YOU CAN'T SUBPOENA ME I'M THE PRESIDENT
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19480518/

I wonder if this will rush to the Supreme Court like Bush v. Gore did.

I mean, the best part about rejecting these subpoenas is that they aren't even doing it under the guise of national security, which they always seem to be doing. They just claim executive privilege and go on with their day.

I mean, they are essentially saying that they can't turn over documents when someone accuses the president of not doing his job because in order to do his job they need not be turn-overable.

Was this at all unexpected? I just hope they find their balls and impeach his ass for contempt of Congress.

Hello President Cheney. :(

Meh. Bush is a lame duck now and he knows it. He truly has little incentive to cooperate with or capitulate to both Congress and the American people.

He's acquired his two terms. He bullied his way into Iraq, served in the President's seat while Saddam Hussein was deposed, arrested, tried and put to death. He basically finished his daddy's war. He lasted twice as long in the job as daddy, too. That's gonna be a witty rejoinder at the next family dinner!

The current situation in Iraq, that's not really his problem anymore. All Bush has to do is maintain the status quo. Don't push too many soldiers in, don't pull too many out. If the liberals want to bring the troops home, they can do it when they have a candidate in the White House. Hussein was toppled. The war against terror was waged. Surely history will vindicate Bush as a bold man of action!

No, all Bush needs to do now is wait. Let his detractors stomp around and shout big words. Big words never prevented Bush from doing what needed to be done. Big words won't oust him from the Presidency now. There's no need to worry about solving crises before 2009. If someone else wants the job so badly, then they'll have to take on the burdens that come with the position.

Yup. Bush's executive pension is assured. Come January 1st, 2009, his life will be a leisurely series of library dedications, charity dinners and paid speeches. Maybe he'll play some more golf and frown in a concerned manner as his limousine drives by some homeless people. All while enjoying the vast family oil fortunes. Yup, life sure is good for ol' G. Dubya.

So what if he obstructs Congressional hearings? So what if he makes a mockery of the very purpose of executive privelege? He's got no sway over Congress and he's disliked more than ever by anyone who doesn't have a Bible shoved up his or her ass. Fuck 'em all. Don't you get it? GEORGE W. BEAT SUDDAM HUSSEIN. No president before even came close. If the man who beat Saddam wants to keep a few documents secret, who are we to argue? SUDDAM FUCKING HUSSEIN, MAN.

Anyone who wants to remove a hero like G.W. Bush over a few, miscellaneous papers is simply unamerican! You'd expect that kind of thing from the British or maybe those worrywart Frenchies. Questioning our leaders is like questioning the flag - you just don't do it! By refusing to kowtow to those guttersnipes in Congress, Bush is sending the message, loud and clear, that good, old, American pride is alive and well in the Oval Office!

Let's see a Democrat weild a pair of testicles like that!


God, Bush is a twat.

Crash's post is the exact reason why the 22nd amendment should be amended again.

Funny how it's only now, that Congress actually decides to take some responsibility to keep the executive branch in check.

What if we impeach both? Could be worth it!

What I hear is that congress can step around this executive privilege is by stating outright that the president has violated federal law. They're not going to, because that would be incredibly awesome, but they could.

Which will do nothing at all, because a conviction is virtually impossible.

Hell, I'm still giddy that the Amnesty Bill fell through today :3: God damn thing gave me the chills.

True, but the problem isn't the firings necessarily, but the lying to Congress. Since Bush never testified, he wouldn't have a problem, but if the courts force the subpoenas, it could make a life a living hell for a couple of very important people in his administration.

Too bad this administration only has a little over a year left.

But, yeah. Hello President Pelosi if Bush AND Cheney got the axe. Ahahaha wishful thinking. :(

too bad this administration only has a year left in it, because you want them impeached?

dude hella shortsighted to the nth degree

Missed my point. But thanks for playing.

But wasn't this essentially the same logic used by Republicans when they impeached Clinton in 1998?

(Fuck me, I'm old. That shit was nearly a decade ago?)

I dunno how I feel about her grandkids being close to The Button.

If Bush can show restraint...

My good sir, you do insult to Pelosi's grandchildren by comparing them to President Bush.

That would be the day the white house is flooded with angry US citizens.

Go ahead and try and impeach him I guess, but his term is almost over so it wont really do any good.

Then what was your point if it wasn't lol president Peloski?

The fact that impeachment hearings haven't already started for these criminals is ridiculous. Wait, no, I take that back... I don't honestly expect either Bush or Cheney to ever be impeached, despite them running around with breaking the law left & right. What's worse is that the media is passing this off and not even mentioning impeachment. Not to mention the public thinking that everything is alright (also who's gonna be the next American Idol)(really who is it gonna be?)(seriously). Who fucking cares if he's only got a year left in office or a day, the fact that this isn't being dealt with should be putting people into riots.

