A lot of importance in life is attached to being in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing then and there. They say to everything there is a season.
Is it now the season to press serious investigations, prosecutions and maybe even impeachment of the Bush administration even if it means causing controversy?
Yes.
Want to know why? Follow me over the bump...
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
-- Bob Dylan, "The Times They are a Changing"
If not now, when?
There seem to be a lot of folks who say that if Democrats push hard now, before an election they will be seen as acting in a shockingly partisan manner. Further they say, serious actions now will be unlikely to result in removal or punishment of public officials, because Democrats lack the votes in the Senate to remove and the Justice Department will be prevented by the executive from prosecuting administration officials.
First, no matter when Democrats use all of the methods at their disposal (including inherent contempt) to compel administration witnesses to testify and produce documents, it will be characterized by the Republicans and their screaming-wingnut-minions as a blatant partisan smear campaign. It will get no better after an election. Should the Democrats obtain enough seats to ram an action through on a party line vote, they will be accused loud and long of being vindictive, recriminating partisans (and much worse). Also, winning a larger majority in Congress and/or winning the Presidency does not get Democrats a "majority" in the media. Democrats and progressives have a lot of work to do to catch up to the right-wing in terms of popular media penetration.
Second, regarding the Justice Department's failure to prosecute, if the Democrats produce compelling, undeniable evidence of criminality on the part of administration officials, Justice Department officials will face great, possibly career-destroying opprobrium for failure to act. Investigation and prosecution of the enormous criminality of the Bush administration will take long enough that it will span election cycles anyway, so evidence produced by this congress will be prosecutable by a Justice Department with a new Attorney General and upper management who will no doubt be more responsive.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so
formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger?
Will it be next week, or the next year? ... Shall we gather
strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the
means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs,
and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies
shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if
we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature
hath placed in our power. -- Patrick Henry
Time waits for no one
Time ravages memories and undermines efforts to locate and preserve documentary evidence.
There must be something in the water in the White House, because memory problems abound. Scooter had some, and Gonzo's brain leaked like a sieve; Gonzo's extreme memory loss was not credible, but a more competent person might experience more plausible memory losses of highly specific and damning facts. The longer it takes Democrats to get these folks to testify, the more plausible their memory losses will appear.
Documentary evidence has a way of disappearing over time. First it was 5 million emails, now it appears to be 10 million emails that have mysteriously vanished. Other documentary evidence like tapes of CIA torture sessions has been destroyed. The decision to destroy it seems to come after numerous denials of the existence of the evidence in a manner consistent with obstruction of justice.
There is the unmistakable appearance that Bush administration officials are going to some lengths to obstruct the process of discovery of criminal actions - in short there is a cover-up going on and the more time that the criminals are given to cover their tracks, the less likely it is that evidence will be able to be discovered.
There are only so many hours in the day
Some folks say that Congress is investigating as fast as it can. There's an enormous amount of stuff to probe and they're working as fast as they can.
Well, all of us who work are under pressure to work harder and smarter to be more productive. Congress needs to learn how to prioritize and to use its tools better. If shovelling faster isn't getting the job done, then it's time to hire more shovellers or use another tool. (I'll take, "Tools," for $500, Alex... the question is what tool can Congress use to speed up investigating the Bush administration? Oooh, oooh, I know - "What is inherent contempt?")
Some folks say Congress has better things to do than impeach the veep and prez, doing that will waste valuable time and bipartisan goodwill on other issues.
Congress needs to get its priorities straight. It's nice that Congress got some good things done in the first hundred days and all, but progress seems to have ground to a halt on the most important issues that we elected these folks to address, like ending the Iraq War and the outrageous powergrab that goes by the shorthand of the "unitary presidency." The President and the Republicans are all but sticking out their tongues and double-daring the Democrats in Congress to stand up on their hind legs and make the corrections they were elected to enact.
