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Edited on Tue Apr-10-07 02:15 PM by Peace Patriot
has let things go that far. Some compromise is generally reached--or one side or the others "blinks"--before it comes down to full scale Constitutional crisis.
Possibly it will go to the Supreme Court (as Nixon and the Oval Office tapes did). But bear in mind that the Supreme Court unashamedly crowned Bush as king in 2000. It's not exactly the same court. It's worse. Would the Constitution hold together, and be enforced, by THIS Supreme Court? I'm afraid the answer is more than likely no.
What are Congress' enforcement powers--direct or indirect? I'm not sure of their direct powers. Can they order Congressional sergeants-at-arms, or FBI agents, to go seize the documents? Can they initiate a Grand Jury proceeding that would have those powers? (In Jefferson's Rules for Congress, he included power of a federal grand jury to initiate impeachment proceedings* against the president in the House. Does it work both ways? Can Congress initiate GJ proceedings?). Their indirect powers are considerable. They hold the purse strings. They can cut off funding to the Justice Dept., or the White House.
You will recall the flap about the FBI invading the Congressional offices of Rep. Jefferson (who was accused of corruption). The Constitution gives Congress total immunity from any such invasion. The FBI, which is under the thumb of the president, CANNOT enter Congress and seize documents, and no one--and I mean no one!--can arrest or detain a member of Congress who is engaged in Congressional business, or is traveling to/from Congress. It is totally verboten. A prosecutor can file charges, and a court can convict, but no one can arrest or detain a sitting member of Congress. Congress can decide to overturn the will of the voters in that district, and evict the Congress member from his/her seat. But until that happens, members of Congress are sacrosanct. The origin of this Constitutional provision was out-of-control kings in Europe/Britain using their police powers to harass members of Parliament.
The thrust of this and other provisions of the Constitution is to curtail, control, stymie, and, if necessary, impeach an out-of-control executive, which they knew to be the chief danger to our democracy. Thus, Congress has much more power to invade the offices of the President, and compel the production of papers, than the President has to invade the offices of Congress (the President has no powers in that regard). The framers strongly believed that it would be the President who would go wrong--would become the miscreant and need curtailment. This power of Congress has been hedged round, in the 20th century creation of the "imperial presidency", by concepts like "executive privilege" and "national security." These concepts do not exist in the Constitution, as limits on Congressional oversight. And they derive, in my opinion, from the ungodly power of the atom bomb, with which the President became invested at the end of WW II. They have been greatly abused, and are a formula for fascist rule, in the wrong hands. And they are most certainly in the wrong hands now. They are in the hands of people whose ultimate goal is destruction of the US federal government as a power that can regulate and curtail global corporate predators. Bush will hide behind these news concepts--executive privilege and national security (and has invented a new one, the "unitary executive")--as if defending the power of the government (of its administration), but the real goal is the opposite of that: to weaken and destroy every agency, and every function of our government, as well as weakening and destroying Congress, and appointing corporate/fascist toadies and yes-men to the federal courts, to destroy any protection the courts may give us against corporate predators.
There are parallels to Watergate and Nixon, although this situation is much more serious--as a Constitutional crisis--because the Bushite corporate controlled vote counting system ("trade secret," proprietary code in the new electronic voting machines, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, which were fast-tracked across the nation during the 2002-2004 period) has prevented us from electing a Congress that has adequate numbers to assert its rightful independence under the Constitution. For instance, 75% of the American people oppose the Iraq War and wanted it ended, yet the voters could only achieve a 50/50 Congress. The people had to outvote the machines. They did it, in some cases. But the handicap on the peoples' voting power has been made clearly evident. In Congress, the numbers on the war are the same as the numbers on impeachment, and will likely be the numbers on the enforcement of subpoenas--although, institutional pride might come into it, on the latter; also, Republicon politics (their need to distant themselves from Bushite corruption). (Even with a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" in their favor, in the electronic voting systems, they still have to get donations and win some votes.)
Bottom line: Theoretically, Congress can do almost anything it wants to, or needs to, in the interest of the American people. But its theoretical power is dependent on transparent vote counting, when its members are chosen by the people. And we don't have transparent vote counting. We have extremely non-transparent vote counting, controlled by Bushite corporations. And that is the heart of this and every problem in our country right now.
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*(Individual state legislatures also have this power--which is why 12 or so impeachment bills have been introduced to state legislatures over the last year or so. These bills of impeachment--if passed by even one state legislature--would go to the House as a privileged resolution. All House business would have to stop, to consider it.)
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