Waiting for Recess Time

By Mimikatz

Today the NY Times calls for Gonzales' impeachment if Solicitor Paul Clement will not appoint a competent special prosecutor to investigate the politicization of the Justice (or "Just-us") Department and Gonzales' lying about the Bush/Cheney regime's massive surveillance and data mining program.  No one from the regime would even go on Fox News to defend him. 

So what now?  Josh Marshall notes that while several federal judges have been impeached and removed, no cabinet secretary has ever been removed from office via impeachment, because before it came to that the President always fired or obtained the resignation of the malefactor.  But here it isn't so easy, as Josh points out. 

Of course, here, as we've noted before, there is an extra wrinkle. Gonzales isn't any cabinet secretary -- not the Secretary of State or Interior. He's the Attorney General, which means that he's the one that can and is bottling up numerous investigations into the president and his appointees. Because the senate will never give the president another Gonzales, the man is literally irreplaceable.

But if the demands for Gonzales' resignation do mount, Bush may finally take his only possible way out--fire Gonzales and recess appoint a compliant new Attorney General, maybe someone on whom they have sufficient goods to compel him or her to take the job and do it right. 

If I were Harry Reid I wouldn't give him the opportunity.  Keep a skeleton crew in DC and schedule a vote once a week.  Unless the Congress is really ready to take Bush head on, they'd be fools to leave town.

Comments

[Kagro X]

No cabinet secretary has ever been removed. But Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876.

[Mimikatz]

Right, Kagro. He was impeached after he resigned. Which is what they should do to Gonzales even if he is replaced, as a warning to the next one.

[Mimikatz]

Via Matt Stoller at Open Left, comes news of a new coalition by MoveOn, Center for Constitutional Rights and others to build a coalition for restoring checks and balances, including the Big Check, impeachment. Baby steps, but necessary steps.

[dunderhead]

Congress should Investigate before they Estivate!

No Recess! Impeach Gonzo as a summer reading project.

But our Congress critters are simply too lazy, or just too cut off from the real world to be scared.

Now me, I'm scared. And my head hurts.

[masaccio]

Orrin Hatch, anyone?

[skdadl]

The NYT editorial refers to Andrew Card as "another official." I'm still laughing over that.

[...]

>>Unless the Congress is really ready to take Bush head on, they'd be fools to leave town.<< congress has shown itself to have no backbone.. given the choice between confronting bush and leaving town, we know that most people assume they will be leaving town.. i am beginning to think the only thing worse then a bush administration is a congress such as the one operating now.

[litigatormom]

I thought Harry Reid had promised that there were not going to be ANY more Bush recess appointments for ANYTHING, even if it meant keeping a skeleton crew in the Senate during the summer break. At the time, he was worried about more "interim" ambassadors like Josh Bolton, but has there ever been a recess Cabinet appointment?

I was going to ask whether Bush would risk the public outcry, but then I slapped myself and came back to my senses.

[bmaz]

Litigatormom - Yes, in fact it has been done with a Secretary of State (Eagleburger)

[Elliott]

We all know recess was George W.'s best subject.

I so dread this recess, just dread it.

[Connie]

How can we get Senator Reid to stop Bush's recess appointments? Could Reid work in his home state and hold teleconferences with Senators to prevent Bush from making recess appointments from Crawford, Texas while he is on vacation?

[Mimikatz]

Actually, Earl Warren was a recess appointment as Chief Justice. He was appointed the day before the Court's term started (Sept 30, 1953), IIRC because the Chief Justice died in the summer, but his name was promptly submitted to the Senate and I don't think there was much dispute he would be confirmed, as he was 5 months later.

[TeddySanFran]

Eagleburger had been Acting SecState since August 1992, when JB3 left to run GHWB's re-election. GHWB recess-appointed Eagleburger for six weeks, in December after Congress adjourned, until his Administration ended in 1/93.

Good thing Junja doesn't try to outdo Poppy. *g*

I expect an Abu recess replacement if Reid doesn't mind the store. Addington for AG? Liz Cheney? Yoo?

[larue]

The dem's seem to want to play small ball, one step at a time, even when it's seemingly evident, they could be swinging from the fences.

Why?

They wanna run this out till the elections . . . take what places they get, and move on with what's already gone down.

The Republic is lost, the dem's are a part of it BEING lost.

Why?

Power, control, money, rule by the few.

Simple.

