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Scrutinizing House Judiciary Report TPM Citations
The House Judiciary report cites TPM four (4) times.
This information may be useful in
We reviewed the citations for accuracy and share the results, after the jump.
The House Judiciary report cites four (4) TPM articles. This review narrowly looks at the quality of the citations, and back-traces the attached arguments within the report with the original comments at TPM. We extrapolate from a statistically insignificant sample size to possible issues warranting public discussion, further analysis, commentary, and oversight.
We share this information to encourage the public to take a critical view of the House Judiciary Report: Do not get lost in the details, but ask why it took this pile of evidence for the Congress to still not stop funding nor timely confront the Executive. Until those obstacles are removed, Exeutive legal consel should be expected to do the same.
The American public is not required to cooperate with a government that defies written law. New systems of oversight and power delegation are perepetualy on the table as a check on abusive government power.
Relevance Theory
The citations help gauge how precise the final product was fact-checked before publication. The citation errors give a sense of attention to detail, the timing of the publication, and the extent of staff review.
We can compare the way the TPM-citations are couched to how the information was originally presented on TPM or other sources. This will give an indication how the report might be skewing, glossing over, or reframing information.
Findings Summary
Citation 1
This citation shows the Judiciary Report did not ensure the published report matches the original citation.
The citation is incorrect, raising questions whether Judiciary staff relied on software to check items which should have been manually fact checked.
The staff writing the House Judiciary Report changed the spelling of the name, did not leave the original text as it was, and did not include in the published report "stet". It appears the staff saw in the original House report before publication an apparent spelling error, but did not check the original source before changing the spelling or formatting in the published report.
Timeline
There's another aspect to this note related to timelines. The House report provides a long narrative related to the US Attorney firings. This information sets the stage for subsequent actions.
In our view, this segment of the House report is misleading. The House report suggests there is a "backdrop", but appears to rely on a creative twisting of the timeline. The House Report implies that there was a large effort before detailed reporting; and that government-led inquiry was swiftly moving with the gathering momentum. The truth is the Judiciary Committee was behind the power curve, did not independently assert power, and was an obstacle to the growing momentum calling for an impeachment inquiry.
House Report [Emphasis added]
We encourage TPM readers to independently review the above language in the original report, and compare the citations the House Judiciary provided re the Government Reform Committee Reports. The cited Government Reform Committee documentation didn't get released -- "emerge" -- until after the reporting prompted government inquiry in 2008.
A close reading of note 58 shows us the "backdrop" for the House Judiciary action in 2007 was on the back of reports not released until May-Oct 2008, long after the public reporting on the US Attorney firing scandal started and Gonzalez had long been replaced. This is a convoluted timeline which defies reason.
It's unclear what the House Judiciary Committee is referencing, or whether it is referring to other documentation it has not fully disclosed or cited. This remains an issue for the Judiciary Committee leadership to explain, not for the public to attempt to independently reconstruct.
Inadvertent disclosures about privileged communications can be the basis for a court order to strip that US government official of reliance on that claim of privilege. The public should discuss methods, when, as now, Members of Congress disclose internal deliberations, how it will proceed to compel disclosure of that disclosed communication.
The public should discuss the options to hold Members of Congress accountable to the same mandatory disclosure standards applicable to the Executive Branch on issues of privilege.
Information is gathered to support decisions. This Congress appears more interested in gathering information, regardless its relevance or accuracy, and avoid making decisions to punish the Executive.
It is difficult for the leadership to justify the Congressional inaction while the Congressional leadership asserts it was sharing concerns about supposed mounting piles of concerns.
Members of Congress and their staff have a legal obligation to to defend the Constitution from reckless incompetence and maladministration within the Executive Branch. Yet the reports from Tamm suggest the Congressional staffers knew of illegal activity, but were not removing themselves, but turning a blind eye.
The House Judiciary report is either misleading on the timeline; or it has fatally disclosed that the leadership well discussed concerns, but did not agree to fully assert its oath of office using all lawful options including funding withholds. There was nothing forcing any of the committee leadership, with this many "concerns," to release any favorable committee report related to the questionable activity.
The House report appears to be fabricating a timeline to have the public believe that the committee was in charge, leading the way; and that the public was reacting to this committee momentum with additional reporting. This is misleading and a smokescreen over what appears to be Judiciary Committee unwillingness to timely assert power related to the non-government-generated fact finding and inquiry.
The House Report leaves the incorrect impression that it was leading the way, and subsequent reporting confirmed what the Committee was still unearthing. The opposite is true: Despite the public reporting, the Committee was not swiftly moving to hold hearings and impose legislative punishment for these abuses.
