GOP Tilting Balance Of Power to the Right By Jim VandeHei

The campaign to prevent the Senate filibuster of the president’s judicial nominations was simply the latest and most public example of similar transformations in Congress and the executive branch stretching back a decade. The common theme is to consolidate influence in a small circle of Republicans and to marginalize dissenting voices that would try to impede a conservative agenda.

House Republicans, for instance, discarded the seniority system and limited the independence and prerogatives of committee chairmen. The result is a chamber effectively run by a handful of GOP leaders. At the White House, Bush has tightened the reins on Cabinet members, centralizing the most important decisions among a tight group of West Wing loyalists. With the strong encouragement of Vice President Cheney, he has also moved to expand the amount of executive branch information that can be legally shielded from Congress, the courts and the public.

Now, the White House and Congress are setting their sights on how to make the judiciary more deferential to the conservative cause — as illustrated by the filibuster debate and recent threats by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and others to more vigorously oversee the courts. …

The transformation started in the House in the 1990s and intensified with Bush’s 2000 election. The result has been a stronger president working with a compliant and streamlined Congress to push the country, and the courts, in a more conservative direction, according to historians, government scholars, and current and former federal officials.

Some of the changes, such as a more powerful executive branch, less powerful rank-and-file members of Congress and more pro-Republican courts, are likely to outlast the current president and GOP majority, they say. …

“Every president grabs for more power. What’s different it seems to me is the acquiescence of Congress,” said former representative Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), a government scholar at the Aspen Institute. …

Bush has demanded similar loyalty from GOP lawmakers — and received it. Republicans have voted with the president, on average, about nine out of 10 times. Critics and some scholars charge that the Congress now seldom performs its constitutional duty of providing oversight of the executive branch through tough investigations and hearings.

This has coincided with a dramatic increase in overall government secrecy. In 1995, the government created about 3.6 million secrets. In 2004, there more than 15.5 million, according to the government’s Information Security Oversight Office. The White House attributes the rise in information the public cannot see to the security threats in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world.

But experts on government secrecy say it goes beyond protecting sensitive security documents, to creating new classes of information kept private and denying researchers access to documents from past presidents.

“We have never had this kind of control over information,” said Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University. “It means policy is being made by a small clique without much public scrutiny.”

Now, the Republicans, with the support of the White House, are looking to reshape the courts in their image.

Profiles in Flinching By Charles Krauthammer

The five losses were to be expected. Three were New Englanders: two from Maine (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) and one from Rhode Island (Lincoln Chafee). No surprise here. They are a different kind of Republican, the almost extinct liberal Republican, and they might actually have been acting on principle.

Then there is John McCain, who is a party unto himself. Add to that John Warner, who decided to go against his party for what can only be called constitutional vanity. He sees himself as a lion of the Senate.

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

RE: “GOVERNMENT SHOULD Not Set Wages” column by John Dendahl

…. American capitalism has a long history of human exploitation. Dendahl seems not to understand that capitalism is an economic system that exists within, and is subservient to, our political system of representative democracy. Politics is about people. Economics is about generating wealth. Capitalism is a good economic system for generating wealth but a lousy one for distributing it.

When wealth is not distributed, that is when wealth — and, along with it, power — are allowed to concentrate in the hands of a few, you get an oligarchy. When our government sets wages, it is acting to prevent the concentration of wealth and power and thereby is preserving our representative democracy. That is not only government’s prerogative, it is government’s duty. …

ANNE KASS
Albuquerque

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

If this thing passed, the bottom line would be that businesses would raise prices enough to cover it and then everyone pays more. Communism failed in the Soviet Union and now even China is leaning toward capitalism to revive its economy. Why some people are trying to revive communism in America is a mystery to me. …

I may not be correct about what the answer to this problem is, but I am sure I know what it is not. It is not to rob people who educated themselves and got a good job to give money to those who did not have time to get an education and become a viable and desirable job seeker.

DANNY OLIVAS
Albuquerque

Inmates Alleged Koran Abuse

One prisoner said in August 2002 that guards had “flushed a Koran in the toilet” and had beaten some detainees.

But the Pentagon said yesterday that the same prisoner, who is still in custody, was reinterviewed on May 14 and “did not corroborate” his earlier claim about the Koran.

Three years in Guantanamo might affect someone’s memory — or his willingness to anger his captors.

What exactly is America getting out of Guantanamo? mjh

Amnesty International released a report calling Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time” and labeling the United States “a leading purveyor and practitioner” of torture and mistreatment of prisoners. Amnesty and the Constitution Project, a legal advocacy group, made separate demands yesterday for an independent investigation into allegations of detainee abuse at U.S. facilities. …

“The refusal of the U.S. government to conduct a truly independent investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers is tantamount to a whitewash, if not a coverup, of these disgraceful crimes,” [Executive Director William F. Schulz, Amnesty International]….

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: “The allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity.”

[mjh: Well, McClellan’s word is all I need.]

ABQjournal: Village May Buy Open LandBy Carolyn Carlson, Journal Staff Writer

One of the largest pieces of open land in the village of Los Ranchos could stay open space if officials approve a purchase agreement with the owner Wednesday.

Trustees will be asked to approve an agreement with Paul and Kandace Blanchard to buy about 17 acres along the north side of Paseo del Norte between Fourth Street and Rio Grande Boulevard.

“One of the priorities of this administration is to acquire as much open space as possible,” Mayor Larry Abraham said Monday. …

Abraham said prior appraisals of the property showed it was worth about $3.2 million. On Monday, he estimated the purchase price will be close to $2.7 or $2.8 million.

Joe Craig, chairman of the village’s Open Space Committee, has said acquiring the property would be a step in the right direction for the village. He said the land would bring back a community feel to the North Valley, which he said it has lost over the last couple of decades to development. …

Abraham said the village would try to combine the Blanchard property with another 20 acres of open space to the east.

From a regional perspective, acquisition of the Blanchard property creates an open space anchor on the north side of the Rio Grande State Park, he said.

“These pieces (of open space) could be connected by foot, bike and horse trails to create an urban network of what the valley used to be like,” Craig said.

Abraham said another property the village would like to acquire is the largest piece of open land in the village. This is about 50 acres where Anderson Vineyards are located. It could be bought for between $3 million and $5 million, he said.

Abraham said they are still working on ideas for this acquisition.

Real Side Radio: Jenna Bush Says “No More Butt Dancing for Me,” Volunteers for Iraq. Media Wakes Up.

Picture Jenna Bush making the announcement, with W’s arm around her shoulders: “I don’t feel right clubbing. I don’t feel right doing the butt dance on bar tables while other women my age are giving life and limb for this country. I’m going to Iraq to show how much I agree with my Dad’s war.”

[mjh: read it all (link above) — it’s blistering.]

Journal Gazette | 04/25/2005 | Frist frosts Democrats with filibuster talk at faith forum

Charles W. Colson, head of Prison Fellowship Ministries [and Nixon’s hatchet man], also appeared by videotape. He said Senate Democrats are trying to use the filibuster “to seize what they lost at the ballot box and to prevent the appointment of judges, holding the judiciary hostage.”? Their actions, he said, “are destroying the balance of power, which was a vital Christian contribution to the founding of our nation.” [?!?!]

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, spoke from the church’s pulpit and criticized the Supreme Court, seven of whose nine members were named by Republican presidents. The court’s majority, Dobson said, “are unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they’re out of control.”