A New York State Of “Mine”
John Dean, in his 07/25/07 post, says that “Conservatives fight dirty and dishonestly.” As a former member of the infamous Nixon White House staff, he would certainly know. Just today comes proof of Dean’s charge against the neo-confidence men:
“If there are cover-ups, the public has a right to know what has been covered up,” Mr. Bruno said, speaking to reporters at Saratoga Springs, the Associated Press reported. He said the [executive] office “has seen fit to abuse the power of that office to spy and track and attempt to really destroy what apparently the [executive] office considers a political rival,” according to the Associated Press.
Strong words! Do they emanate from a Congressional Democrat seeking to uncover the mysteries regarding the political terminations of US Attorneys across the land?
They do not.
At the national level, the contest over that issue is still being contested over the extra-Constitutional claims of executive privilege.
These words come instead from the New York State Legislature, where Republican members there are making charges against Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer which echo the charges levelled against the Bush administration by Congressional Democrats.
But here’s the difference. Spitzer has suspended or demoted members of his staff for misleading him over the use of the New York State Police to investigate Republican State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s use of air and ground security escorts. Has Bush done anything similar when confronted with charges of malfeasance by aides? No, he has not. He has, in fact, strongly defended their disdain for Congressional subpoenas. [The Bush administration is no stranger to the political use of subpoenas or the controversy they engender.]
But in getting back to the opening uproar, despite the political nature of many of Bruno’s trips, he has regularly been granted the use of state aircraft and security personnel by Gov. Spitzer’s office, even though the New York Times reports that - like Bush - Spitzer leads an office whose “us-versus-them mentality” is at the root of the riot.
But unlike the Congressional Democrats v. Bush, the GOP opposition is cheering the hits they have scored, loudly proclaiming that “The steam is gone from the steamroller” and “Eliot has blown reelection” whether that is truly the case or not.
Why is it that the abuses detailed by the report written by a fellow Democrat rate such a hue and cry comment as “a major scandal reminiscent of Watergate” [Baruch College public affairs professor Doug Muzzio] due to “a chief executive’s office spying on the opposition and then lying about it”, when at the national level the defense rests on the idea that a similar Congressional investigation for similar Executive branch crimes against the populace would “assail the concept of executive privilege” [White House Press Secretary Tony Snow]?
Returning to John Dean: “… authoritarian conservatives want the world to ‘Do as we say, not as we do.’” They also express this alleged “superiority” through ideas like ““The only moral abortion is MY abortion” and “The only True Religion is MY Religion“.
Such anti-democratic elitist notions must be defeated. To accomplish this defeat, it may well take some to ask the rest the vital questions: “How do you know when you are losing your freedom in a democracy? How do you know if you are colluding in the demise of freedom and justice? And how can you regain them once they have been lost?”
The short answers: Look around you [More here]. Doing nothing - “no matter what outrages the government commits against the Constitution, civil liberties, and the rule of law” [Laurence M. Vance] - is collusion. You can’t - not without outside intervention - which for us isn’t going to arrive.