I'm just waiting for someone on the hill to have the balls to call this administration what it really is... a dictatorship.

Dictatorships excerise complete and absolutely unrestricted power. They typically possess the ability to completely squelch any and all naysayers with little or no reprecussions.

To say the Bush Administration in anyway resembles a dictatorship is simple demagoguery.

Other than restore faith that the American Political system isn't entirely broken to the billions of disillusioned people across the world watching the disaster that is this administration?

Impeachment is quite simple since it just requires a majority vote. Conviction, while difficult, is not impossible to believe since (A) the proof that he's guilty is quite evident and (B) even his own party doesn't like him.

Guilty of WHAT?!

Be fucking serious.

Okay, what about a plutocracy? Shadow government? I can come up with more names if you'd like. The fact is that just because you have absolute power does not mean you go around flaunting it. Especially when you are parading around as a shining beacon of freedom and democracy.

Show to me where George W. Bush has absolute power. If he had absolute power, he wouldn't need Congress to do shit. Whatever he wanted would be the law of the land based on his executive fiat and that alone.

I don't think you understand the concept here. He needs the Congress to keep the appearance of a democracy. How good of a facade would it be, if the government didn't at least go through the motions of functioning properly? Besides, congress is a great distraction for the American public. If Bush (really now, its Cheney) wants something, he'll just sign an executive order for it. Or maybe they'll just tack on an amendment at the last minute on a bill that is sure to pass.

Yeah, the whole idea that an executive could just order something and have it become the law is just absurd and it could never happen in America! Never!

Not answering a subpoena is Contempt of Congress, a criminal offense. Did you not read my post?

The President and the executive branch have a thing called Executive privilege . That privilege exempts the particular information Congress wants from subpoena.

At least that is the argument of the Bush Administration. Whether or not it is a crime is to be decided by the federal courts. Until such time a federal court says that the Administration has to surrender the requested information to Congress and the Administration refuses, they have committed no crime.

So I'm going to have to ask you to try again, fuck boy.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the purpose of THE LAW to make sure that no one goes ABOVE IT?

Circular logic, I know. Thing of beauty.

Contempt of Congress has a long history of being upheld by the courts. Bush's definition of 'Executive Priveledge' has none. So until Bush's views are upheld, a crime has been committed. Try again.

Just subpoena Cheney. He's not part of the executive branch, so he can't claim exec privlege.

Has this joke been made in this thread already?

You have an interesting understanding of the criminal justice system. You see, although LEGALLY SPEAKING a person is innocent until proven guilty this does not in fact literally render them innocent in reality. The public, in their infinite wisdom, is free to judge the crazy man who, though for the moment presumed innocent, is still drenched in blood and intestines and shrieking about Baphomet. "They didn't catch me yet, so that proves I didn't do nothin" is an argument for 7-year olds.

Jesus, your logic is like a pretzel made by 5-time repeaters of the 3rd grade. "If he retroactively decides - by imperial fiat - that what he did wasn't a crime... than it wasn't! Case closed."

And yet this statement does nothing to refute the fact that until a federal court says that the Bush Administration has to surrender the requested information and the Administration subsequently refuses that no crime has been committed.

So let's stop this silly fucking dance, shall we? Show me a crime Bush has committed or please shut the fuck up. You won't, because it doesn't suit your agenda to do so, but it was worth a shot.

Pang? Drop the track! Goddamnit.

Yes, we all know that you are a Republican, Phoenix, and that you wouldn't necessarily have brought any of these points up had a democratic president been the subject.You are one of the few people on this earth who will still defend the Bush administration blindly, republican or no.

That being said, the judicial system has yet to prove Bush 'guilty' for any behavior unbecoming of a president, true. People break laws all the time, each of varying quality and severity but thats not the focus here.

The focus should be not which law was/wasn't broken, but which laws were taken advantage of, manipulated by the Bush administration for selfish economical reasons, to the detriment of not only the American people's trust but the welfare of the people of Iraq and the rest of the world.

Such laws that protect the president from facing proseution for eavesdropping in on the American people without a court order, possibly need revision. Lying in court is the least of my worries. How about lying to the people in regards Iraq having "weapons of mass destruction" and falsifying information as a reasoning for defending "freedom"? How about sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives in the name of "freedom"?

For sure, defending "freedom" shouldn't entail going in and killing tens to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians on foreign soil.

Morally speaking, the man's hands are already quite dirty, whether Bush knows it or not is besides the point. He will likely serve the rest of his term and be clean of any wrongdoing because of this 'Executive Privilege'. Perhaps that is a privilege which bestows upon the president, the capacity to play God. To decide who lives, who dies and who gets the shaft without facing any repercussions whatsoever seems like it should be wielded with a little more responsibility and decency.
Who knows, maybe even history will look back upon the man fondly, but I'll be damned if at least a few people won't remember just how shitty this administration is.

