House Democrats held one of their Kangaroo Court-type hearings yesterday ostensibly on Administration decisions regarding detainees and, specifically, the approved torture techniques that the government authorized interrogators to carry out against prisoners.
I say ostensibly because anyone out there believing that the House Democrats were truly interested in getting to the bottom of anything probably also believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and a World Series Championship for the Cubs in 2008. Please don’t insult our intelligence by claiming otherwise.
In fact, almost all high profile hearings on the Hill now degenerate into the most ridiculous posturing and preening by Members who rather than seek the truth, seek to score pure political points.
Truth be told, the Administration makes an unbearably easy target.
But those on the receiving end usually play along by being polite, pretending to be respectful of the power and duties of Congress, and are expected to sit there and take their medicine as they are raked over the coals by ignoramuses who are usually laughably ill prepared. We saw it with the Petreaus hearings as each Congressman got their chance to spout and then would ask the same question over and over; when are we leaving Iraq. Petreaus, maintaining as much dignity as he could muster, tried to come up with different language to use in answering the question, playing the game of trying to make the Member look good for the TV cameras.
But yesterday, we saw what happens when two of our branches of government are at war – and politics and policy don’t matter as much as the personal dislike felt by the two sides for each other.
Testifying yesterday were the Devil and the Devil’s Familiar. John Yoo is the guy who wrote a memo trying to legally justify torture – a dubious and ultimately incoherent attempt to excuse the inexcusable. Also in the dock was David Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney and suspected of all sorts of misdeeds and wrong headed thinking.
They were both reluctant witnesses having been subpoenaed by the Committee – a waste of good paper as it turns out because Addington especially decided to act the part of a 15 year old smart ass kid being interrogated by the cops. He lounged in his chair as if he was at a bar. Every ounce of body language, every fiber of his being screamed contempt for his interlocutors. His voice dripped with sarcasm and malignant scorn.
Dana Milbank – something of a contemptible creature himself – recognized Addington’s performance as akin to his writing; “nasty, brutish, and short:”
There he sat, hunched and scowling, at the witness table in front of the House Judiciary Committee: the bearded, burly form of the chief of staff and alter ego to the vice president—Cheney’s Cheney, if you will—and the man most responsible for building President Bush’s notion of an imperial presidency.David Addington was there under subpoena. And he wasn’t happy about it.
Could the president ever be justified in breaking the law? “I’m not going to answer a legal opinion on every imaginable set of facts any human being could think of,” Addington growled. Did he consult Congress when interpreting torture laws? “That’s irrelevant,” he barked. Would it be legal to torture a detainee’s child? “I’m not here to render legal advice to your committee,” he snarled. “You do have attorneys of your own.”
He had the grace of Gollum as he quarreled with his questioners. In response to one of the chairman’s questions, he neither looked up nor spoke before finishing a note he was writing to himself. When Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) questioned his failure to remember conversations about interrogation techniques, he only looked at her and asked: “Is there a question pending, ma’am?” Finally, at the end of the hearing, Addington was asked whether he would meet privately to discuss classified matters. “You have my number,” he said. “If you issue a subpoena, we’ll go through this again.”
A bundle of joy, that one.
The left likes to throw around terms like “imperial presidency” because it makes them sound smart when they talk about their political enemies. In truth, most of what they complain about – signing statements (where there has not been one single instance of the president invoking), a “unitary executive” that even they can’t define, and “tearing up the Constitution” which again, they come up short when asked for examples (Habeas Corpus is alive and well thank you and was in danger only in the fevered imaginations of the left).
But Addington is a tool for acting like an idiot and Yoo wasn’t much better. The more Addington gave the Democrats attitude the more desperate they became to have their talking points confirmed. At times. they didn’t even bother getting confirmation from the witnesses. They simply put words in their mouths and falsely claimed that the witnesses had “confirmed” the absolute worst of the charges against the Administration:
Far left radio station Pacifica carried the proceedings live–with unhinged commentators and callers griping afterwards that Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and his fellow witch-hunters didn’t stab their pins in far enough.The two-hour hearing was an absolute travesty. Nadler and the Dems shamelessly badgered and harangued the witnesses; Yoo, polite to a fault, repeatedly attempted to answer questions, only to be cut off by foaming jerks who twisted his words or indignantly claimed he was “conceding” some point that he had just established himself.
