It's unanimous.
See also Andrew Cohen's Rough Justice – The Case Against Alberto Gonzales: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV, plus Gonzo on the Hill: A Comedic Tragedy
Don't go near Dick Cheney.
If you say something he doesn't like, however calmly and respectfully, he may have you arrested by the Secret Service and charged with “assault” — and threaten to have your child taken away by Child Services.
If you're a public official, it's harder to have you arrested, so he'll just swear at you and a couple of years later make up a claim that you got within kissing range of him:
In a “chance meeting” on the Senate floor with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in June 2004, Vice President Cheney told Leahy to “f*ck yourself.” According to Leahy’s spokesman, the “exchange began when Leahy crossed the aisle at the photo session and joked to Cheney about being on the Republican side.” Cheney then “‘lashed into’ Leahy for remarks he…made criticizing Iraq contracts won without competitive bidding by Halliburton.”
In the new biography of the Vice President by Stephen Hayes, Cheney claims that the reason he shouted the expletive was because Leahy had been too “close” to him:
Leahy came over and put his arm around me. And he didn’t kiss me but it was close to it. So I flashed and I told him — I dropped the F-bomb on him. … It was heartfelt.
Leahy was not “close” to kissing Cheney; all he did was try to shake his hand.
(There's more where that came from, and plenty of witnesses.)
Moral of the story: Don't go near Dick Cheney. He's dangerous, and might be contagious.
Secrecy News points us to this important document:
A major new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service examines the congressional contempt power.
“Congress’s contempt power is the means by which Congress responds to certain acts that in its view obstruct the legislative process. Contempt may be used either to coerce compliance (inherent contempt), punish the contemnor (criminal contempt), and/or to remove the obstruction (civil contempt).”
“Although arguably any action that directly obstructs the effort of Congress to exercise its constitutional powers may constitute a contempt, in the last seventy years the contempt power (primarily through the criminal contempt process) has generally been employed only in instances of refusals of witnesses to appear before committees, to respond to questions, or to produce documents.”
“This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress’s contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with each of the three different types of contempt proceedings. In addition, the report discusses limitations both nonconstitutional and constitutionally based on the power.”
See “Congress’s Contempt Power: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure,” July 24, 2007.
AG Gonzales is testifying before congress at present — it's live on CSPAN. It's not pretty. His position is that he can't testify about anything on which he's recused. And he can't recall much else — including how much attention he paid to approving a death penalty request. Were it not for the cavalier way in which he and his boss treated death warrants in Texas, this would not be credible. But unfortunately, it might be the truth.
Senator Specter did not look happy — but will this actually spur him to support a call for impeachment of Gonzales? Nothing less will do.
Good questions, on the whole, from the public. See the videos, question by question.
Notorious dog-owner Mitt Romney has advice for people who — remembering 9/11 — think it's wrong for him to compare US Senators to Osama Bin Laden (or, if you prefer, for him to fail to condemn those of his supporters who glory in the comparison): “Lighten Up”.
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw