Season of Witches

[kurtyboy]

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Our entire Republic is based upon this bedrock—that “we, the people” provide legitimacy to a government if and only if we consent to be governed. And implicit in the notion of consent is the idea that it may be revoked. In our republic, consent takes material form in the franchise—we vote for our representatives, and they in turn appoint the officers of our government. If those representatives or officers fail, we may remove them through political action. We the people are the ultimate check on our own government.

But in the government today, there is a disturbing pattern of attempting to lay blame at the feet of unelected officers and leave it at that.

When a CIA agent’s name was leaked to the press, jeopardizing not just her life but the security of our nation and the world, only one conviction came about—the Vice President’s Chief of Staff. The Vice President retained his job.

When our Congress provided the President with authorization to make war in Iraq, they did so while citing intelligence collected and shaped by unelected officials. Tenet, Wolfowitz, Rice, Powell, and Rumsfeld created a case that Congress found compelling enough. Four years on, when the case has crumbled under its own weight, nobody in the list above has suffered serious indictment. Rice and Wolfowitz found better jobs; Rumsfeld and Powell retired into comfort; and Tenet received the Medal of Freedom. In Congress, Clinton, Kerry, and Edwards all became front-running presidential candidates. Of the Senators and Representatives who voted for the Iraq War Resolution, only a handful lost their reelection campaigns.

When an unprecedented United States Attorney massacre occurred last year in a brazenly partisan assault on the separation of powers, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales only took full responsibility while simultaneously fully ducking it. The sole job lost so far—Kyle Sampson, the AG’s Chief of Staff—is two levels removed from the gaining elected official, the President. The President says he has faith in the AG, and leaves it to Gonzales to make nice with the Congress that confirmed him.

The same scandal has at its center legislation made a part of the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. A passage in the reauthorization circumvents the checks built into the Constitution by allowing US Attorneys permanent appointment free of the legislative confirmation process. The passage was put into the reauthorization under the authority of Senator Arlen Specter. As documented by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, Specter explains:

<snip>
"I then contacted my very able chief counsel, Michael O'Neill, to find out exactly what had happened. And Mr. O'Neill advised me that the requested change had come from the Department of Justice, that it had been handled by Brett Tolman, who is now the U.S. attorney for Utah, and that the change had been requested by the Department of Justice because there had been difficulty with the replacement of a U.S. attorney in South Dakota."

Thus, at least according to Specter, O'Neill had merely been following orders from the Department of Justice when he snuck new language into the Patriot Act that would consolidate executive branch authority. "
</snip> http://www.slate.com/id/2161260/pagenum/all

O’Neill still works as Senator Specter’s Chief Counsel. Senator Specter remains as powerful as ever.

Again and again, blame gets shifted away from elected representatives and to lower-level officers, but the scandals continue unabated. To paraphrase Lily Tomlin, no matter how many injuries to the Republic we imagine, we find we just can’t keep up.

At the center of everything is one Karl Rove. Neither elected nor subject to Legislative confirmation, Rove’s name surfaces prominently in every one of these and now countless other scandals and breeches of Constitutional propriety. Rove has remained nearly untouchable; even while speculation that he would be indicted in the CIA leak case swirled around the Capitol. Sidney Blumenthal, writing for Salon, notes:

<snip>
"Karl Rove is the rightful heir to Nixonian politics. His first notice in politics occurred as a witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. From Nixon to Bush, Rove is the single continuous character involved in the tactics and strategy of political subterfuge."
</snip> http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/03/15/rove_attorneys/

If this President cannot see fit to remove Rove, then our Representatives have a Constitutional responsibility to impeach and perhaps (subject to the findings of the impeachment) remove the President. If they do not have the will to impeach, then we the people have a responsibility to remove and replace our representatives. It is the only way our Republic can survive this latest season of witches.

Accountability ultimately rests at our feet, and we ought to get on with it.

[snappyturtle]

1. K&R Excellent. n/t