I think the concluding sentence of your 12:38PM March 7th post would be an excellent follow-up to Constant’s long post in the ‘Insta-giants/Bloggers…’ thread. So I’m wondering if you might permit me to cut and paste it to there — or perhaps — and better — you might do so yourself, with whatever adaptation you think necessary or fitting.

Regardless of your decision, you might like to consider this title as an ideal companion to the Lazare book:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-1579549551-3

See ya.

I, too, think that a show about whether our form of democracy needs to be updated would be great. I don’t understand why a document written over two centuries ago, can’t be re-examined. After all, many of the writers of that document were slave holders. Certainly, we have a different perspective on humanity now. And, yes, the arrival of the Corporation in the 1800s and its rise as the 4th branch of government was not in the test models discussed by the founding fathers. (The very fact that it was only written by men suggests that we go back and a get a more balanced perspective.)

I think it would be cool to have a project where we write a new constitution! Can we have a thread about that? It might even see more action than the morality thread….

Constant wrote: “There needs to be mechanisms to remove the Executive and Congress when they fail to assert their oaths and protect the system.�

Thomas Jefferson might offer the most realistic answer:

“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?�

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

Fortunately, the grand jury is ably guided by a competent US Attorney, Mr. Fitzgerald.

One issue is data; the issue before us is the statute protecting the name. The two are completely different.

Plame’s name is not a simple “declassification of data” — rather, the statute specifically prohibits anyone from revealing the name of a CIA Operative’s name. One issue relates to data access, the second applies to the protection of people. The statute prohibits revealing the name of a CIA agent — this in not to protect information, but to protect a person.

I completely disagree with the notion the Vice President may declassify something using the Executive Order as foundation, for two reasons:

1. The Youngstown Case shows us that Executive Orders must be consistent with statute; at no time may the President or Vice President “authorize” someone to violate the law. Whether someone in government or their legal counsel in New York chooses to proffer this before the court is a separate matter.

2. It is a red herring to confuse the issue “authorized to declassify something” [which may or may not be true, but irrelevant]; and the issue of “whether one can or cannot reveal a CIA agent’s name.” Whether Libby actually believes this “defense” is a separate matter, but has no bearing on whether he did or did not violate the statute barring conduct against this revelation.

American Culture: Devoid of credible public legal advocates

The world has taken the bait on the “declassification” issue — that applies only to information that can be declassified; it is a separate matter whether or not someone has violated the law in revealing an agents name.

If we are to believe that “anyone” can “comply with the law” by ignoring it, then this tells us alot about the public’s willingness to embrace non-sense; and the government/media’s propensity to spew forth this non-sense without any challenge. As we have seen with Iraq, both the media and government-judicial system fell down: They embraced non-sense, and absurdly believe this will not be challenged.

- – - -

Issue 2: The current discussion:

1. Question: Have we lost control of what we know, and what we’re allowed to know?

We are not without power to inquire, use other methods, and make adverse judgments. It is permissible – when the Executive refuses to cooperate – to make conclusions.

Whether Congress does or does not want to act on this adverse judgment – and impeach – is a separate issue. But the argument that “impeachment is just a political tool� should not be the excuse to do nothing in the wake of high crimes, abuse, and malfeasance.

The problem is twofold:

A. This Congress has allowed the President to absurdly “reclassify� something that is in the public domain;

B. The President is given the exclusive power to fire the Inspector Generals. What’s needed is a system that will reform the lessons of the special counsel problems, and inject this system of oversight-audits into the Executive Branch. Possibly creating for congress an NSA-like monitoring system that is directed that the Executive Branch.

What’s needed is a method to strip the Congress of legislative immunity when they continue to appropriate money for unlawful conduct. Once Congress continues to assent to violations of the Constitution they no longer can credibly claim legislative immunity, and are attached to the subsequent unlawful, unconstitutional conduct.

2. Question: As Cheney has pointed out directly, this administration believes that the executive branch’s natural constitutional power has been curtailed since Watergate; is all this secrecy just a puffing of constitutional muscle?

For the Executive to dance and puff unconstitutionally, two other branches must assent to that unlawful conduct. One can only “puff� muscle if one assent to that puffery. At best the Senate Intelligence Committee has turned into the cover-up committee; at worst they are complicit in the war crimes. Hitler didn’t arise simply through brute force; he rose because the nation assented to that unlawful conduct. No different in America.

Cheney is delusional and believes in non-sense. Get real – Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Black sites, war crimes in Iraq – plenty of evidence that the constitutional muscle is being flexed despite laws to the contrary.

