When Republicans Loved a Filibuster

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By Robert Parry
January 27, 2006

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012706.html

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Supporters of George W. Bush are lambasting Sen. John Kerry for a threatened filibuster against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. But 15 years ago, their attitude was different as backers of George H.W. Bush wielded the filibuster to block a probe into Republican secret dealings with Iran that could have doomed the Bush Dynasty.

On Nov. 22, 1991, Dole mounted a filibuster against any independent Senate inquiry of the allegations that the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage deals had been, in effect, the second act of secret Republican negotiations with Iran’s radical mullahs. Dole invoked party discipline to defeat a cloture vote on funding for the probe.

Now, 15 years later, a back story of George W. Bush’s nomination of right-wing jurist Samuel Alito is that the U.S. Supreme Court could end up being the final arbiter of attempts to investigate wrongdoing by the current President Bush.

With Alito joining reliable pro-Republican votes – Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy – Bush will have an important card up his sleeve should a legal question about the President’s right to keep secrets from Congress or a prosecutor ever wind its way to the high court.

full article: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/012706.html

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.

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1. This is what I mean, folks. EVERYTHING is rooted in IranContra and BCCI

EVERYTHING.

And if you read Clinton's book, he says he didn't want further investigations of Bush1's IranContra dealings because he wanted his retirement to be "peaceful".... HOW SWEET!!!!

And our country and the rest of the world is now under the near complete control of the fascist agenda that IranContra and BCCI first exposed.

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2. Now Rumsfeld has the secret army that Ollie North wanted

and Alito will protect the Bush and his cabal from any legal action directed against their war on Americans.

Alito illegal wiretapping memo (National Archives):

Samuel A. Alito to the US Solicitor General, Memo re: Forsyth v. Kleindienst, US Department of Justice, March 8, 1984 (expressing the view that the Attorney General should be immune from suit over illegal wiretaps). Read the full text of the memo (PDF) from the National Archives. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here and in a Bloomberg article here.

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4. I don't get it - why aren't people interested in the SOURCE information

that Parry provides so well?

It would be so much more helpful when they argue against BushInc in the real world.

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5. I really thought this would sink Reagan. I thought it would hurt his aura

of imperialism that his nauseating supporters perpetuate with their revisionism.

It may be that folks need an active fight to motivate them to gather up the threads of these past scandals and weave them into the latest outrages. It feels though, like we are fighting just to get the engine started in our party, much less drive anywhere. Time will come . . .

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6. If you read my post below you can see why Reagan and Bush were let off the

hook....and I think that one move by Clinton allowed the fascist agenda to take hold WITH COVER they could never have gotten had Bush remained in office.

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7. I try to speak no evil of our Bill

I know of what you speak. It was very hard to accept at the time. There had to be some political (personal?) calculations that went beyond his statement. But that's the stuff of freepers. I've no taste for dirtying up our party's prez.

Kerry kept at it though. What's the status of the trial?

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8. Neither did I, big...until that decision came to roost. And when I read

in his own words why he made his choice, it was just too short and shallow to be believed.

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9. I was a Democrat from the Jesse Jackson wing of the party at the time

The DLC changed the rules to shorten the primary process to, in effect, wrap things up by Super Tuesday. I strongly opposed the move, loathing the DLC's influence. Years later, I was so desperate to unseat Bush that I abandoned my strict idealism and was immediately attracted to Clinton and his way of getting down and dirty, like his republican rivals. I threw off objections to his conservative positions and instincts in favor of his pragmatic approach to winning the White House.

It worked. And, you know . . . the Big Dog actually grew in the job, like a good man should. He exercised every liberal instinct available to him, every idealistic initiative was embraced with compassion and understanding. He didn't govern like a man from a conservative state. He operated from the center, but he surrounded himself with some classic, competent liberals who he listened to and respected.

But there were those times that he seemed to be someone else, someone who I could never support, like when he expanded wiretapping, his enthusiasm for 'free trade', his cooperation in finishing the dismantling of welfare 'as we knew it' that he had begun as the head of the Governors Association, his ties to Tyson, his 'friendship with conservatives like Dick Morris . . .

But, I remain as proud of his presidency as I've ever been about any politician. I remain forever grateful for his service, and the caring and compassionate way that he held us all in those big soft hands of his. I suppose I'll always set Bill aside when we find him in the path of our pursuit of the conservative cabal. I owe him that much. History will tell, anyway.

Thanks for the chat. :hi:

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10. I'm proud of much in his presidency, but the ramifications of his decision

on this have just proven to be too great. I prefer to categorize it as naivete, but, when wisdom dawned it was time to change his mind.

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3. READ CLINTON'S OWN WORDS ABOUT HIS DECISION THAT SCREWED AMERICA

...President Bush gave a big Christmas present to some former associates, and potentially to himself, when he pardoned Caspar Weinberger and five others who had been indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. Walsh's trial was about to get under way, and President Bush was likely to be called as a witness. Walsh angrily denounced the pardons as completing a six-year coverup, saying it "undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office - deliberately abusing the public trusr - without consequence." Since now none of the defendants could be called to testify incourt under oath, if there were any more facts to come out, they probably never would, Just two weeks earlier Walsh had learned that the President and his lawyer, Boyden Gray, had failed for more than year to hand over Bush's own contemporaneous notes relating to Iran-Contra, despite repeated requests to do so.

I disagreed with the pardons and could have made more of them but didn't, for three reasons. First, the President's pardon power is absolute under our Constitution. Second, I wanted the country tobe more united, not more divided, even if the split would be to my political advantage. Finally, President Bush had given decades of service to our country, and I thought we should allow him to retire in peace, leaving the matter between him and his conscience.

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There is not one word in his book about BCCI. The first and granddaddy of all terrorist banks that Bush and his administration were protecting from Kerry's investigation.