Even if we accept the House Judiciary Report as true -- that there were "reports" within the Committee leadership, not yet published until 2008 -- the question is: Why did this admitted-to internal communication not prompt internal decisions to act, as opposed to not aasserting power through funding withholds until the Congress was satisified with the responses from the President?
Arguably, it is reckless when Committee leadership are aware of a problem, but they continue to fund a questionable operation while they "wait" for a straight answer. Wrong answer. If the Exeutive will not cooperate with Congressional oversight, that funding should have been stopped. At a minimum, Congress should have conditioned additional funding streams with burdensome requirements giving the Executive the "easier option" of cooperating. Inexplicably, Congress did not, as it should have, exercised that option.
The funding streams did not stop. There is only one reasonable answer: Despite the legal duty to enforce the Constitution against domestic enemies, the Members of Congress and their staff knew of a problem, did not act, failed to assert power, and despite questions provided funding to a larger pile of questionable activity. The purpose of having a Parliament was to take away from the King the exclusive power to spend money. Congress missed this lesson, rubber stamped 2001-9, but, as an after thought, issued a report detailing its complicity with this reckless spending, mismanagement, and illegal activity.
Congress was absurdly waiting for the Executive branch to agree with the oversight before Congress first moved to shut off funding until the President cooperated. Arguably, this is a reasonable basis to raise questions of Member of Congress alleged malfeasance, especially given the Geneva and FISA implications during wartime. Nuremberg showed that policy makers can be adjudicated with war crimes when they engage in malfeasance and refuse to confront illegal activity.
It appears the House Judiciary Committee is rewriting a timeline, focusing on a pile of evidence, but has no reasonable explanation why it did not shut off funding -- as required -- pending Executive Branch cooperation and compliance certification. At a minimum, Congress should have increased oversight, attached more strings to the funding, and created more conditions for the Executive to comply until he fully met he legal obligations under the US Statute, Geneva, and FISA. Congress refused to do this.
Our job, outside Congress, must be to examine what Constitutional reforms are required to ensure that a lazy Congress does not, as this one continues to do, defer to the Executive Branch; but does condition funding on continued Executive Branch legal compliance.
he memo from the 30th, is a clarification of comments made to TPM. The memo is not signed or dated on the last page.
Textual Reference
It does not appear House Judiciary staff used the citations to independenty fact check the published inforation contained within the report. Had there been fact checking on this citation, the staff should have caught the inconsistency between (a) the name of the cited statement connected with Kengle; and (b) the cited title for that TPMM-URL for the Kiel by-line.
The citation at note 173 does not match the information available at the provided link.
The House Judiciary-provided URL does not go to the cited article name, but to a TPM-reposting of the original article posted here. During fact-checking, staff should have placed the Judiciary-provided URL into the web-brower, then noted the cited title and by-line did not match the text in the citation. The House Judiciary citation should have stated, "Available through ___" or "Referenced here ___, available here."
The information in the House Judiciary report matches the text lifted from the TPM website at the cited URL and the original memo.
However, fact checking of the citation would have revealed the error in the citation, and inconsistency between the citation and the information within the TPM by-line. Indeed, the text in the three (3) sources match, suggesting the real source of the quote (and incorrect citation) was not the citation or the supposed original source, but something else.
There are intermediary steps which Judiciary has the burden to disclose. House Judiciary has the burden to reconcile this inconsistency with a coherent explanation.
The "intermediary step" appears to be a secondary software system which stores information, prepares that citation, and automatically retains data. The error appears to be the failure of the staff to ensure that the citation software correctly links the citation in the software with the real citation and text.
These embedded rules must be understood and mitigated before the House Judiciary Staff publishes information. Something fell through the cracks.
The process used to oversee the production of this work product needs to be reviewed in the context of: What oversight system have we developed, did we develop a review process that would catch these things; and how can we apply these insights about our internal operations to ensure we understand what analogous processes broke down in the Executive Branch. The Judiciary Staff needs to demonstrate it is taking the time to understand what it failed to do; and generalize these lessons before continuing its engagement with the Executive Branch.
Going forward, the same risk-assessment must be done on the tools and methods the Executive Branch was using; and understand the robustness of the Executive Branch's mitigation plans.
Judiciary Staff are hinting that they may need additional oversight within their area of analysis before they can independently apply these lessons to a different branch of government.
The House Judiciary appears to have had high confidence in the information provided within the quote; but did not re-check the citation to determine that the citation would go to the quoted material. The link goes to the information, but not to the matching TPM by-line.
