they appear…

  • My ass this congress doesn’t work for the president! They are all pussy-whipped, hen-pecked lackeys for Bu$h and his neocon/big oil/corporocratic handlers!

  • still, you have to ask: why do the “pundits” fall for the notion that these big bush set-piece speeches are going to work? i mean, i understand the inside-the-beltway aspect of groupthink in punditland, but you would imagine, by now, they would at least be a little more cautious before praising the latest initiative.

  • At this time, the president doesn’t care if his ‘plan’ goes through Congress or not. If it does, he wins. If it doesn’t, it leads into the traditional pre-election “Democrats soft on terrorism” attacks.
    This time, however, it remains to be seen whether the attacks can gain traction.

  • Was it CB that asked the other day whether “the jig is up”? Used to be the GOP marched in lock-step with dingus, no matter what insanity it was. Now, with eight weeks to go before the election that could have them all buried in subpoenas, they can’t even stick to the same talking points. These guys are starting to look like Democrats!

    Even two years ago, if ABC wanted to put up a blame Clinton smear, the only ones who would have said a thing would be the lefty blogosphere, which would have been quickly dismissed. Now we even have administration officials crying foul.

    These guys keep up a cool front, but the internal situation must be a nightmare. We learned the other day that Cheney’s office was in a panic looking for WMD evidence a few years ago, though they kept up a tough front. Now the dissent is boiling over onto the front pages, and defenders of the farce look increasingly absurd.

    GOP polling shows they could lose 30-40 seats. A time of consequences is upon them. Investigations and indictments loom ahead. They will soon start a race to throw one another under the bus. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving crew…

  • Not only that, but here in Norway it is being reported that come countries Bush blew the whistle on are not very happy at the moment.

    See, Bush “the decider”, decided to play more politics and after denying that we had secret prisons, torture, he now admits the one, and we can pretty much all bank on the second thing.

    So Romania and Poland gor left holding the bag. Romania may now get a delay it its acceptance to the European Union, and Poland may lose it’s right to vote in the council.

    Bet THEY are happy how it all paid off to kow tow to Bush’s administration, eh?

  • Republicans seem to have suddenly discovered “the rights of the accused”? Hmmm. I wonder why that is?

  • “Republicans seem to have suddenly discovered “the rights of the accused”? Hmmm. I wonder why that is?” – cookie

    LOL

    Maybe someone pointed out that soon, they will be under investigation 🙂

    Maybe someone pointed out that Boy George II is not going to hand pick his sucessor, either for the nomination of his party or for the Presidency, and he can’t expect President 44 to ignore all the crimes he has committed 😉

    Maybe it is about time the Bushites thought through the fact they will not always be the Government of the United States, and they have a lot to answer for.

  • “Republicans seem to have suddenly discovered “the rights of the accused”? Hmmm. I wonder why that is?” – cookie

    LOL

    Maybe someone pointed out that soon, they will be under investigation 🙂

    Maybe someone pointed out that Boy George II is not going to hand pick his sucessor, either for the nomination of his party or for the Presidency, and he can’t expect President 44 to ignore all the crimes he has committed 😉

    Maybe it is about time the Bushites thought through the fact they will not always be the Government of the United States, and they have a lot to answer for.

  • Here’s a scary thought….

    Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution says (in part):

    [The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses [of Congress], or either of them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper;….

    Suppose the Dems win one or both Houses. Could Bush convene the Congress and then adjourn it until he thinks it “proper”, and then rule by decree, citing the need to prosecute the War on Terror as Commander in Chief without interference?

  • Considering how willing the Replugs are to push everything to the legal limit and beyond individually and collectively to protect themselves and their Fuhrer from investigation, we should expect some very controversial election outcomes with all of the paperless voting machines being used. Maybe someone in the “Sit On Your Ass Bush Rubberstamp Congrass” could speed a bill through requiring all polling places to provide paper ballots on demand.

  • Eeyore: That IS a VERY scary thought… and I wouldn’t put it past these corporatists in power to do something like that. Their goal is to create a global corporatocracy, therefore they must eliminate the American middle class. Allowing for citizens’ votes to count, which would undoubtedly lead to at least 1 house being under a democratic majority, is too much of a threat to their power. The mid-term elections this November are perhaps THE most important in our country’s history; either the American middle class re-asserts it’s power by voting out these corporatists, or the new world order will continue to dominate, leaving our earth and our people in shambles while they grow immensely more rich and powerful. What will happen to America, our democracy, if that happens?

  • Re: 20
    The complete quote is:

    he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper;

    It requires a disagreement between the houses on the time of adjuournment. Presumably if the dems capture a single chamber, he could work with the republican constrolled chamber to manufacture a disagreement w.r.t adjournment.

  • Re: 23.

    You’re correct, Kevin, I missed typing in the pertinent clause. But since the Republicans seem to be willing to bend the rules to whatever purpose suits them, I can see where a Dem house and a Republican senate could disagree on an artificial time of adjournment, Bush steps in, and then Congress goes home.

  • Tom Joad says that some of the secret prisons are in Poland and Romania. The Washington Post at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644_2.html says “The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement. The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.”

    So Americans took over Soviet-era hell-holes in eastern Europe for torturing our own secret prisoners? And we shipped more of the prisoners off to Egypt and Morocco and so forth for additional harsh treatment. How have we not become as bad as the Soviets were? We knew that such things are evil and ultimately counter-productive, yet the whole nation went happily along with the criminal idiocies put in place by Bush and his Republicans.

  • Hey, I think we’re turning one of the vaunted “corners” that Bush and his buddies keep talking about — only it’s not in Bush’s political favor. Add to the pile that Bush closest international confidant is on the way out, Afghanistan is going from the W column to the L column rapidly and reports are that Condi was pushing for the more “moderate” military tribunal legislation over Dick Cheney’s objection and I’d say there is a bonfire of political capital burning in the Rose Garden right now.

  • ***…and I’d say there is a bonfire of political capital burning in the Rose Garden right now.***
    ————————————————-petorado

    I’ll agre on the bonfire part, but I don’t think it’s “political capital” that’s burning. More than likely, it’s the mountains of documents that they cannot afford to have exposed to the Lamp of Truth….

    As for 3-dash-2, closely examine the text:

    ***…he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper;….”***

    If he can convene only one House (identified by the words “either of them”), then any disagreement “with respect to the time of adjournment” would clearly have to be “between” the President and the particular House in question, being “either” the House of Representatives, or the Senate. If for example, he convened one House with respect to “an extraordinary occasion,” he could (by any one of several forms of subterfuge) call for an adjournment when that House desired to stay in session—or demand that they remain in session until a large number of issues had been resolved. Either scenario establishes that “disagreement between them” scenario.

    Sure—it sounds crazy as bat excrement—but, consider who we’re dealing with in the Oval Office right now

    The “out” for Congress on this is to simply agree to adjourn, and then reconvene. The “in” for Bush is that somewhere around the time of Congress’s scheduled adjournment, he could establish an “extraordinary occasion” that might effectively grant him that one shot—to adjourn the Congress—or at least one House—thus terminating that particular session. I’m not certain if he could play the adjournment against the next session—scheduled, I believe, to convene on January 3rd—but it could at least widen his opportunities to run rampant. At the very least, he could suspend the Senate, and then fill all the vacancies in the same manner that he applied to get Bolton into the UN.

    A very dangerous predicament, indeed, given the person who could be wielding that type of untethered power….

  • Hurray for Hagel, indeed. Congress is there to provide independent analysis of problems and to check the President if they disagree. Congress is supposed to work for the American people, not the President or their parties.

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