Sen. Feingold (D-WI): We’ll fix Bush abuses after he ‘slinks off the stage’

therawstory
Dem Senator: We’ll fix Bush abuses after he ‘slinks off the stage’
Nick Juliano

Some Democrats — frustrated at banging their heads against a wall much of these last eight years, as they’ve watched George W. Bush run roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law — are determined to return some semblance of order once the president leaves office next year.

It was this desire to dial back the executive power overreach that was Bush’s primary governing philosophy that led Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to call together nearly a dozen experts Tuesday morning for a Judiciary subcommittee hearing on “Restoring the Rule of Law.”

Aside from Feingold, Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse was the only Democrat who showed up to question the witnesses arrayed before him in the Capitol Hill hearing room. Republican Sam Brownback, the Subcommittee on the Constitution’s ranking member also showed up to quibble with the hearing’s implication that Bush had disregarded the law and complain about proposals to close Guantanamo because some have suggested moving the detainees to Fort
Leavenworth, in his home state of Kansas.

Recommendations from Tuesday’s hearing centered on steps the next president and the next Congress could take to restore balance among the three branches of government. Generally, they said a President Obama or McCain should commit to increasing transparency and accountability, work more closely with Congress and rely less on secrecy.

Whitehouse was particularly concerned about this last point, accusing the Bush administration of selectively declassifying information related to ongoing national security debates “to secure propaganda advantage.”

Some members of Congress, like Whitehouse, who sit on the Intelligence committees are privy to an array of classified information, including sometimes information that would contradict what Bush or other administration figures are saying in public, but they are legally prohibited from disclosing that information. Such a situation allows the administration to abuse its power, he said.

After the hearing was over, RAW STORY caught up with Whitehouse for a couple minutes as he was heading to the elevator to ask whether Congress would keep up its efforts to expose Bush administration abuses once the president leaves office.

“Well I think that question is somewhat answered by the fact that we’re still inquiring about these issues now. The Bush administration is soon going to slink off the stage, and there’s very little likelihood, I think, that any of us believe that we’re likely to affect the behavior of the Bush administration in its last months,” he said. “But … the target is lessons for history and making sure that people understand what happened and that we are armed and motivated to send a message to the next president that there need to be pretty specific changes.”

The subcommittee heard more than two and a half hours of testimony from the witnesses, who came from all sides of the political spectrum and included former members of Congress, the military and the Bush and Clinton administrations along with legal and constitutional experts. Some of the witnesses at Tuesday’s hearing suggested creating an independent commission to fully examine Bush’s eight years in office once he leaves. (The idea sounded similar to plans advanced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich for a “Truth and Reconciliation” Commission.)

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who served as general counsel to the Chuch Committee that uncovered abuses by the Nixon administration outlined the need for and usefulness of another committee to examine Bush three decades later.

“We know that excessive secrecy smothers the popular judgment that gives life to democracy. We need to cut through that secrecy, and a commission would serve several functions,” he said. “First it would reveal many of the as yet unknown aspects of what our government has done, and equally important, how internally it rationalized and evaluated its actions. Second, documenting violations of the public commitment of the United States is also to fulfil an important moral imperative. Renewing our commitment to the rule of law by confronting and acknowledging our recent failures gives substance to our national moral commitment and thus can help to begin to restore our reputation in the rest of the world. The findings of the commission would also play a role, an important role, of holding accountable those who are responsible for wrongdoing and for legal and constitutional violations. The public revelations made by a commission would lodge accountability for deeds where it belongs and serve as a warning to future government officials not to again stray into the bound of unchecked power.”

Whitehouse said he would like to see an independent inquiry into Bush’s presidency “on a variety of issues,” but he seemed skeptical about whether Congress would be ready to create such a body.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a commitment for things like that to happen until they become specific, and we’re not there yet,” he told RAW STORY. “But I think that there’s a commitment in general to try to get this right.”

(Original Article)