It appears Judiciary learned of the cited quote, not the cited article, through TPM; but then changed the source from the original TPM reporting to the citation of the former DOJ employee. It appears they found the quote, then tried to find the source. This process appears to have been incomplete. A complete process would have linked to the correct TPM URL with a proper citation; or it would have linked to the currently published URL with a comment about embedded comments. One or more steps did not happen. This is not how a Judiciary Staff should do staff work, nor document information.
We believe the House Judiciary likely knew of the information through informal talks with TPM; then helped facilitate posting of information on the TPM website and providing background information to TPM off the record.
It appears as though someone on the House Judiciary staff would have known about the content of the information provided to TPM, but did not think to ensure the published citation correctly provided readers with the by-line on the TPM website at the cited URL.
It appears Judiciary knew of the document and contents independently, but wanted to give credit to TPM, not the real source of the information about the quoted material within the House Judiciary document. It's possible to find the information, but the cited URL would logically trigger a citation that cites Kiel, not the DOJ attorney; or the opposite: A different URL, directly to the TPM-hosted statement.
- Why didn't Judiciary cite the real source of the information?
Someone appears to have communicated with the House Judiciary staff office with the information, then someone retroactively attempted to find a public source; then assign that source as the citation. That is not how citations should work. The correct citation should be, "Hand delivered document on ___-date, by staff member, available from ____ website."
The House Judiciary Comittee appears to have a source of information that it does not want to disclose; is getting information through methods it does not want to reveal; and has incorrectly assigned the "source" to a citation that it did not really use. Had the documented source within the House Judiciary report been bonafide, the staff would have noted the dates in the citation do not reconcile with the public information; and that the citation does not match the documents and real sources they relied.
Again, this supports the reasonable conclusion someone retroactively did something; or they did not do something before publication. Not only was the stepped skipped, but there was no detection of this lapse before publication. Until these discipline issues are confronted, the public should reasonably expect Congress to gloss over "lapses" within the executive branch.
Until Congrss understands what's broken down in its supervision process to report credible, correct, traceable infromation within its documents, it is not well positioned to detect much less challenge similar potential issus within a competing branch of government, especially where the executive is not cooperating nor providing coherent answers. Those incoherent exeutive branch responses will only be credibly challenged and detected if Congressional staff can demonstrate they have a coherent, robust, and traceable process in house to do the same on a work product within their exclusive control.
Applying Details About This Citation To Oversight On Executive Branch Action
This detail is important when analyzing whether the President and WH-DOJ legal counsel similarly retroactively did something. It appears the House Judiciary is not conducting exacting oversight on its own documents. Similar flaws in the President's explanations should not expect to be detected or confronted.
The public cannot reasonably expect the House Judiciary Committee or its staff to credibly track whether the "authorizations" for abuse were or were not reasonable if they refuse to consider the possibility that the authorizations were, after the fact, retroatively created.
This citation illustrates how some key conclusions have been overstated without carefully considering other factors. Italics missing in citation. See "Citation 4" re 71 of 487 for details.
Comparison [Emphasis added]
The text from TPMM:
The House Judiciary Report has deleted the reference to "elderly" in the context of who is affected by the laws; and changed the object of the decision; and its defense and justification to whether there was a narrow objective of solely "not helping" elderly minorities. This seems a stretch.
We view the report's phrasing as slightly misleading. It cannot be argued that the "decision to approve" was premised only on the fact that early minority death. It may have been a factor; but the House Report does not adequately discuss other factors which may or may not have had greater or less weight in the decision.
The original TPM comment didn't prove the decision was made with that primary objective; but the House Report leaves the incorrect impression that the justification for the decision is linked primarily, solely, exclusively, and exhaustively with this narrow objective. Whether this is true or not as a product of the subcommittee investigation, is a different matter and is conclusory, not the product of credible legislative inquiry as reported in the report.
The way the report has been written is troubling. With this many alleged crimes, its unfortunate the House Judiciary has left the impression that it needs to reach conclusory statements based on dubious arguments and propositions. This suggests the Committee, despite this much time doing nothing by way of an impeachment, has been stretching accusations to justify a pile of evidence; but did not focus its energy on the strongest lines of evidence that would justify public support for the timely, effective use of Congressional power.
It appears the House Judiciary has gotten lost in a pile of evidence, and missed the big picture: Constitutional power must be asserted to defend the Constitution, check abuses, and timely defend the Constitution.
A better approach for purpose of timely confrontation with alleged Executive abuses would be to focus the committee staff on the strongest lines of evidence; assert power against the Executive along the strongest lines; and leave the less-clear lines of evidence for subsequent legislative follow-up.