Bipartisan goodwill, pffttt!!! Republicans see bipartisanship as Grover Norquist put it,"Bipartisanship is another name for date rape." Norquist was the fellow that laid out the attack plan for Republicans in 2004, neuter the opposition:
"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."
The Republican attack plan doesn't seem to have changed, even with a change in majority status. It's kind of sad to watch, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, the Democrats always seem to be trying to promote bipartisanship while the Republicans are always pushing the Democrats into the gelding stall.
We've seen this movie before - act now or forever hold your peace
Democrats have a long-standing pattern of sacrificing justice in an attempt to achieve an elusive bipartisan comity. John Conyers and Henry Gonzalez' call for impeachment in 1983 over Reagan's Grenada invasion - scuttled. Henry Gonzalez' 1987 motion for impeachment over Iran Contra - scuttled actually, not just scuttled stillborn by choice of the investigators:
The shredded documents and shredded memories of the White House cover-up are usually blamed for the failure of the committees to uncover ''all of the facts.'' But there are other reasons, namely the limitations that the committees imposed upon themselves or allowed to be imposed on them. They began the investigation by immediately imposing an unrealistic deadline for ending it. They agreed to permit the White House to review all internal documents for ''relevance'' before being released to investigators. They made no attempt to locate and make evidentiary use of Presidential calendars, nor did they seek Presidential telephone logs. They were intimidated by the public reaction to the immunized testimony of Marine Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North, and flummoxed by the immunized testimony of Poindexter, who said he had not told the President of the diversion, in order to give him ''deniability.''
Most important, senior members of the Senate committee, which played the dominant role, agreed from the outset that specific evidence of a Presidential ''act of commission'' would be necessary before Reagan himself would become a target. No amount of Presidential negligence or nonfeasance, they decided, would justify a potential impeachment proceeding that could be dangerous for the nation.
Here's how the 1987 investigation was described at the time in the Washington Post on August, 4 1987 in an article titled, "Hill to Reagan: All is Forgiven" (sorry no link, I got it from Lexis-Nexis at the library):
The message from Congress to Reagan was, "Come home, all is forgiven."
Congress has been lied to, berated, patronized, needled, baited and, in the case of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, mugged by witnesses.
But because the president has thrown two rascals out and replaced them with rational men, Congress is ready to start over. It is grateful to Reagan for not making them impeach him.
Congress, like a battered wife, will take back the abusive husband. He fell among evil companions, that's all. She will give him another chance. Divorce, like impeachment, can be so messy.
With that pattern set, it was no surprise that when Bill Clinton took office in 1993 he and the Democratic leadership of the time scuttled four legal actions that would have led to prosecutions of Bush the elder and many in his administration:
But, in 1993, Clinton and the Democratic congressional leadership concluded that pursuit of these "old" scandals would only embitter the Republicans, make the Democratic Party look vindictive and endanger the bipartisanship that Clinton saw as essential for his domestic policy agenda...
The Democratic retreat from the investigative battles in 1993 would have another profound effect on the future of American politics. By letting George H.W. Bush leave the White House with his reputation intact – and even helping Bush fend off accusations of serious wrongdoing – the Democrats unwittingly cleared the way for a restoration of the Bush political dynasty eight years later.
The investigations and legal actions related to Iran-contra, BNL/BCCI among others spanned several administrations, despite having been undermined all along by timid Democrats and finished off in a bid to obtain political goodwill from Republicans that never materialized. If anything, Clinton and the Democratic leadership's caving in on these issues was taken as weakness by the congressional Republicans, who rewarded Clinton's actions with even sharper opposition and impeachment. In terms of the Republican general public, Clinton and the Democrats were demonized and creating anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic, anti-liberal propaganda became a cottage industry, launching the careers of scads of conservative media wingnuts.
With this in mind, it appears that there is little reason to hold off taking action against the Bush administration until later. Ok, perhaps they can wait until after the writer's strike is over so that late night commedians don't lose out on a golden opportunity for some great snark.