Crossposted at Congress Matters.
Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee released the Majority Staff Report on the Bush presidency. Here's the nut from the table of contents:
1. The Congress and the Judiciary Committee should pursue document and witness requests pending at the end of the 110th Congress, including subpoenas, and the incoming Administration should cooperate with those requests.
2. Congress should establish a Blue Ribbon Commission or similar panel to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush Administration that were undertaken under claims of unreviewable war powers, including detention, enhanced interrogation, ghosting and black sites, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance
3. The Attorney General should appoint a Special Counsel, or expand the scope of present investigation into CIA tape destruction, to determine whether there were criminal violations committed pursuant to Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war powers, including enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had this to say:
"I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility," via NPR
This gives a nice context and I think he is right that the check on the Executive should come from Congress and politically it seems to give good cover to Obama. Whitehouse was awesome in the Alberto hearings and I hope he keeps his word.
I haven't read the full report but just skimming the table of content was enough to get me going and at a glance it seems both thorough and scathing. There's nothing there we haven't known for a long time but, and correct me if I'm wrong, apart from the Kucinich impeachment resolution, which had a snowball's chance in hell, this is the most serious documentation of the criminal activity of the Bush Administration to come out of the Government and at this juncture I wonder if it could get some traction. Sections include:
Sec. 1 Politicization of the Justice Department
Sec. 2 Assault on Individual Liberty
Sec. 3 Misuse of Executive Branch Authority
Sec. 4 Retribution Against Critics
Sec. 5 Government in the Shadows: Executive Privilege Secrecy and the Manipulation of Intelligence
The full document is available online here.
Given Conyers notoriety here at Kos for sternly worded letters, I won't be surprised at a lot of yawns and asdf, but for me Conyers has been one of the few consistent and respected voices in government in communicating the abuses of the Bush administration. Once the bunker busters hit the White House on Tuesday we might just see some action. I'm not holding my breath but this time I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I posted a version of this yesterday on Kos and, as expected, got mostly yawns. I was hoping for more of a discussion though, which brings me to my questions. What authority does the Judiciary Majority Staff Report have, if any? To whom is it distributed? Who determines whether to act on the reccomendations and what political pressures, partisan or otherwise come to bear on that decision. Also curious about any insight into the interplay between the DOJ, HJC and Executive Branch on this one.
H/T to Think Progress for the link and the Whitehouse quote.