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Banned
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This forum seems moribund since late last week. Since I suspect that we are closer to an imminent constitutional crisis between congress and the executive branch than we have been since Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliott Richardson, to fire the special prosecutor who was zeroing in on executive branch illegalities, it is all the more disappointing that there is no "in depth" discussion of much of anything....here at TFP Politics.....
Following the recap article on what was reported during the Nixon era, I posted a reader's opinion from another site, that interprets what James Comey testified to yesterday, and the larger implications of what it meant, in a much clearer and briefer way than I could attempt to present it. It explains my reaction to Comey's testimony and how it influenced me to start and title this thread.
I think that all of the Bush Cheney agenda....from installing Karl Rove in a white house office in 2001, blending the political and administrative functions of the executive branch, into one partisan mechanism bent on consolidating power and keeping it permanently, is what everything from hiring Abramoff's Susan Ralston as an aid to Rove and Bush, to the fake "voter fraud" prosecutions by DOJ prosectuors, and the firing of the US Attorneys who resisted, to the disregard for the FISA court, <b>is all about.</b> Controlling lobbyists campaign contributions, (K Street Project) discouraging the oppostion vote,(Phoney DOJ Vote Fraud "task force", inspired by the concerns of Bush and Rove, and the flawed Felon Voter Purge Lists from Bush's bro, in FLA....) and illegal surveillance of political adversaries,(NSA telephone bill monitoring, Illegal abuse of FISA court, illegal monitoring of domestic calls and telephone records of news reporters) using a tight knit group of trusted republicans brought by Bush from Texas (Meiers and Gonzales), and via the hiring of 150 Regent University alumni by Kay Cole James, along with whatever trusted political operatives linked to Rove, Norquist, Abramoff, and the Council for National Policy, that could be mustered and unleashed on the formerly less organized, less religiousized and less republicanized federal government.
<b>IF you disagree with the reader's "take" on the Comey senate testimony, what do you think what he said, implies, and if you do agree, what do you think Sen. Patrick Leahy and his committee should do, in response? Since it is usually left to the Attorney General to determine if further investigation is indicated, it looks like we're fucked, there. All that seems open as an option to get to the bottom of what Comey was describing, are impeachment hearings in the houes, IMO.</b>
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...s/102173-2.htm
Nixon Forces Firing of Cox; Richardson, Ruckelshaus Quit
President Abolishes Prosecutor's Office; FBI Seals Records
By Carroll Kilpatrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 21, 1973; Page A01
In the most traumatic government upheaval of the Watergate crisis, President Nixon yesterday discharged Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.
The President also abolished the office of the special prosecutor and turned over to the Justice Department the entire responsibility for further investigation and prosecution of suspects and defendants in Watergate and related cases.
Shortly after the White House announcement, FBI agents sealed off the offices of Richardson and Ruckelshaus in the Justice Department and at Cox's headquarters in an office building on K Street NW.
An FBI spokesman said the agents moved in "at the request of the White House."
Agents told staff members in Cox's office they would be allowed to take out only personal papers. A Justice Department official said the FBI agents and building guards at Richardson's and Ruckelshaus' offices were there "to be sure that nothing was taken out."
Richardson resigned when Mr. Nixon instructed him to fire Cox and Richardson refused. When the President then asked Ruckelshaus to dismiss Cox, he refused, White House spokesman Ronald L. Ziegler said, and he was fired. Ruckelshaus said he resigned.
Finally, the President turned to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, who by law becomes acting Attorney General when the Attorney General and deputy attorney general are absent, and he carried out the President's order to fire Cox. The letter from the President to Bork also said Ruckelshaus resigned.
These dramatic developments were announced at the White House at 8:25 p.m. after Cox had refused to accept or comply with the terms of an agreement worked out by the President and the Senate Watergate committee under which summarized material from the White House Watergate tapes would be turned over to Cox and the Senate committee.
In announcing the plan Friday night, the President ordered Cox to make no further effort to obtain tapes or other presidential documents.
Cox responded that he could not comply with the President's instructions and elaborated on his refusal and vowed to pursue the tape recordings at a televised news conference yesterday.
That set in motion the chain of events that resulted in the departure of Cox and the two top officials of the Justice Department and immediately raised prospects that the President himself might be impeached or forced to resign.
In a statement last night, Cox said: "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people."
The action raised new questions as to whether Congress would proceed to confirm House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to be Vice President or leave Speaker of the House Carl Albert (D-Okla.) next in line of succession to the highest office in the land.
Richardson met at the White House in the late afternoon with Mr. Nixon and at 8:25 p.m. Ziegler appeared in the White House press room to read a statement outlining the President's decisions.
The President discharged Cox because he "refused to comply with instructions" the President gave him Friday night through the Attorney General, Ziegler said.
