Conyers publishes massive report on 'Imperial Presidency'
Everyone wants to know: will Obama order investigations into the Bush administration's abuses of power? But, perhaps the new question should be: if he doesn't, who will?
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) is at least going to try.
Conyers published a nearly 500-page report (PDF link) Tuesday titled, "Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the presidency of George W. Bush." Conyers' report makes 47 recommendations "designed to restore the traditional checks and balances of our constitutional system," reads the foreward. Recommendations include the establishment of a 'blue ribbon' commission to fully investigate the Bush administration, and the launch of criminal probes."
Even after scores of hearings, investigations, and reports, we still do not have answers to some of the most fundamental questions left in the wake of Bush’s Imperial Presidency," Conyers said in a release. "Investigations are not a matter of payback or political revenge – it is our responsibility to examine what has occurred and to set an appropriate baseline of conduct for future administrations."
On Jan. 6, Conyers introduced a bill that, if passed, would create the "Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties," which would seek to root out President Bush's abuses.
“The Bush Administration’s approach to power is, at its core, little more than a restatement of Mr. Nixon’s famous rationalization of presidential misdeeds: 'When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,'" Conyers wrote in the report's foreward.
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Monday, "We now have President Bush speaking quite candidly that he was in the loop, we have Dick Cheney who almost bragged about it. The question for Barack Obama is whether he wants to own part of this by looking the other way."
Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, "We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward."
"If waterboarding is torture -- and Barack Obama has said that it is torture," Turley emphasized, "and torture is a war crime, then the president has committed a war crime if he did order waterboarding. You have to do some heavy lifting to avoid the simplicity of that logic."
"What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued," Obama told Philidelphia Daily News reporter Will Bunch in April 2008.
Obama added, "if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," but agreed with Bunch's assertion that the effort could turn into a "partisan witch hunt" that threatens to consume his first term.
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 9:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home