Post by soaks on Jul 19, 2008 5:31:20 GMT -4
This is also related to Sometimeman's posting on election fraud:
blairsvillecity.proboards104.com/index.cgi?board=politics2&action=display&thread=2099
From Glenn Greenwald's Blog at Salon.com
Friday July 18, 2008 08:19 EDT
The right-wing understanding of Government
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
Brad Blakeman is a former Deputy Assistant to President Bush and is currently the CEO of Freedom's Watch, the group formed last year at the American Enterprise Institute by some of the nation's largest GOP donors (and Ari Fleisher), devoted to advocating the neoconservative agenda. On Wednesday night, Blakeman was on the Dan Abrams Show discussing the White House's refusal to turn over to Congress FBI interviews with Bush and Cheney in the Plame investigation, based on a brand new form of executive privilege invented by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Here's how Blakeman justified Mukasey's obstructionist actions:
Look, what you have is a very smart attorney general who's trying to protect his client and that's the president of the United States, an executive privilege.
That is about as warped a view of how our Government is supposed to work as one can imagine. The core attribute of the Justice Department is independence, not allegiance to the President as "client." The President has his own lawyers in the White House Counsel's Office. The Attorney General is not and never was one of those lawyers. To the contrary, the Attorney General represents the people of the United States -- if he has any "client," that's who it is -- and is often required to take positions and actions adverse to the President. Few things could subvert -- and have subverted -- the American justice system more than thinking of the President as being the "client" of the Attorney General.
For the rest of the story (with citation links):
www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/18/blakeman/index.html
Users comments can be found here:
letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/18/blakeman/view/?show=all
blairsvillecity.proboards104.com/index.cgi?board=politics2&action=display&thread=2099
From Glenn Greenwald's Blog at Salon.com
Friday July 18, 2008 08:19 EDT
The right-wing understanding of Government
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
Brad Blakeman is a former Deputy Assistant to President Bush and is currently the CEO of Freedom's Watch, the group formed last year at the American Enterprise Institute by some of the nation's largest GOP donors (and Ari Fleisher), devoted to advocating the neoconservative agenda. On Wednesday night, Blakeman was on the Dan Abrams Show discussing the White House's refusal to turn over to Congress FBI interviews with Bush and Cheney in the Plame investigation, based on a brand new form of executive privilege invented by Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Here's how Blakeman justified Mukasey's obstructionist actions:
Look, what you have is a very smart attorney general who's trying to protect his client and that's the president of the United States, an executive privilege.
That is about as warped a view of how our Government is supposed to work as one can imagine. The core attribute of the Justice Department is independence, not allegiance to the President as "client." The President has his own lawyers in the White House Counsel's Office. The Attorney General is not and never was one of those lawyers. To the contrary, the Attorney General represents the people of the United States -- if he has any "client," that's who it is -- and is often required to take positions and actions adverse to the President. Few things could subvert -- and have subverted -- the American justice system more than thinking of the President as being the "client" of the Attorney General.
For the rest of the story (with citation links):
www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/18/blakeman/index.html
Users comments can be found here:
letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/18/blakeman/view/?show=all
