Bush:"you can interview my people" Dems: "under oath" Bush: "you mean, so they HAVE to tell the truth? No way!"
posted by
Wally
7:15 AM
Listening to the Bush administration talking about their "extraordinarily generous offer" (which, as a questioner at yesterdays White House Press Briefing said, heretofore shall be known as "EGO") to allow specially chosen members of Congress to hold private interviews with Rove, Meirs, etc. you'd think they were talking about donating body parts. Come on, they do interviews every day with the press, in front of cameras, with the public watching. The only difference is, when the news media does the interviews, they're allowed to take and publish the transcript of the interview. So why is Bush so afraid to allow Congress to transcribe these "interviews"? And why is he so adamant that his people avoid of being "under oath"? Can it be that he's afraid that a sliver of truth might slip out? Could it be simply that, after 6 years of deception and secrecy, they don't know how to tell the truth?
Unfortunately for the Bush gang, Congress is no longer under the control of his lapdog Republicans - they want to know what the hell is going on, and they're not afraid to ask for it.Subpoenas for Rove and other top White House aides were expected to be authorized Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. A House panel took similar action Wednesday, but held off issuing the subpoenas.
(snip)
Countered Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: They came up and said, 'This is our offer. Take it or leave it. Accept these papers where we've erased 100 pages or more so you don't even know what's on there. Do a closed door hearing where the public has no idea what is said and they're not under oath, and if you don't like that, take it or leave it.' Well nobody's going to take that."
(snip)
With authorizations in hand, the Democratic chairmen of the Judiciary panels, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Leahy can issue subpoenas at any time, but they haven't done so yet.
They also could continue to negotiate with the White House, with the threat of subpoenas as a bargaining chip.
Chicago Sun Times Meantime, Tony Snow (among others) has been pushing the White House talking points trying to weasel out of having to tell the truth to Congress, and to the American people (you know that "of the people, by the people, for the people" part of the Constution). When pressed about why Bush refuses to allow a transcript of the interviews in the White House Press Briefing yesterday, Tony Snow kept referring to the "EGO" - as if that offers proof of the openness and honesty of this administration. Over and over he repeated that if the Dems were interested in the truth they'd just accept the EGO and not make a "spectacle" of things. To that was ask, if the White House isn't afraid of the truth, why are they so afraid to take the oath and answer questions in public. What are they hiding?
This is way longer than I intended when I started writing, so I'll close with this little beauty:Q So, Tony, back when President Clinton was citing executive privilege to keep internal deliberations in that White House from being talked about in Congress, you wrote -- now famously -- .....
Q No, no. But you wrote quite eloquently about this. You said, "Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold the chief executive accountable. We would have a constitutional right to a coverup."
MR. SNOW: Right. Now let me --
Q So why were you wrong then and right now?
MR. SNOW: Because this is a not entirely analogous situation. I've just told you what we have, in fact, offered to make available to members of Congress. And what we are doing is we are holding apart confidential communications between advisors and the President. And that is pretty standard practice in White Houses. But, again --
Q It's exactly what the Clinton administration talked about. You'll note, by the way, that this came directly from the TRANSCRIPT of the White House press briefing.
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