30
Jul
In which the LA Times proves embarrassingly indulgent of lying
If you haven’t yet seen this last Saturday’s LAT lead editorial, it’s a real winner and sign of just how much the Emperor’s Clothes Era is still with us.
What a sad and embarrassing editorial, embarrassing for those of us who have been LA Times readers all our lives [There's a photo of me 'reading' it at age 3 on the front stoop next door, like father, like daughter] and who care about the integrity of our local but also national paper. And what a sad and embarrassing emblematic commentary the “D.C. cease-fire”* editorial is on the times we live in as far as the state of our Fourth Estate goes.
* web title; in print, it was titled “Truce or Consequences”
It’s old news that the MSM have become alarmingly complicit in their deferences to power à la Bush/Cheney. It’s newer news that the public at large has turned a corner and majorities see the validity for impeachment proceedings against an unprecedented unholy alliance, the President and the Vice President both in demonstrable violation of the Constitution and particularly the separation of powers and respect for checks and balances which are vital to that dear Constitution. And yet here is the LA Times seeing the White House’s latest obstructionism and defiance of their Constitutional limits and responsibilities as reason for compromise, for letting President Bush get away with his defiance of Congressional oversight and his unprecedented breadth and depth of secrecy and imperial dismissiveness.
Instead the LAT endorses a compromise “floated” by Specter and Schumer. (Bad enough that Sen. Schumer was party to the drafting of the compromise. He’s heading the expeditionary force on a mission to have a special investigator on Gonzales named and yet he thinks it’s okay to skip the “oath” part of getting testimony?). This floater — by allowing subpoenaed witnesses to the US attorney politicization scandal, which taints our entire judicial system and any nationwide respect for the rule of law and fairness, to ‘testify’ without being under oath — essentially amounts to saying, “Just come down to the Congress for a chat. We don’t care if you tell us the truth. Anything but the truth will suffice.”
Where have we come to? Those of us old enough to have attended by radio and TV the daily painful march toward eventual hard-earned truth in the Watergate hearings shudder in disbelief to hear that today’s equivalent of John Dean, namely Harriet Miers, should be excused from testifying under oath rather than being held to exactly the same standard of public service — to truth and the Constitution, not to a President — which John Dean was. Our era makes the Nixonian “long national nightmare” look like sanity incarnate.
But what baffles — the very thing that destroys “upbringings” of all kinds, research shows, namely inconsistency of behavior by the “adults” — is that today, Monday, the LAT comes up with a very sane “Al Qaeda on the brain” lead editorial (called “Bush’s Folly” on the web — do they ever use the same title on web and in print? is that emblematic of the schizophrenia here, the having it both ways?). The gist of the editorial would almost make you think LAT editors watched and really listened to Bill Moyers last Friday night (the second segment, precisely on Al Qaeda on the brain, and worth reading/watching if only to be amazed that an instructor on terrorism at West Point still has a job — well, it’s only Monday — given his perspective and advocacy. Oh and don’t skip too fast over the first segment either, especially if you’ve got an ear for more horror-stories of Congressional ‘earmarking’ practices amok).
So, what happened? Did these same LAT editors mis-set their TiVOs back two weeks ago and miss Moyers’ July 13 program entirely on impeachment including a set of rationales, from both sides of the political spectrum (Bruce Fein and John Nichols), that could never allow a listener paying attention to come away with their own rationales for indulgence of Executive Branch lies and defiances of Congressional oversight still afloat?
You don’t compromise away the Constitution, not its checks and balances, not its separation of powers, not its power vested in the people nor their right to know, nada. Whassamattah widgyou, LAT?
Please don’t tell me you think the likes of Miers, Bolten, and Rove — after all the evidence of this administration’s relationship to truthtelling — would say anything remotely reliable (even half-truth, quarter-truth) if not under oath. Irrealis koolaid, anyone?
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
The LAT is on a breathy campaign for “compromise” in the US attorney fiasco. On July 11 its pathetic editorialist, apparent leader of one of the weakest large-paper opinion pages in the country, published “Privilege has its limits” with a subhead stating that it would “behoove” president and Congress to compromise.
Well, “behoove” is a wimp word, and altogether suited for the Times’s flaccid editorials. Right off the bat, the subhead contradicts the headline; where are the limits on executive privilege if you compromise by letting Miers et al lie to Congress without penalty? Because that’s exactly what the Times advocates.
There are gigantic holes in the argument for a compromise between Bush and the Congress. The Times cites – as it reverses the meaning of – the Supreme Court decision in U.S. vs Nixon, which actually said Nixon’s executive privilege didn’t overrule Congress’s right to information. The Times says, “Presidents should be able to confide in aides and to solicit advice without it being made public.”
Well, first of all, the Times’s support of executive privilege falls flat because Bush claims he had no role in the firing of the U.S. attorneys. Exactly what executive privilege, then, could he claim?
Second, allowing Bush aides to give unsworn testimony is no compromise. It’s a surrender. There’s strong evidence that administration officials lied under oath and are getting away with it. And yet the Times advocates allowing them to lie while not under oath?
What good will that do? At least perjury is a crime and can be prosecuted. Saying that the current Supreme Court isn’t likely to support a congressional criminal investigation is a sorry excuse for giving up on sworn testimony. And there’s no evidence of that supposition anyway – as bad as the Roberts court is, it has, if rarely, ruled against Bush. This kind of editorial hypothesizing has no place in a paper of this importance on an issue of this magnitude. That sorry rationale is akin to that claiming impeachment proceedings shouldn’t be attempted because they’ll fail anyway.
All this in support of Congress compromising with Bush by allowing unsworn testimony. Then the paper says Bush also has cause to compromise if he wants to avoid the process of a special prosecutor’s investigation. The paper quotes Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island saying senators have not yet discovered a “smoking gun.” And of course there’s no smoking gun. Yet. That’s because the administration is lying through its teeth, hiding and destroying evidence, and figuratively flipping off the Congress and the public.
The LA Times, in other words, says both Congress and president can benefit from compromise: Congress, because this way it won’t face losing in the courts; and the president, because compromise might help Bush keep that smoking gun well-hidden. Allowing unsworn testimony – is that an oxymoron or what? – will only ensure that the smoking gun is never found.
What a miserable stand for a beacon of journalism to take.
Wait. Scratch that “beacon of journalism” stuff.
July 30th, 2007 at 9:52 amIt should be noted that even if Gonzo wasn’t under oath during an earlier lie-fest, lying to Congress w/o an oath is still a crime. It surely is impeachable, esp. at the level he took it.
Likewise, if Democratic leaders publicly say in comments that find the way to top editorials that they want to “compromise,” especially at this point, we must be at amateur hour. Even if you HAVE to compromise, you don’t show your hand like that. Not that I think they should.
This sort of thing is poisonous. They have a potential here, if they only fight and grab hold. If they don’t, the future can be quite dark.
July 30th, 2007 at 5:35 pmJoe, it probably hasn’t exactly seemed as though I’ve been restraining myself from criticising Democrats too much during the past few years, but at this point I feel as though I’ve been giving them way too many benefits of way too many doubts. You’re right, on both the amateur hour and dark future scores.
Montfort, does unsworn testimony mean nobody gets to swear?
July 30th, 2007 at 5:44 pm