JUST WHAT IS SO HARD FOR REPUGLICANS TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT TAKING THIS OATH?
The right-wing (mis)understanding of Government
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.
This all used to be so basic. But the belief that the DOJ exists to advance the interests and wishes of the President has become a central premise of how our Government now works. The Justice Department has been transformed into but another cog in the instruments of Government that protect and serve the President. And that transformation isn’t unique to Alberto Gonzales (who, during a CNN interview while Attorney General, actually referred to Bush as “my client”), as The Washington Post‘s Dan Froomkin pointed out yesterday:
Michael Mukasey has President Bush’s back.Mukasey succeeded toady Alberto Gonzales as attorney general last fall. But the notion that he would restore independence to that post took a big hit yesterday when he refused to turn over to a House committee key documents related to the CIA leak investigation.
Mukasey may have a better reputation than Gonzales, but it turns out he is just as willing to use his power to protect the White House from embarrassing revelations.
That’s why a former White House official and top right-wing activist like Blakeman can go on television and simply proclaim (without anyone contradicting him) that the President is the Attorney General’s “client” and that whatever the Attorney General does to protect the President is accordingly justified in the same way that a standard lawyer’s duty is to protect “his client’s” interests. Obviously, Blakeman’s understanding of the most basic aspects of how our Government works is painfully ignorant, but — thanks not only to the Bush administration but also to one of the most derelict Congresses in history — that view also now accurately reflects the reality of how the Government actually functions. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/18/blakeman/
The AG of the US is supposed to represent the people of the country, not the White House. In fact, he is supposed to prosecute members of any branch of government who violate the Constitution. Where did this old codpiece get his opinion of his position — from Karl Rove? The Bushites must have something big on him — pictures in the bus station men’s room or in the hay with a chicken. What an embarrassing and dangerous disaster Mukasey has turned out to be.
Comment by RS Janes — July 22, 2008 @ 6:24 pm
our ELECTED EMPLOYEES are supposed to represent THE PEOPLE too but they don’t! Is it something in the water? Surely the bushites can’t have dirt on EVERYONE… OR CAN THEY?
For the architect of Dubya’s destruction of Constitution and Bill of Rights and his being above all laws, read about David Addington, described by Jane Mayer as Dick Cheney without a sense of humor in Madness and Shame @ http://www.truthout.org/article/madness-and-shame.
Comment by kerry — July 22, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
Addington’s a monster, all right, as are the rest of the gang. I don’t think the Bushites have dirt on everyone — some of them come from places like Messiah College and Liberty University so they’ve already been brainwashed and wrapped in plastic — others are paid-off, like that a-hole Brad Blakeman, or just plain dumb, like Dana “Huh, what’s the Bay of Pigs?” Perino. (Maybe she thought ‘Bay of Pigs’ was a reference to the White Hosue.)
Comment by RS Janes — July 24, 2008 @ 7:10 am