Jan
14
House Judiciary Committee Report
Filed Under Uncategorized
The House Judiciary Committee issued a report on abuses of power by the Bush Administration called “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.” The report is a comprehensive exploration of all the ways in which the Bush administration abused its powers.
The report covers abuses that are familiar: secret domestic wire-tapping, torture, extraordinary rendition, and so on. But it also highlights - putting first and foremost - a section called “Politicization of the Justice Department.” It explores in detail the way in which the Bush administration used a department with enormous powers, which is supposed to administer the law impartially, for partisan purposes.
The report points to the prosecutions of Governor Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, and Cyril Wecht, as well as Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor and says, “Each of these matters presented at best a questionable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and they often involved charges that appear to have elevated routine political fund-raising or similarly mundane conduct into aggressive federal criminal charges.”
It is difficult to argue, in light of the extensive, detailed evidence compiled in the report, that the Bush administration was not engaged in political prosecutions. Congress has subpoenaed extensive information in connection with these matters and is still awaiting many answers. The report seems designed to remind people that Congress is still demanding a great deal of information about these prosecutions and that once the new administration comes in, a great deal of that was previously hidden will likely be released.
You can read the full report here.
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