So, keep loving you some Republicans and keep defending them blindly.

-Theodore Roosevelt

I don't support Bush blindly at all. Matter of factly, if he were up for re-election, I wouldn't even vote for him. I agree with Bush in principle alone and quite frankly, he is indeed the lesser of two evils.

I can deal with a largely incompetent guy with good ideas, but not a party who advocates everything this country has fought against for the last 70 or so years just so they can buy votes.

Not like it matters anyway. Bush will be gone, the Democrats will win the White House in 2008 and the systematic dismantling of the American superpower will go into full throttle. So stop fucking whining. You guys are gonna get what you want anyway - socialism, America abrogating its sovereignity to the UN, and world 'respect.'

Oh don't be so dramatic. If the Democrats fail to grow a pair of balls and Republicans start talking about ending the war, we could be looking at another Republican majority with a Democratic president.

Not too bad with the Clinton presidency, all things considered.

Funny NP would mention dismantling America as the world's only superpower under a democratic president.

Not blindly loyal to your party indeed.

Night Phoenix: Contempt of Congress is a crime of omission. You don't need to prove he DID anything - his inaction is in and of itself criminal. The court proceeding is largely a formality - "We subpoenaed him to do this. He didn't."

AND YOU KNOW WHAT SOCIALISM BRINGS...

COMMUNISM!

buy war bonds, make victory crops, etc

Love that Cold War thinkin' you got going there, but uh, the USSR has been gone for over a decade, buddy.

Also, christ, my eyes are now lodged looking in the back of my head from rolling them too much at all of this circular logic.

"But what he did was wrong!"
"Ah, but he hasn't been convicted!"
"Yes, but he abused a law into preventing justice from being made."
"No court has said that he did or didn't. He isn't guilty of anything!"
"Listen, can I just shoot you and get this over with? Hell, if I don't get arrested by the police and go through the courts, it's like I never did it at all!"

Shoplifting is illegal. It doesn't matter if the culprit is apprehended and convicted. The act itself is condemnable under United States law. A person who steals is a thief, regardless of their police record.

Saying that Bush is innocent of obstruction and contempt of Congress is only a technicality, in that he hasn't actually been convicted. But this does not cancel the act itself. He is still prosecutable.

I remember when Bill Clinton was being interrogated. The Republicans bitched and moaned for weeks when Bill said "Define "Is.""

Nearly a decade later, Republicans are saying "Define "Guilty.""

Oh, sweet irony.

They're also saying "define 'executive branch'" which could be one of the scariest things I've ever heard considering they're saying it after 6 and a half years.

It has nothing to do with the Soviets. Yeah, they lost the Cold War, but the strange irony is that the economic philosophy they advocated is slowly, but surely starting to creep up on America. And it's not just the Democrats, it's some of these Republicans, too. It's part of the reason I've become so disillusioned with American politics and I don't even bother to vote anymore.

But the thing that is in question is whether or not the Bush Administration, under the guise of executive privledge, has to give Congress the documents they've requested. That is why I say that until a federal court rules that the Bush Administration cannot invoke executive privledge in this instance that no crime has been committed.

No wonder America's headed down the drain so quickly...

And by the way, no, we don't need Cold War era Russia to have Communism. That's the first time I've ever heard someone try to make that argument. It was interesting for those 1.5 seconds until it met total failure.

lol "try" to "make" that "argument"

If you'd like to believe I'm trying to do anything, go right on ahead.

The only total failure I see here is you.

And?

Exactly what is the problem with socialist values sneaking in? Before you start pointing fingers at the catastrophic fall of the USSR, bear in mind that their ideas about communism were pretty heavily tainted by the functional dictatorship they were running at the same time. Sharing of economic resources tends to be at cross-purposes with consolidating all power into the hands of a few, and all that, not to mention the toll their forced industrialization and Stalin's purges took on the nation.

It's all good and well to toss around socialism like a scary word as though it were an understood fact, but those of us not in the choir need a little more explanation.

Socialism means more government control, less economic prosperity, even less of an incentive to be prosperous because an ever-increasing amount of your prosperity will be seized to subsidize everyone else's lifestyle. It is a recipe for widespread mediocrity.

It is my firm belief that the creation of a social welfare system in the United States will be the one thing that really does us in.

See how successful Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are? All three systems are in a state of insolvency for the long-term barring break-backing taxes. The public education system - an exercise in being habitually fucked up.

Those of you who advocate socialism know good and well everytime the government touches something, it gets turned into absolute shit. You just have such a hatred for capitalism and the profit motive that you'd rather subject all of us to bullshit.

