Attorney General Asks Congress to Defy Supreme Court

[davidbikman]

To begin understanding what happened today during the Attorney General's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, you need to read both the Times' and WaPo's accounts. Neither of them, however, fully communicate the horror of BushCo's relationship with the rule of law.

David Stout of the Times leads with Gonzales' suggestion that Congress should simply ignore the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Hamdan and approve the Bush administration's rules on military tribunals. As Patrick Leahy asked Gonzales during the hearing:

"The question is very specific. Is it the administration’s position, as one of your assistants suggested, that we should simply ratify the military-commission procedures that the president designed and the Supreme Court struck down in Hamdan?"

"That would certainly be one alternative that Congress could consider, Senator Leahy," the attorney general replied.

The nation's chief law enforcement officer has just suggested that the U.S. Congress legislate in clear defiance of the Supreme Court. Am I the only one who's neck hairs are standing on end?

David Stout's story rightly notes that it was Bush who prevented the Justice Department's internal watchdogs from vetting the legality of the domestic wiretap program, but lets Gonzales' justification (that too many clearances would have jeopardized the security of the program) skate without challenge. It's Dan Eggen's story in the Post that points out that many attorneys at Justice were given clearance in order to carry out a criminal investigation of how the program was leaked; it was only those lawyers whose responsibility it was to advise on the program's legality who were blocked from looking at it. A clearer display of this administration's priorities can't be found.

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