3. Question: Do we need to trust the executive in a time of war?

No, that’s why Congress has the power to declare war – and they have not made such a declaration. The founding fathers in Federalist 47 and 51 remind us that no executive is to be trusted.

To suggest the Executive’s argument “we’re at warâ€? means anything asks us to ignore the constitutional principle: The Constitution is neutral in its schedule –the Constitution was written to apply during both peace and war, not when the Executive wants to follow it or explain it away. This executive has violated the constitution with the unlawful NSA activity, and Congress assents to those violations.

There needs to be mechanisms to remove the Executive and Congress when they fail to assert their oaths and protect the system. The states need to have a Constitutional convention to discuss this self-evident failure of the current system of “checks and balances� and remedy this well known defect with accountability. It’s clear that the threat of “losing one’s seat with an election� does nothing to mitigate the continued appropriations for unlawful wars.

4. Question: Are there long-term dangers to secrecy that we haven’t begun to recognize yet?

Yes, by “focusing on the long term� we are encouraged to ignore the current problems: Chipping away, rationalization of misconduct.

5. Question: What about all those revisionist Reagan histories that never got written?

Unclear what you’re trying to say with this. Need more discussion on what you’re trying to say.

Google helped me find sourcewatch.org

BUSH Regime? – How about instead Bush administration.

“The public was not informed that having a U.S. military presence could fuel an intifada and lead to civil war.� Odd, I heard that as an average citizen paying attention to the news prior to the invasion. What a secret!

Of course the office of the Vice President’s should remain as a the do nothing post described by Thomas Jefferson rather than a working part of the administration. The fact that Governor Bush ran office with the stated purpose of using Dick Cheney and other experienced leaders as an integral part of his administration is irrelevant.

Opensource is stuck on Daniel’s “Left� Shore.

It’s amazing how the press including Mr. Shore showed great deference to the Clinton administration in withholding information on Whitewater, the death of Vince Foster, and “Hillary Care�.

Too bad NPR was effective as fighting the oversight of the CPB board.

See second reply to CCM for more feedback, however.

CCM, re your 6:08PM post: LOL! And right on.

Another ‘right on’ to your 7:33PM post, but here’s some food for thought regarding this from you: “there is an inherent power struggle between the citizenry (the vast, invisible branch of a nation) and the government. Both struggle to avoid serving the other, both struggle to reduce the control over the other.�

We ignorant Americans don’t seem to know or to care, but in state-of-the-art 20th (and 21st) century parliamentary democracies, the executive can’t play such effective secrecy games with the voters because the executive is drawn from the parliament – and representatives in those systems – which sport vastly fewer lawyers than our legislature (see book recommendation below) – aren’t nearly so willing to delude their constituents for the good of the party. The recent blowups and flaps in Blair’s government – which are not genuinely parallel to the seemingly similar ‘mini’ scandals of the Bushies – bear this out.

So, regarding this: “Should the government serve the citizenry, or should the citizenry serve the government? Many issues of transparency and how they should be managed boil down to this tension … a struck balance is difficult to achieve…�

In parliamentary democracies, the government is viewed as the implementer of the will of the citizenry – not as an elected but sovereign (and coercive) quasi-adversary.

If you don’t believe me (and my assertions based on extensive time discussing this sort of thing with the highly civically-involved citizens of Sweden and Greece), please check out Daniel Lazare’s The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution is Paralyzing Democracy Harcourt, Brace, & Co.; 1996) http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-0156004941-0.

I know I’m surely developing a reputation as an obsessive for so frequently suggesting this book, but it’s for a damn good reason. These problems of our government, from the seemingly simple problem of voter interest and turnout, to these vexing questions of congressional integrity and executive imperiousness, are all a by product of an experimental blend of democratic impulse and the founders’ simultaneous fear of democracy (which they dubbed something like ‘mobacracy’, if memory serves).

So, they gave us a republic only one step removed from monarchy (we elect our ‘king’ to four year terms, while skipping altogether the British ‘prime minister’ model), that was rigged to favor the propertied over the ‘ignorant masses’.

And we seem so smug with our constitution that we’re not willing to question whether or not two centuries worth of untrammeled development of corporate power and international commerce hasn’t perhaps nudged it into obsolescence.

To one who has read the Lazare book, it’s blatantly obvious that this is exactly what’s happened. (And I feel more strongly than ever that this is worthy of an hour of ROS.)

Over and out from one-trick-pony Nikos.