[phred]

TeddySanFran -- I agree, if Congress recesses, Gonzo will resign and be replaced by one of Cheney's henchmen. I speculated that it might be Addington the other day, but Liz Cheney or John Yoo would do just as well. It needs to be someone who knows exactly how to steer any investigations away from the illegal conduct.

Without impeachment, Congress will keep hitting the Executive Privilege brick wall. I have argued in the past that Gonzo would not resign and he would not be fired because he is Bush's firewall. Now though with the very real possiblity of impeachment his usefulness as a firewall is at an end, because Congress can compel the WH to turn over all relevant documents (including those politically inconvenient ones implicating Cheney and Bush in all manner of embarrassing/illegal conduct).

If Congress recesses, they will have handed victory to Bush on a silver platter. Unless of course they come back from their break ready to impeach both Bush and Cheney. Forgive me, while I don't hold my breath...

[John Lopresti]

With respect for the ample expertise evident in this abbreviated thread thusfar, I would expect the kabuki rigid structure of the plot to discount the importance of a concentration of chastizement upon Gonzales. We keep getting the public relations emissions such as Bush's recent proclamation about tortcha good and bad; the road this administration has traveled into the illicit is far wider than the part Gonzales firewalls so adeptly. Further, I anticipate the segue into a Rove in pro per. confrontation with Senate Judiciary Committee to add to the hype but also to cover for Gonzales, as many of Gonzales' excesses are way beyond his own 'Judge' ethics; he is covering for many other folks who believe the course selected was the only one, given their smartness of resources factor, and the eight year time span they have to control the reins of government.
In a more off-topic, yet-related consideration, I wonder if author mimikatz has worked on some of the historical background of this issue as well as a somewhat related one, that of the open meetings constructs which affect the oversight committees. What I am looking at here is a way to encourage congress to evaluate what CA did with Bagley, Keene, Brown rules for open meetings; as well as suggesting a way to increase congress' interest in revisiting a contemporizing of what constitutes that noble human tradition known as Recess Time. Both 'recess' and serial meetings to circumvent openness requirements of key committees such as G8 who were to provide oversight of the administration's wildside gambits but did not, as far as we know to this date, deserve restatement by congress; or, as the President himself recently has adopted the terminology in the fisc matter, 'modernization'. Creating Patriot to respond immediately to the chaos of September October 2001 was an initial unified act by the government; but propagating its most insidious subclauses foolhardy in less risky times, though I defer to the experts for the assessment of risk. Clearly there are a lot of thoughtful people asking to look at the subventions of due process entailed in prolonging some of those measures; and I agree with the visitor bmz regarding the peculiar track of the promotions afforded to the unelected person who wrote the law which let Gonzales politicize career civil rights legal review posts in the voting disputes section of the department of justice. I do not believe Goodling and STaylor's self-exculpatory remarks about how innocent the Merit System corruption incentive really was; though that is a side investigation.

[paulc]

FINALLY... Thank god we're finally discussing the real issue here. Bush would whack Fredo with a shovel and bury him in shallow grave in a Waco minute if he thought he could get a suitable lackey to replace him. Even a recess appointment poses problems (ie; Robert Gates)

With the exception of Addington, what's the likelihood that a new AG will toe the Cheney line completely?

Right now they're all in the same boat and must continue to cover for and protect each other but would a new AG is willing to fall on his sword for Bush,Cheney Rove and other senior admin officials at the risk of their own reputation and (he say's hopefully) liberty?

[paulc]

One more thing. Why is that that no one in the so called mainstream nedia has publicly recognized this issue? The broader public might better grasp the complexity of these various an assorted cover-ups if they realized that the sole purpose Gonzalez serves is the protection of Bush

[Paul in LA]

"If I were Harry Reid I wouldn't give him the opportunity. Keep a skeleton crew in DC and schedule a vote once a week. Unless the Congress is really ready to take Bush head on, they'd be fools to leave town."

Since Leader Reid already clarified this LAST MARCH, you really ought to catch up in your reading. He has already said he will do exactly that, and he said it five months ago.

However:

• The TRADITION that a recess has to be longer than ten days for a recess appt. is not binding.

[Barbara]

" Why is that that no one in the so called mainstream nedia has publicly recognized this issue? "

I wonder if a day our lives will ever pass again without asking that question, paulc. I wonder if at some point it will be politically favorable for them to actually report on what's going on. Until then, Thank God for blogs.