If the 109th Congress will go down in history as boot-licking hand maidens to a criminal White House, the 110th will go down as the most cowardly, utterly useless opposition body in U.S. history — the polar opposite of the body that faced down Richard Nixon, and the wimp-ridden antidote to the scheming, partisan body that tried to undo the election of William Clinton.
How useless is the current Congress? Let me count the ways…
They can’t compel Karl Rove or Josh Bolten to testify before them, and their constant threats of “contempt!” fall by the wayside…
They can’t out-maneuver Republicans, who stop bills cold on the House and Senate floor.
They capitulated in cowardly fashion on FISA, giving Bush everything he wanted on domestic surveillance and telecom immunity, junking the Fourth Amendment in the process (and they’ve got more coming, from the still-enforced PATRIOT Act to complete surveillance of the Internet.) ***NOTE: read this post on the Bushies’ database of some 8 million Americans whom they could surveil and detain at will in the event of “an emergency” if you really want to feel sick to your stomach.***
They continue to give Bush everything his heart desires on Iraq, backing down time and again on the issue of a timetable for orderly withdrawal, and forking over all the cash Dubya’s Pentagon can stuff into a sideways appropriation.
They cannot reign in a recalcitrant attorney general who is thumbing his nose at them as surely as his predecessor did.
They cannot pass meaningful legislation outside of a housing bill that even Bush wasn’t dumb enough to veto in an election year.
And their only concern, from Pelosi on down, appears to be getting re-elected.
Worst of all, they refuse to hold accountable, through the only means the Constitution allows: impeachment; a president that many of them — or really any of them who have an iota of understanding of the Constitution — know committed clearly impeachable offenses (many of these guys are lawyers.) Instead, the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress, like their GOP-led predecessors, are spending their time “saving the president’s chestnuts” and scheming among themselves to hold sham “impeachment-like” hearings that are unworthy of press coverage (which is why they aren’t getting any,) while promising the White House that nothing will come of them. Even Dennis Kucinich, the author of the “hearings,” capitulated, allowing the House leadership to let him make a fool of himself and his colleagues, while wasting the valuable time of dozens of earnest witnesses (not to mention bloggers, who thankfully have lots of time on their hands…)
What then, is the purpose of our current Congress? A useless bunch, almost all of them, particularly in the House, where most of the rotten, Bush-petting legislation and cowardice orginates, but also in the Senate, where Harry Reid and company continue to quizzle and cower under the outright treachery of one Joseph Lieberman.
With all of the lack of spine, one wonders whether the administration’s domestic wiretapping extended into the Congressional office building. That might at least explain why they continue to do the bidding of a lame duck president and his criminal gang. Next, I expect them to approve offshore oil drilling and pass a law declaring torture to be the law of the land. What more damage can they do to the constitution and the Republic at this point, having declared, in essence, that there are no impeachable offenses — that a president can break the law with impunity, and that he and his cabinet; hell, his FORMER cabinet members — can feel free to ignore Congress altogether, with Congress’s blessing. They have squandered their constitutional prerogatives, made a mockery of their own authority, and allowed that man, that idiot in the White House, to humiliate them and blacken our country’s honor, not to mention killing more than 4,000 of our bravest citizens in furtherance of a fundamentally un-American neoconservative cause.
Now the Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s of the world might explain that I simply don’t understand how politics works — the Congress has to “get the people’s business done,” and the people want lower gas bills, not impeachment. Well when members of Congress take the oath of office, they, like the president, swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The pork for their districts comes later. And because the Constitution is so fundamental to our freedoms, to our ability to live free in a country that still belongs to us, and not the president, impeachment of a criminal administration IS the people’s business. Getting re-elected, well, that’s YOUR business, Debbie. Besides, what exactly has Congress gotten done “for us” in the last two years? Hm? Not much.
As People for the American Way wrote after the House began pushing to give Bush more surveillance powers:
Checks and balances are endangered when Congress refuses to perform its oversight role and hold members of the executive branch accountable for their actions. The Intelligence Committee decision is just the latest in a series of caves to the White House by this Republican-led Congress. Congress caved when it reauthorized the PATRIOT Act, which includes provisions that deprive Americans of civil liberties. Congress has failed to fulfill its oversight responsibility for a wide variety of executive agencies, including the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which has reportedly reduced some fines for safety violations and failed to collect others at all.2 Congress has refused to investigate the Bush administration’s attempt to hide the true estimated cost of its Medicare prescription drug benefit, the White House’s disclosure of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity, and corporate special interests’ and oil lobbyists’ involvement in Vice President Cheney’s energy policy task force.It’s no wonder that, according to the Washington Post, “Government scholars and watchdog groups say the decline of congressional oversight in recent years has thrown off kilter the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers created to keep no one branch of government from becoming too powerful.”iii
At this stage, I’m not even sure why they’re there. We should throw off this false patina of multi-cameral government and simply install our president as king. He already has his puppet parliament.
If I had my way, our pathetic Congress would be turned out on their asses this fall, starting with Nancy, Harry and the hugely disappointing John Conyers, and with the exception of a small handful, including Jim Webb (because of his advocacy for our veterans), Russ Feingold, Dick Durbin, Henry Waxman and Robert Wexler. The rest of them can go to blazes. (Chuck Hagel is retiring, Barack Obama is running for president.)
Unfortunately, most of these clods’ seats are perfectly safe.
And that might be the biggest shame of all.
I’ll close with part of the testimony from Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, one of the other “good guys,” at the faux-impeachment hearings yesterday:
“What this Congress does, or chooses not to do in furthering the investigation of the serious allegations against this administration – and if just cause is found, to hold them accountable – will impact the conduct of future presidents, perhaps for generations.”“Mr. Chairman,” Baldwin continued, “there are those who would say that holding this hearing – examining whether or not the president and vice president broke the law – is frivolous. I not only reject this, I believe there is no task more important for this Congress than to seriously consider whether our nation’s leaders have violated their oath of office. The American public expects no less. It is, after all, their Constitution. No president or congress has the authority to override that document, whereby ‘We the People’ conferred upon the branches of government limited and defined power, and provided for meaningful checks and balances.”
There can be no question at this late date in the Bush presidency that the issue of whether the American system will be characterized by “meaningful checks and balances” is at stake – and that goes to the heart of the matter of why Friday’s hearing ought not be the end of a process but a beginning.
Even after George Bush and Dick Cheney have left the White House, the definition of the presidency that they have crafted will remain.
“On January 20, 2009, the next president and vice president of the United States will stand before the American people and take an oath of office, swearing to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ This commitment and obligation is so fundamental to our democracy that our nation’s founders prescribed that oath in our Constitution. They also provided for the removal of the president and vice president for, among other things, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’” Baldwin explained to the committee. “Presidents and vice presidents do not take that oath in a vacuum. They are informed by the actions or inactions of past presidents and congresses, who establish precedents for the future.”
It is in the power of the Congress to begin setting the precedent to which Baldwin addressed herself. That power was defined by the framers of the Constitution, as were the practices and procedures to be used in executing it.
… (The) American people have been forced to sit by while credible allegations of abuse of power mount:
And we continue to sit by, waiting for a Congress with the courage to act.
UPDATE: Check out Congress’ latest capitulation, to big oil.
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