I’m all for moving forward. But that cannot include sweeping the past under the rug. An item on Raw Story this morning has me more that a little annoyed.
Former Bush Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove has a new president urging Congress not to force him to testify next week. President Barack Obama.
In a court brief quietly filed Monday, Michael Hertz, Obama's acting assistant attorney general, said it was necessary to delay an effort to force Rove to be deposed in a congressional investigation into the firing of nine US Attorneys and the alleged political prosecution of a former Alabama governor.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t fly. This is not just about Karl Rove; it’s about the principle of Congressional oversight. Rove, Gonzalez, Card, the list goes on and on, have sneered at the very idea that anyone has the right to investigate what the Executive Branch does.
It’s that principle that cannot be allowed to stand. This reeks of the Obama White House trying to protect their own prerogatives, and implicitly all future Presidents as well.
Haven’t we learned anything from the Bush years? Not to mention the Nixon Years? Or the Reagan years (Iran/Contra)? Or Johnson in Vietnam?
"The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened," Craig told The Washington Post. "But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency."
That is precisely the issue. What Cheney set out to do was vastly expand the institution of the Presidency and we cannot afford to allow that to stand.
I didn’t work my ass off for the last two years to get a Democrat elected just to see things like this happen.
I’ll cut them just one bit of slack. Holder has only been there for two weeks. This could be the old Bush crew still pushing forward, but I’m finding that hard to believe.
I've just finished reading an excellent book about the Teapot Dome scandal by Laton McCartney http://www.amazon.com/.... Excellent book, I highly recommend it. The similarities to the last 8 years are striking. The White House at that time tried to block investigations. Teapot Dome was only exposed after Warren Harding died because one Democratic Senator, Thomas Walsh of Montana, put his entire life and career on the line to make it happen and he had the power of contempt of Congress behind him. He was very nearly stopped and the whole sordid story went undiscovered. If it had such nonsense would have become standard operating practice.
Our generation has a responsibility to those in the future not to allow the precedents of the last 8 years to stand. I’m not inclined to be very flexible on this one.