Fred Fielding's latest letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee/Chairman Pat Leahy lays out exactly what kind of cooperation Leahy, Democrats, and the American public can expect from the Bush Administration:
Nothing.
But that's not all. They're planning to get us to roll over for them again, and perhaps appropriately, given Dick Cheney's famous outburst, get us to screw ourselves. You'll see how (don't worry, no pictures) -- after the jump.
Sure, according to the AP/Salon.com, Fielding, White House counsel to George W. Bush and former Nixon aide, wrote to Leahy on Friday and said that the subpoenas request "extraordinarily sensitive national security information."
Fielding said much or all of this could fall under, of course, "executive privilege."
Fielding said that while they've started going through documents, the work is "by no means complete" and cannot be completed by Monday (the new deadline, after it was extended from July).
This, says Fielding, leaves Leahy with two choices: either push the deadline back, past Labor Day as Fielding suggests/invites/demands, or face non-compliance from Fielding, Bush, & Co., punishment for which would be enforced by the Washington, D.C. United States Attorney (certain to be a decision free of improper political influence, right?). Leahy already pushed the deadline back once, but since then, a couple weeks ago, wrote to Fielding (see letter) and noted that Fielding/Bush had:
"rejected every proposal, produced none of the responsive documents, provided no basis for any claim of privilege and no accompanying log of withheld documents"
So this deadline (Monday, August 20, 2:30 PM) looks like a real fish-or-cut-bait moment, doesn't it? The ball's definitely in the Democrats' court, isn't it?
Oh, but the AP story includes a summary of one other thing Fielding wrote in his most recent reply to Leahy, which sounds almost like a peace offering:
"[Fielding] suggested further conversations with the panel, saying the White House did not want the issue to interfere with the administration's desire to make more permanent the new powers Congress just gave NSA to monitor communications entering the United States involving foreigners who are the subjects of a national security investigation.
While Congress approved the measure, lawmakers specified that the new provisions would expire after six months, unless renewed."
Well, thank god the Bush Administration and their Republican enablers don't want to mix up negotiations over the subpoenas with negotiations over the short-term FISA fix that the Democrats just handed Bush on a silver platter (on a related note, the NYT reports today that there may be a second silver platter of changes which Bush had not requested -- which suggests two images, neither pleasant: Democrats falling all over themselves to give Bush even more power than he requested; or Democrats, handing Bush more power in the spirit of John Cleese's waiter in the "Mr. Creosote" Monty Python sketch, force-feeding the consumer of all he surveys until it is finally too much)).
Thank god, I say, because that could get very confusing indeed. Why, some arguments about executive power in one case might contradict... Or some examples of unconstitutional activities... Well, there's obviously no way that someone could use those two issues together, is there...
Oh, wait.
Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is your Fall 2007 Subpoenas and FISA-changing, NSA-warrantless-wiretapping legalization strategy all rolled into one: George W. Bush, with Fred Fielding at his side, will tell Democrats that they cannot have the information sought in the subpoenas, because it threatens George W. Bush's Administration national security. Furthermore, Bush and Fielding will argue, Democrats need to support the president's unique role in leading the fight against infinite international terrorism by extending his powers, as Buzz Lightyear would say, "To infinity, and beyond!"
And if Democrats keep asking pesky questions instead of supporting the American president, their Commander-in-Chief (note: most of us know that title has no force outside the military, but I'm not sure every Democrat does), then Bush will be forced to do what he wants, Congress and the Constitution be damned, leaving Democrats the choice of being proven impotent to stop his extra-Constitutional activities, or continuing to pretend that Bush isn't systematically shredding the Constitution and asking Democrats to change the law to pretend that he isn't... and thus, also, proving themselves impotent to stop his extra-Constitutional activities.
So, what are we and/or our leaders going to do about that?