President Gone Rogue: Part I

Today is Thursday, 25 May 2006.

“In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” (Tom Paine, Common Sense)

Did the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the creature of unelected faux-president W. Bush, subvert the Constitution when it searched the Congressional offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D, LA) this past weekend?

For the separation of powers to long endure, for checks-and-balances to work, it is required that the three branches of government be co-equal. How can this be, if the Executive branch can send its agents to spy out the offices of the Legislative and Judicial, for reasons legitimate or illicit, when the Legislative and Judicial branches have no minions to do the same to the Executive?

It seems this is the only time in the history of the Republic that Congressional offices have been searched by agents of the Executive branch. Given the high value the W. Bush regime claims to place on strict and originalist interpretation of the Constitution and precedents, it seems peculiar it would cavalierly throw overboard some 217 years of practice. Especially given that many members of Congress have been investigated, and some convicted, without need of ransacking their offices.

That the offices of the Legislative and Judicial branches should be immune from invasion by agents of the Executive in no way means that the former are “above the law.” Their position is like that of spouses in a marriage, who cannot be compelled to give testimony against one another, since society judges that preservation of confidentiality within marriage is a greater priority than testimony. Likewise, society has judged that preserving the independence and co-equality of the Legislative and Judicial is a higher good than the evidence which might be obtained from violating their offices and records.

Ah, some would say, but there is equality: the Legislative and Judicial have the power of subpoena to compel the Executive to testimony and production of evidence. But who can enforce those subpoenas, if the Executive resists? How many battalions have the Legislative and Judicial?

Let us recall one of the great lessons of 1776: in the final analysis, the power of the State rests upon the power to coerce obedience to its dictates, which is to say, on the viability of police and military power. It is for this reason that the Constitutional Convention hedged in the powers of the Executive so closely, for the Founding Fathers had seen what had been done when absolute police and military power rested in the hands of monarchs.

Do we really want the FBI to have carte blanche to ransack the offices of Federal legislators and judges, with ample opportunity to spy on political opponents of the regime or plant fabricated “evidence”? The same FBI which has proved time and again cringingly subservient to the illegal political machinations of American presidents, going back to J. Edgar Hoover assuming command of the Bureau in 1924. (Cf. COINTELPRO, the FBI's 1960s-70s Counterintelligence Program which conducted illegal surveillance and disruption against political dissidents.)

This is, of course, only one skirmish in a far larger war: the Bush Junta’s war to emasculate the Constitution and subvert the Republic into a society dominated solely by the federal Executive power. A society in which the Executive is free to go to war on personal whim, without a Constitutional declaration of war, and on fabricated evidence, free to illegally wiretap, kidnap, and torture, free to sign bills into law while simultaneously issuing public statements boasting of his “right” to ignore those laws, etc.

Tune in tomorrow for “President Gone Rogue, Part II: The Theory of the Unitary and Plenary Power of the Executive.”

In the meantime: Quis custodit ipsos custodies (Juvenal). “Who shall guard the guardians?”