…over the raid of Representative Jefferson’s office?
Hastert whined so loud and so long over the separation of powers in this matter, that Bush, who doesn’t seem the least hesitant about rights violations, backed down and sealed Jefferson’s stuff for 45 days. This, supposedly is for a cooling off period.
And where does our Constitution say a Legislator’s office can’t be raided if he’s committing crimes - assuming there’s strong evidence to warrant such an incursion?
In a previous raid (a year ago, according to Al Sharpton), $90K of 100K of bribe money was discovered in Jefferson’s home freezer.
Recently a leak had it that Hastert was under investigation. And now he’s not, The leak was retracted with apologies to the House Speaker.
Anyone care to shine a little light on any of this?
Because it’s them, not us. Who gives a shit if some pobe like you gets harassed, you civil rights violated, or your life screwed up? You don’t matter. They’re important, and they do. He’s one of “US” (from their perspective).
Because most of them have something to hide. Most of them are smarter than to stuff bales of cash in the fridge, but there’s something. It could be their little black book that their wife doesn’t know about, it could be the duplicate (real) book of ‘campaign contributions’.
And these are the guys who steer the fate of the world.
There probably is a lot of self-interest and power politics at play here. But underneath, I think there is actually a serious constitutional issue at stake here. After all, this is an administration that resists at every turn any attempt at oversight or scrutiny by Congress. Remember, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are part of the executive branch. It seems to me there is some kind of legitimate principal at stake here.
Now, if we were to address this issue seriously, we’d have to say, well, of course, it doesn’t make sense to set up a system in which members of Congress are immune to investigation and prosecution for violations of the law. The question is who gets to do it?
Lately, I’ve been coming to the conclusion that we’re missing something important in our system of government, and that’s a neutral civil service over which both the executive and the legislature have very limited authority.
Who then besides the FBI and Justice department can investigate wrongs doing by congress? Isn’t this exactally like checks and balances are suposed to work one branch keeping an eye on the other branch.
I think a good part of the issue is that the FBI, a federal arm controlled by the Executive Branch (Gonzales is a direct Bush appointee), raided, without consultation, an office controlled by the Legislative Branch. The appropriate thing to do would have been to work with the Capitol Police, who are specifically under the control of the Legislative Branch, as Congress controls Washington DC.
Am I right in thinking that, if the FBI can raid a congressperson’s office, they could also raid the President’s office if they reasonably suspected evidence of a crime’s commission in that office? They could also raid the Supreme Court for similar reasons?
I’m cool with all of that (I’m not speculating on specific crimes committed anywhere, just talking in the abstract). But I can see where that might make Bush nervous.
If you read my whole post, you’ll see that I ask this question myself:
And if you read my whole post, you’ll see that I say that the checks seem only to be working in one direction. The administration has flatly refused to submit to investigation and oversight by the Congress on a variety of critical issues. So there’s no balance.
I read your whole answer I just don’t see any constitutional issue in this at all. It the warrants for searching are legitimate ie with probable cause and a definite idea of what they are searching for then this is good law enforcement. I think that having the congressional police being the only people that can investigate congress is ridiculous. I also think the idea that the FBI should check have to keep the congressional police involved seems a lot like to sort of cozy professional courtesy type arrangements that make it hard to investigate powerful people.
The arguments that the executive office is not cooperating with congress in the way congress would like seems to me to be somewhat irrelevant to this. It sounds a lot like someone when caught speeding saying that everybody else was doing it why don’t you go after them.
I ask this because a couple of hours ago, Jeff Toobin, CNN’s legal eagle was on camera and said there’s nothing in the Constitution forbidding the raid on Jefferson’s office.
But you’re talking prcedents. That’s a different matter and it didn’t come up in Toobin’s discussion. I think we’d all be interested in what you have to say.
Well, you’re asserting all Congresscritters have something to hide, even more so than the average citizen. Don’t you think there might be a few honest ones? Or is it flatly impossible for an honest person to get elected to Congress?
The specific precedents I had in mind were that the queen is not permitted to enter parliament without an invitation and the president does not enter the floor of Congress without invitation. I don’t know whether the latter is the result of an explicit bar or just assumed protocol.
However, the idea of such a restriction has support in political theory of the separation of powers. In the context of federalism, John Marshall said the power to tax is the power to destroy. In the context of separation of powers, there would seem to be a parallel. If the executive has the power to investigate members of the legislature by barging in on its sanctum in order to find evidence of crimes, does that not disturb the co-equal status of the two branches of government?
It’s settled principle that the executive is never required to pursue criminal charges; that’s a matter within the executive’s discretion. Doesn’t that set up the executive with the power to punish political opponents in the legislature with police action without check?
Not if Congress also has unlimited power to investigate and subpoena executive officials up to and including the president. Which it does – doesn’t it?
It certainly should, but it certainly doesn’t seem like it. The president is asserting broad powers to refuse to submit to demands for documents and to refuse to answer questions about governmental activities.