RAGGED THOTS

By nothing more than dumb luck, the Republican-controlled Congress—lambasted for the junkets, earmarks, and “culture of corruption” that have aligned to produce the lowest approval ratings in memory—was handed a shot at some desperately needed redemption. All its leaders had to do was make the right choice between condemning the rankest corruption and displaying an outsized arrogance. Guess which one they chose?
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There should have been little for leaders of Congress to do but applaud. Instead, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Majority Leader John Boehner led a chorus of disgruntled legislators in crying foul, closing ranks around an apparent felon, and raving incoherently about a supposed separation-of-powers violation.

This incredibly tin-eared performance was based on an extravagant construction of the Constitution’s speech-and-debate clause (Article I, Section 6). Congress evidently reads this clause as giving its office space blanket immunity from any investigation by the executive branch—even with court authorization—in connection with any crime, no matter how heinous.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 9:15 PM

Six decades ago, the National Security Act of 1947 inserted buffers between presidents and their top military men, leading immediately to a series of military debacles or, at best, stalemates. Instead of Marshall speaking--respectfully but frankly--to FDR, we got McNamara huddling with LBJ and, now, Donald Rumsfeld, who never saw combat, interpreting warfare to a president who never saw combat. Instead of making battlefield decisions based upon military necessity, the rise of powerful secretaries of defense resulted in combat decisions based upon political expediency.

Defense secretaries, not dissident retired generals, have politicized our national security. As for the recently invented "requirement" for retired officers to remain silent and apolitical, would we really like to strike George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower from our history books? After all, it was Eisenhower, the former soldier, who warned us so presciently of the military-industrial complex, while secretaries of defense--one after another--merely shoveled money into its maw.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act, an echo of Vietnam, was supposed to guarantee unfiltered military advice to the president. It didn't work. The elaborate superstructure of the contemporary presidency, with its many gatekeepers, excludes the nation's senior military leaders from the frequent, intimate, and unconstrained contact with the president that served us so well in the past. Too much has been delegated: While the president has the indisputable right to dismiss military leaders (as Lincoln certainly had to do), he also has the duty to study the professional advice of those who will lead our troops into battle before overruling it. With the approval of Congress (and increasingly without it), the president makes our strategic decisions, but it is his obligation to the American people to make informed decisions.

Today, however, our presidents do not hear unvarnished, de-politicized military advice, and the situation has never been graver than under the current administration. Presidential interviews with generals are essentially pre-scripted, with vetted talking points--political courtiers control access to the president and determine what the president will hear. Only the president himself could change the situation by demanding to hear a range of military views (without commissars at the shoulders of the generals). President George W. Bush, who has chosen war as a policy tool, may be the American president most isolated from sound military advice.

Something to ponder. Read the whole thing.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 7:34 PM

The court document was the basis for an FBI search of Jefferson's congressional office on Saturday and Sunday. The FBI had no comment on what it found in the 18-hour search.

According to the document, the FBI recorded a series of conversations between Jefferson and the informant, leading up to a July 30, 2005, meeting at a hotel in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. What happened next was captured by the FBI on videotape, the document said.

"At the close of the meeting, (the informant) and Congressman Jefferson exited the building and stood before the open trunk of (the informant's) car. At that time, Congressman Jefferson reached in and removed a reddish-brown colored leather briefcase which contained $100,000 cash in denominations of $100 bills," according to the court document.

"He placed the briefcase in a reddish-brown colored cloth bag, then took the bag, containing the briefcase and the $100,000 in cash and placed it inside the passenger compartment of his 1990 Lincoln Town Car and drove off."

According to the document, the money was to be used to bribe a high-ranking Nigerian government official who had agreed to help an American telecommunications company do business in Nigeria.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 8:45 AM