Manufacturing consent

Finally the British papers are perking up and taking notice of the now- inevitably-known-as Attorneygate scandal, which is is growing like topsy, sprouting tendrils all over the place, almost escaping the efforts of the Talking Points Memo team and the mainstream reporters who’re trying to keep up with them.

As they sift through a pile of 3,000 emails released by the White House, with 2,000 more to come, the sheer scale and blatancy of Bushco’s political interference in the Justice Department is becoming ever more apparent.

Luckily this is the sort of thing the left blogosphere, with its overpopulation of political wonks, geeks, lawyers, lawyer wannabes, scholars and various combinations thereof eats right up with gusto and the revelations are coming thick and fast. (I bet whoever thought up distributed processing didn’t really have bringing down governments in mind, though.)

So what do we know so far? Kevin Drum via Digby gives a succinct overview:

If seven U.S. Attorneys were fired that day for poor performance, that would be fine. If they were fired for insufficient commitment to Bush administration policies, that would be fine too. But there’s considerable reason to believe that at least some of them were fired because either (a) they were too aggressive about investigating Republican corruption or (b) they weren’t aggressive enough about investigating Democrats.

That’s it. That’s the argument. David Iglesias: Didn’t bring indictments against some local Democrats prior to the 2006 election. John McKay: Failed to invent voter fraud cases that might have prevented a Democrat from winning the 2004 governor’s race in Washington. Carol Lam: Doing too good a job prosecuting trainloads of Republicans in the wake of the Duke Cunningham scandal. Daniel Bogden and Paul Charlton: In the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired. And this all comes against a background that suggests the Bush Justice Department has initiated fantastically more investigations of Democrats than Republicans over the past five years.

Thanks to the email dump we now also know that the attempted putsch of federal attorneys and the installation of political apparatchiks in their places was orchestrated by Bush’s brain, Karl Rove, with the collusion of Alberto Gonzalez and his deputy Kyle Sampson with then WH counsel Harriet Miers (her paltry revenge against real lawyers for not having secured that vacant Supreme Court seat?). Every one of them’s a political operative.

Knowing that prosecutions are on the way for Republicans and Bush loyalists in particular, not content with having already stacked the Supreme Court in their favour and having installed party loyalists at every level, the White House sought to make assurance doubly sure by gutting an entire level of federal prosecutors, many of whom had been appointed by Bush for their loyalty. They just weren’t loyal enough.

What happens next? Well, things are hotting up for a confrontation between the White House and Democrat-led Congressional oversight commitees over executive privilege, specifically over who will testify to the committee. The White House says no way WH staff will testify, the committee says OK, we’ll subpoena them.

For Bushco executive privilege is the Big One. It’s the principle behind everything they’ve done; the notion that Presidential power is absolute and what the President does may not be questioned underpins every single Bush administration policy and action.

The assertion of the untramelled power and privilege of the Presidency is also the battle royal that Bushco’s mad-eyed lawyers have been preparing for since the day the administration took office:

December 12, 2001

MEMORANDUM FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

SUBJECT: Congressional Subpoena for Executive Branch Documents

I have been advised that the Committee on Government Reform of the House of Representatives has subpoenaed confidential Department of Justice documents. The documents consist of memoranda from the Chief of the Campaign Financing Task Force to former Attorney General Janet Reno recommending that a Special Counsel be appointed to investigate a matter under review by the Task Force, memoranda written in response to those memoranda, and deliberative memoranda from other investigations containing advice and recommendations concerning whether particular criminal prosecutions should be brought. I understand that, among other accommodations the Department has provided the Committee concerning the matters that are the subject of these documents, the Department has provided briefings with explanations of the reasons for the prosecutorial decisions, and is willing to provide further briefings. I also understand that you believe it would be inconsistent with the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers and the Department’s law enforcement responsibilities to release these documents to the Committee or to make them available for review by Committee representatives.

It is my decision that you should not release these documents or otherwise make them available to the Committee. Disclosure to Congress of confidential advice to the Attorney General regarding the appointment of a Special Counsel and confidential recommendations to Department of Justice officials regarding whether to bring criminal charges would inhibit the candor necessary to the effectiveness of the deliberative processes by which the Department makes prosecutorial decisions. Moreover, I am concerned that congressional access to prosecutorial decisionmaking documents of this kind threatens to politicize the criminal justice process. The Founders’ fundamental purpose in establishing the separation of powers in the Constitution was to protect individual liberty. Congressional pressure on executive branch prosecutorial decisionmaking is inconsistent with separation of powers and threatens individual liberty. Because I believe that congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest, I have decided to assert executive privilege with respect to the documents and to instruct you not to release them or otherwise make them available to the Committee.

I request that you advise the Committee of my decision. I also request that the Department remain willing to work informally with the Committee to provide such information as it can, consistent with these instructions and without violating the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Bushco knew right from the start that what they planned to do when in office was illegal and they’ve taken steps all along to ensure secrecy by asserting privilege and presidential rights where there are none, with the supine, gluttonous acquiescence of a pork-fed Republican Congress. The tussle between the White House and Congress over whether Rove testifies to Congress may well be the “cataclysmic fight to the death”Bush promised after the Democratic rout of Congress last November:

In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush’s understanding of the presidency, the President’s team has been planning for what one strategist describes as “a cataclysmic fight to the death” over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is “going to assert that power, and they’re going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation.”

The Attorneygate hearings are much more than little local spat between dull government bods. Whatever else, the upcoming tussle between the White House and Congress over Karl Rove certainly is going to put the doctrine of the balance of powers under severe strain and might even cause a constitutional crisis. Is it too cynical of me to think that’s what’s been planned all along?

This could turn out to be the end-game of Bush’s power grab, for good or ill: the question of who wins on executive privilege, Congress or the White House, may well determine the course of US and world political history – if it gets that far. If push comes to shove, Bush can always be persuaded to nuke Iran and the likely consequences of that would make an argument over the balance of powers seem just a little bit irrelevant. Let’s hope that’s not what ‘a cataclysmic fight to the death’ actually means.

UPDATE

Game on! The Washingon Post reports:

House Panel OKs Rove, Miers Subpoenas

By LAURIE KELLMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 21, 2007; 11:00 AM

WASHINGTON — A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

By voice vote, but with some “no” votes heard, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law decided to compel the president’s top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the firings.