Informed Votes

What we expect from Congress is that legislators are fully informed on the legislation upon which they vote and that, prior to the vote, the legislation is given a full and fair hearing. Never to my knowledge has legislation so often been rammed through as it has been in this Congress, with none of the legislators fully informed and the process specifically designed to circumvent debate. It is what one would expect to see in a banana republic. It is an atrocity, though some of the criticism for legislators goes off afield when it comes to calls for legislators to read every line of every piece of legislation being proposed.

Obama said that he wanted to remake America. He has attempted to do so by bypassing the processes built into our system to insure Democracy works. It worked with the stimulus. It has worked in the House with cap and trade. Obama tried mightily to do this with socialized medicine and a vast overhaul/expansion of financial regulation. But the electorate are pushing back - which we damn well should, since this violates the very spirit of our democratic form of government. That said, criticism goes afield when it calls for the legislators to "read every line" of every piece of legislation.

Democrats, instead of addressing the substance of this problem, are focusing on the narrow issue of "reading every line." There is no better example of that than Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH), a congressman who voted for Obama's stimulus and cap and trade. There can be little if any doubt that he voted for those bills without being aware of all that was in them. No one who voted for those bills did. Yet he tries to obfuscate his responsibility for those fundamental failings by shifting the issue:

Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02) believes reading every bill in Congress “would slow down the business of Congress to a crawl and it would be hard to get done what needs to be done.”

Members of Congress who don’t read the bills they are voting on “is not necessarily the major problem with the way Congress functions,” he said.

Hodes, who is the sole Democratic candidate in the race to replace the retiring New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, made the remarks during a recent editorial board meeting with the Nashua Telegraph.

“Hodes said it’s not realistic to expect members of Congress to read every bill word-for-word, as Congress took more than 2,000 votes in the session that ended in December,” the paper reports. . . .

Congress - and Hodes - should be vilified for their votes on stimulus and cap and trade. It violates every tenet of our democracy. We have every right to demand legislators understand what it is for which they are being asked to vote. But on the very narrow issue of "reading every line," Hodes has a point. It does not matter how an individual Congressman gets his knowledge of a bill, it only matters that they have the knowledge and they don't vote for legislation that has not been given a full and fair hearing. Those on the right and left who are rightly angered at what they see happening under Obama need to tighten their criticism - otherwise, people like Hodes and the other hundreds of his cronies that violated our democratic tenets will escape their responsibility.

(H/T Hot Air)

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Reality, Hypocrisy & Politicizing Policy Differences

A fine piece of legal research out of Yale Law School answers the questions, how have the laws of torture been interpreted by prior administrations and what interrogation techniques have they viewed as lawful under those interpretations? And in an act far transcending "mere hypocrisy," the Justice Dept. will refer two of the drafters of the Bybee memo to their state bar associations for consideration of discipline up to and including the loss of their right to practice law. Yet even as they do this, the Justice Dept. is arguing in a seperate case that a court adopt the central legal theory espoused by the writers of the 2002 memo. It would be hard to imagine an act of greater hypocrisy.
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Compliments of Powerline, we now are able to access an impressive piece of legal research on the history of our interpretation of the law of torture and the history of our post-WWII interrogation programs. From Powerline:

The Yale Law Journal Note on interrogation law and policy by William Ranney Levi has received considerable attention, plus requests for the link. I understand that the Note has not been published yet, but it can be downloaded from this link. Click on "download." If that doesn't work, click on "SSRN" on the next screen you see.

I would strongly recommend taking a look at this document. It is rather lengthy. Ultimately, the well documented conclusions of the author are that: a) the law of torture sets an unclear line that is subject to a range of possible interpretations, though history shows that in times of need, all prior administrations have taken an expansive view of what was allowable under the law; and 2) the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Bush Administration do not amount to any significant change from prior types of interrogation techniques deemed legal by past post-WWII administrations.

Indeed, to the extent that we see any break with traditional interpretations of what was deemed allowable under the law, it has come from President Obama and the extreme limits he has now placed on interrogation of terrorists. Powerline has more, here and here.

According to reports released yesterday, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is now recommending that two of the authors of the Bybee Memo - Justice Bybee and John Yoo - be referred to their state bar associations for possible discipline. There will be no direct criminal prosecution of any of the OLC lawyers, but this end result still amounts to the criminalization of policy differences. Both Yoo and Bybee are still in danger of losing their livelihoods, it's just that Obama has now kicked the responsibility for doing so to the states. (Apparently Obama does hold some belief in federalism - who knew?) This is not over by any means. And there is still the issue of the Obama Justice Dept. vowing to cooperate with a Spanish Court in that court's criminal investigation of these individuals.

All that said, what takes this to a whole new level is that the Obama Justice Dept. is currently arguing before a court that one of the central legal theories articulated in the Bybee Memo should be adopted as controlling law. This from Powerline:

Meanwhile, far from actually believing that the most notorious "torture memo," written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo in 2002, was a criminal act, the Obama Justice Department has just filed a brief in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in which is adopts and endorses the Bybee/Yoo thesis. Andy McCarthy has the details. Of course, it shouldn't be surprising that DOJ has adopted the Bybee/Yoo analysis as correct, since the same approach was endorsed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Pierre v. Attorney General, on a 10-3 vote. So the "criminal" policy of the Bush Justice Department is also the law as elucidated by the Third Circuit, en banc, and the policy of the current Department of Justice.

What we're witnessing here goes far beyond mere hypocrisy. In three months, Barack Obama and Eric Holder have succeeded in politicizing DOJ and bending it to their partisan ends, to the point of threatening their predecessors with baseless criminal prosecution as a form of political harassment.

Read the entire post. We are well on our way to banana republic status. If Obama has been able to do this much mischief to our nation in the first 100 days, imagine what might be in store in the next 1350 or so?

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