Furthermore, Ziegler said, the office of special prosecutor was abolished and its functions have been turned over to the Department of Justice.
The department will carry out the functions of the prosecutor's office "with thoroughness and vigor," Ziegler said.
Mr. Nixon sought to avoid a constitutional confrontation by the action he announced Friday, the press secretary said, to give the courts the information from the tapes which the President had considered privileged.
That action was accepted by "responsible leaders in the Congress and in the country," Ziegler commented, but the special prosecutor "defied" the President's instructions "at a time of serious world crisis" and made it "necessary" for the President to discharge him.
Before taking action, Ziegler said, the President met with Richardson to instruct him to dismiss Cox, but Richardson felt he could not do so because it conflicted with the promise he had made to the Senate, Ziegler said.
After Richardson submitted his resignation, the President directed Ruckelshaus to dismiss Cox. When Ruckelshaus refused to carry out the President's directive, he also was "discharged," Ziegler said. The President's letter to Bork said Ruckelshaus resigned......
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Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003232.php
Trust the Washington press corps to lunge for the process story, and ignore the substance.
<b> When the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don't know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration's own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it.</b> In fact, Comey reveals, <b>the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn't required.</b> They just didn't want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.
This wasn't an emergency program; more than two years had elapsed, ample time to correct any initial deficiencies. It wasn’t a last minute crisis; Ashcroft and Comey had both been saying, for weeks, that they would withhold
approval. But at the eleventh hour, the President made one final push, dispatching his most senior aides to try to secure approval for a continuation of the program, unaltered.
Continued:
I think it’s safe to assume that whatever they were fighting over, it was a matter of substance. When John Ashcroft is prepared to resign, and risk bringing down a Republican administration in the process, he’s not doing it for kicks. <h3>Similarly, when the President sends his aides to coerce a signature out of a desperately ill man, and only backs down when the senior leadership of a cabinet department threatens to depart en masse, he’s not just being stubborn.</h3>
It’s time that the Democrats in Congress blew the lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program. Whatever form it took for those years was blatantly illegal; so egregious that by 2004, not even the administration’s most partisan members could stomach it any longer. We have a right to know what went on then. We publicize the rules under which the government can obtain physical search warrants, and don’t consider revealing those rules to endanger security; there’s no reason we can’t do the same for electronic searches. The late-night drama makes for an interesting news story, but it’s really beside the point. The punchline here is that the President of the United States engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, until senior members of his own administration forced him to stop. That’s the Congressional investigation that we ought to be having.
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Quote:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...7/05/15/comey/
Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday May 16, 2007 06:16 EST
Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal
(updated below - updated again - Update III)
.....Comey repeatedly stated that it appeared that Ashcroft was not even oriented to his surroundings. Compare that to Tony Snow's disgustingly dismissive defense yesterday of the behavior of Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales: "Trying to take advantage of a sick man -- because he had an appendectomy, his brain didn't work?"
But more revealingly, just consider what it says about this administration. Not only did Comey think that he had to rush to the hospital room to protect Ashcroft from having a conniving Card and Gonzales manipulate his severe illness and confusion by coercing his signature on a document -- behavior that is seen only in the worst cases of deceitful, conniving relatives coercing a sick and confused person to sign a new will -- <h3>but the administration's own FBI Director thought it was necessary to instruct his FBI agents not to allow Comey to be removed from the room.
Comey and Mueller were clearly both operating on the premise that Card and Gonzales were basically thugs.</h3> Indeed, Comey said that when Card ordred him to the White House, Comey refused to meet with Card without a witness being present, and that Card refused to allow Comey's summoned witness (Solicitor General Ted Olson) even to enter Card's office. These are the most trusted intimates of the White House -- the ones who are politically sympathetic to them and know them best -- and they prepared for, defended themselves against, the most extreme acts of corruption and thuggery from the President's Chief of Staff and his then-legal counsel (and current Attorney General of the United States).
Does this sound in any way like the behavior of a government operating under the rule of law, which believes that it had legal authority to spy on Americans without the warrants required for three decades by law?
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<b>....and now, one of those "thugs" is himself the Attorney General, and if the president having his back is an indication, he must be doin' a heckofa job,"....right?</b>
**Watch the video of James Comey's Senate tesitmony describing the hospital "showdown":</b>
Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014173.php
(May 16, 2007 -- 01:42 PM EDT)
As discussed, here's the video of yesterday's testimony by former Deputy AG James Comey. Their section of questioning where Comey discusses the hospital showdown is about 25 minutes. We've tried to edit it down by cutting out a few relatively non-essential passages. And we got it down to about 15 minutes.
We'll be posting a shorter version with just a few key passages a bit later.
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Last edited by host; 05-16-2007 at 11:45 AM..
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