Malkin’s description is 100% accurate as anyone who watched the hearing could testify. Frequently cutting off Yoo’s answers was one of the most despicable tactics I’ve seen in a while. Of course, it didn’t help that Yoo was doing his best to obfuscate the issues but, as James Joyner points out, most of the questions had little to do with the subject matter the hearing was supposed to be about:
Then again, it’s easy to have contempt for this particular process. Unlike Phil, I’m not an attorney. But it seems to me that these are precisely the kind of answers one ought expect from a hostile witness presented with inane, hypothetical questions.Congress has every right — indeed, a duty — to investigate suspected wrongdoing on the part of the executive branch. But it’s far from clear how this set of questioning was supposed to be helpful toward that end. The man is an adviser to the vice president, not a would-be Supreme Court Justice. What difference does it make what his pet theories of executive power are? What matters is what actions the president and his team actually took.
Wouldn’t it have been far more useful, then, to ask specific questions about specific activities that took place in Addington’s presence? Indeed, it appears that, in the rare times that was the case, Addington was much more forthcoming.
As I said, a farcical exercise.
And Addington? He repeated his incredible assertion that the Vice President is not part of the Executive Branch:
Cohen asked Addington to explain his curious theory that the vice president is not part of the executive branch. Addington explained that the vice president “belongs to neither” branch but is “attached by the Constitution” to Congress.“So he’s kind of a barnacle?” Cohen inquired.
“I don’t consider the Constitution a barnacle,” Addington said reproachfully
This is a man seriously in need of a remedial course in the organization of the government of the United States. And the idea that he is serious about believing that nonsense makes one dread what other “advice” he gave to Cheney about Constitutional issues.
The final idiocy of the hearing occurred when Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) expressed the desire that al-Qaeda was watching the hearing – all the better to come after Addington and kill him. He didn’t say that but the meaning was absolutely crystal clear:
Cheney’s Cheney continued to dole out the scorn (“You asked that question earlier, today, and I’ll give you the same answer”) until Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), the last questioner, inquired about waterboarding. “I can’t talk to you—al-Qaeda may watch these meetings,” Addington said.“I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington,” Delahunt joked.
“I’m sure you’re pleased,” Addington growled.
Milbank incredibly and dishonestly refers to Delahunt’s wish to see Addington in the clutches of al-Qaeda as a “joke.” Others, perhaps less of a lickspittle than Milbank, disagreed:
I almost drove off the road when Delahunt sarcastically told Addington that he was “glad” al Qaeda finally got the chance to watch him on TV. He can spin it all he wants, but the gloat in his voice is unmistakable.
Indeed, Malkin has the video and Delahunt’s wish was not made in jest but was spoken as a devout hope – the inference more than clear.
Shocking? Not terribly. The hearing had been building to something like this for a couple of hours. Still, actually watching a Member of Congress wish for the death of his political enemy elicited feelings of nausea – like watching a plane go down with you in the cockpit.
Addington, and to some extent Yoo, refused to play by the rules. They didn’t allow the petty ass Congressmen to walk all over them. They weren’t the polite, obeisant servants of the people executive branch employees are supposed to be (Yoo teaches at Stanford now). But Addington could have at least made a small effort to respect the notion that Congress – for all its flaws and stupidities – had every right to interrogate him and that copping an attitude of disdain for that idea did a disservice to his boss and to our republic.
What a gross, depressing, spectacle the two sides made of themselves yesterday.
9:44 pm
Rick, consider this, Congress has the right to hale people in front of it and ask those people questions designed to elicit information. When they do so simply to grandstand, that is deeply offensive. Moreoever, when they insult a captive audience, that is simply beyond the pale. I am a citizen of a free nation; no government official has the right to force me to come in front of them and then insult me, and if they do, I have the right to respond in kind. For example, if I were in front of Senator Kennedy, and he insulted me, I would simply refer to him as Senator Chappaquiddick. If Senator Biden did so, I would ask aloud whether anything he said could be trusted given his cheating in law school.
I think you miss the issue about the intrusiveness of such an ordeal. And besides, it’s easy to have contempt for a creature like Delahunt.
As for torture etc., I think you need to grow up a little bit. First of all, no one is advocating rape by trained animals, serious disfigurement, serious pain, torturing of children or anything like that. Second of all, wars aren’t always fought with kid gloves. That’s life. Lives are at stake, and these guys aren’t honorable combatants. Remember what Bill Clinton said—”we have to have a policy against torture”.