It could be because socialist systems are woefully inefficient and lack the ability to generate significant capital because they encourage people to underperform. I mean, this is why the French elected Sarkozy. At some point there's going to be a generation that's fed up with fronting the bill for the previous one's excesses.

It's essentially the same argument behind Court interpretation of the Constitution. Something isn't technically unconstitutional until the Supreme Court declares it to be so. I mean, US courts didn't even start interpreting the 2nd Ammendment as a collective right until the 1930's. It doesn't matter how stupid the decision is, it sets precedent.

This is essentially the same argument that Night Phoenix and the White House is making. It doesn't matter how much you don't like it, it isn't technically incorrect.

What's so bad about mediocrity? No, seriously. I could live with a lot of government control if it's done right. I don't think the government we have now is controlling things appropriately (not that I claim the ability to fully wrap my mind around the absurdity that is our current political landscape), anyway.

Also, isn't it the desire for personal prosperity that causes a majority of the injustice in society? Correct me if I'm wrong. It's not so bad to give to other people, by the way. In high school, at least where I live, kids are required to perform community service. I think it's healthy.

Could you elaborate about how you see social welfare as the US's downfall? I won't necessarily disagree and call you a fucktard. I'm just curious.

Capitalism does suck when it's licking consumerism's ass all day and night.

The fact that someone could seriously ask that question is actually a great example of what's so bad about mediocrity.

I fail to see how, exactly. Requiring someone to perform community service to graduate doesn't do anything towards making someone a better citizen or person. The kind of people who would enjoy doing community service aren't the ones who would need to be better people, and those who could stand to be better would be more likely to resent having to do it and learn to avoid it.

All of which says nothing about trying to fit this community service in among school, extracirricular activities, work and sleep.

Ah, there's the rub. How can you determine whether or not something is being done "right" in an instance where you have a state-run monopoly? The only way to do so is to judge by comparing to other nations. So by comparison, Cuba and Zimbabwe are shit poor, China is transitioning into a market economy, and the Soviet Union, oh that's right, fucking collapsed.

Now Western Europe is facing serious economic reform because their massive welfare states are economically insoluble, and they're falling behind significantly in productivity compared to Americans and the Chinese.

Well you might as well get into the territory that there's no selfless act. Injustices occur because certain actors act to benefit themselves at the expense of someone else. A government monopoly doesn't make this situation any better, in a lot of ways it makes it worse. The only thing which could be worse than state monopolies are state-backed cartels, which is basically how our healthcare industry operates.

You are very right. It's not so bad at all to give to other people. That's why there are thousands and thousands of charities that recieve billions of dollars in donations every year and why the vast majority of entreprising poor people opportunities to better themselves that are vastly superior to anything that was available even as recently as 100 years ago.

The mistake that Socialists ( and Democrats and Republiccans and every other political party ) make is the belief that because they should have the right to make everyone else pay for what they want. Socialists want perfect income equality; instead of buying land in Montana and forming themselves a nice commune, the vast majority of them want to get to get others to subsidize their lifestyles. Democrats want free healthcare and retirement benefits; instead of donating to charities themselves to make that happen, they force everyone else to pay for it. Same thing goes for Republicans, Greens, whatever. But that's for another thread.

I think the point that a lot of people are missing in this whole executive privilege debate is the fact that Bush did not come up with this theory. Washington first used an argument very like executive privilege (although it was not called that back then) to deny papers relating to his negotiation of the Jay Treaty with England to the House. Presidents Jefferson, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Clinton all invoked executive privilege. Many of them had to back down from their positions once a court ruled against them. Maybe the same will happen to Bush. But to say that Bush should be impeached for this is nothing short of batshit crazy insane.

Much help from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege in the above paragraph.

Hmm. Not to get off too much on a tangent here, but socialism doesn't seem like a brilliant idea. I mean, one of the ideas behind socialism is income equality, right? Won't this negate the average citizen going above and beyond the call of duty? Won't this sterilize the need for competition, one of the things that has made America what it is today economically? Won't it completely piss off Phoenix Night? You're goddamn right! I kind of understand PN's reasoning for not appreciating Socialism...

Anyways, I don't think America will ever become Socialist in nature. I think our country will continually get more liberal, but there will always be a legitimate number of conservatives to ensure that this never happens.

To remain on topic, the current administration feigns "executive privilege" to run things in accordance to a very centralized political scheme, sometimes involving kidnapping diplomats in countries where it isn't allowed (CIA in Italy), killing lots of civilians and most recently, not providing documents to an inquiring court.

Its clear that current administration's tactile stupidity is making many Republicans realize that liberalism seems much more appreciable, possibly converting them. In my eyes this is a fault of the Republican party for nominating such fools.