11:05 pm
Rick, did it ever occur to you that perhaps those who work for the Administration are perhaps fed up to the neck in being drug through the show trials of the Democrats?
Just a thought.
Now, here is another thought:
have you heard one word from Nancy Pelosi on any torture techniques used on detainees? No? Why do you think that is? Could it be because the techniques where designed by not only the Administration but the Congress, as well, and SanFranNan doesn’t want that to ever come out?
Nancy Pelosi if fully aware of what techniques were, and were not used. But she remains mum on the subject.
Just a thought.
11:40 pm
signing statements (where there has not been one single instance of the president invoking)
Just as an aside, you guys really don’t get why people are up in arms about signing statements, do you?
It’s not that he’s using a tool that is legally available to him, it’s the way and the amount of times that he uses it. The constitution says that the president can sign a law or veto it. Those are the choices. The problem is that Bush uses the signing statements to pass a law, but strike parts that he finds inconvenient. This creates a de-facto line item veto, which as you may recall, the Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional. Additionally, Bush has used this power more than every other president combined. From Charlie Savages Pulitzer prize winning essay on the signing statements:
WASHINGTON —President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ‘’whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush’s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ‘’to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ‘’execute” a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.
As you said (quite admirably, you’re one of the first conservatives I’ve seen that has called Bush administration’s interpretation of the constitution loopy), Bush has gotten terrible advice about constitutional interpretations. These same people are telling him that he has the right to ignore any law he finds inconvenient. I don’t want any president, R or D, to have that power.
And yes, that hearing was painful to watch.
11:51 pm
I would consider the idiots in congress the enemy, me their prisoner, and give only Name, Rank, and Serial number, along with a KMA attitude.
When you puts the clown in charge you have to expect a circus to break out. We have had 17 month of continous circus performances while they killed the economy.
There isn’t any other way to look at it, BDS is running wild in the democrat party and someone is going to have to start arresting them and confining them to a mental facility for our own safety.
The democrats are responsible for 90% of the American deaths in Iraq. Providing aid and comfort in time of war tends to get people killed. Check a recent Yale or Harvard study which verified that.
12:22 am
The idea that Al Qaeda can target Addington now that he’s been on TV is just plain stupid and dishonest. Anyone who can use Google can find innumerable pictures of him. Of course, the idea that Al Qaeda couldn’t be sure whether the U.S. waterboards prisoners unless Addington had confirmed it is equally stupid and dishonest. Delahunt was making a pointed comment about Addington’s (and his boss’s) penchant for behind-the-scenes skullduggery, not a death threat.
By the way, Yoo teaches at Berkeley, not Stanford.
1:07 am
I agree, our Government seems to be eminently dysfunctional. Recent polls show that most Americans agree (Bush below 30% approval rating & Congress even lower). Nothing seems to get done and the mean spirited squabbling is exasperating.
6:54 am
Delahunt was clearly thrilled that Addington can be identified by Al Qaida . Thats SICK. How low have these Dems gone? Can they go below the gutter?
6:40 pm
Let’s recall the steroid hearings. Why were the dhimmies wasting time on this and the kind of light bulbs we should use as the enrgy crisis grew worse and worse. Why do they offer us as a solution Magic Pixie Dust instead of exploiting known technologies and resources and encouraging practical research for alternative sources or advanced technology.
I am heartily sick and scared of the dhimmies who still believe taxing corproations will make the average working guy better off or that taxing dividens is social justice.
Show me a state where Liberals reign and I’ll show you high taxes, declining populations, and high crime.
9:04 am
This was a war of wills, but Addington and Yoo knew the ground rules well. The Congressmen would have little time to ask questions, so they both used the “Russian bear hug” technique .. use long answers .. eat up their time.
Rudeness, by the way, usually scores points to most people’s minds(i.e. view NAFTA debate between Gore and Perot).
Frankly, when hearings really don’t want any real answers, which these hearing didn’t, this is what they deserve. I’ve always wanted to see somebody give a Congressional committee a “body slam” and this is about as close as it will ever come and still stay polite.
1:52 am
Vice president of the US is a legislative not an executive office and only serves a ceremonial role in the Executive,he presides over the Senate and has the tie breaking vote.From the Senates own website:
vice president – Under the Constitution, the Vice President serves as President of the Senate. He may vote in the Senate in the case of a tie, but is not required to. The President Pro Tempore (and others designated by him) usually perform these duties during the Vice President’s frequent absences from the Senate.