It may be true that the DOJ has worked with a state legislagure to meet adverse objectives. However, by refocusing the original TPM comments to suggest a tighter, causal relationship does a disservice to the integrity of the House Judiciary Chairman.
Comment: Italics (in original) is missing from the cited title:
This raises additional questions about whether the original documents were or were not correctly cited; and whether added or deleted emphasis has or has not been documented.
When the report cites case law, or makes other changes to the text emphasis, it's whether similar emphasis issues match the extent of Addington's selective parsing in the Iran-Contra Minority Report.
Conclusion
The House Judiciary Committee Report politely references four (4) TPM citations. The good news is someone is reading TPM. The bad news is there appears to be some unanswered questions about how the Judiciary Committee reached its conclusions, and the quality of the citations.
Our concern is the House Judiciary Committee, despite this pile of evidence, appears to have waited too long. There should have been intermediary steps to challenge the Executive, long before the pile of evidence grew this large.
Nothing prevented the national leadership, seeing an end to the House term, from prospectively assigning to the Senate the independent duty to carry the flag and lead the confrontation with the Exeutive. Accordingly, it appears this report is more of a smokescreen, and not intended to be used to guide staff or Congress to conduct specific oversight.
We are concerned about the creative timelines Judiciciary seems to have adopted. The Judiciary's own citations contradicts its (apparent) misleading narratives and timelines.
This report is not wanting for length or citations. Our concern is the quality of the citations raises questions about some of the motivations for the references, and raises questions about other relevant decisions and issues which have been glossed over or not contained within the report. The attention to detail should give some pause to the American public before we can trust the House Judiciary to independently confront the Executive.
House Judiciary should be commended for providing a lengthy report, but these accolades should be tempered with additional public oversight. The public needs to understand more details about the fact checking that went into this report, and why some of the specific evidence lines and arguments appear to be conclusory
Recommendations
The public needs to discuss tools to conduct better oversight of Committee work before final reports are issued; and ensure Congress timely asserts power to put the Constitution before the Executive.
A. Committee Staff work Preparing For Executive Oversight
Congress should review the House Judiciary report and issue a change page as the errors are discovered. This information should be available for public inspection on the web.
House Judiciary should review the staffing check sheets used to review this report prior to publication; and examine which faulty assumptions must be mitigated before they can credibly, independently challenge the Executive Branch.
The Judiciary Committee leadership should review the errors, examine patterns, and openly discuss how these systemic problems may or may not be within the responsibility of Congress to manage.
Congress should discuss the reasons the public should or should not be concerned with the quality of the oversight and sourcing with this report; and explain what systemic problems have been noted and how they will be managed to ensure that the Congress can conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.
B. Public Oversight Goals
TPM readers should review the legal citations in the House Judiciary Report. Readers should note where text is removed; and determine if the way the case is cited or summarized misrepresents the statute, legal opinion, or original citation.
The public should, while reviewing this report, discuss whether the Congressional committee process can be trusted to operate on its own; or whether reforms are required within the Constitutional framework to compel timely Congressional action when confronted with Executive illegal activity, non-cooperation, or abuse of power.
The public needs an answer: What level of evidence is required before the Congress will assert power; what scope of illegal activity, abuse of power, and non-cooperation is required before Congress will, not just threaten, withholding funds and increasing strings attached to continued appropriations.
The public should review what lawful options, outside Congress, are required when one chamber of the House refuses to act; and parallel action should be taken in a separate chamber. The House as a body dissolves every two year. Nothing stopped the public from pressuring the Senate to take the lead, and review the issues the House Judiciary has raised.
C. Duties of Judiciary To Clarify the Report
Judiciary should disclose the timeline of information it has related to the 2007-8 dialog with the House Government affairs committee, and disclose which documents or other memoranda it has that are outside the 2008 citations.
Other Notes:
272 of 487: "Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war"
Comment: It is a fauly premise to argue that Executive power is not reviewable. We the People may, at any moment, revoke this delegation of power; and supplant this Constitution with a new one. It is a misreading of FISA to pretend that an express restriction of power relative to the warrant requirement is unreviewable.
The President has no power to independently assert power which violates the Constitution, especially when the Executive agrees to be bound under FISA. Power has been delegated so that it may be used. This US government, including Congress, has turned a blind eye to illegal use of power. We still have no straight story of how the abuse of power was, in secret, deployed against the American citizens. Power is delegated so that leadership, in secret, can lawfuly do things. It appears this leadership, despite teh promise of legality, in secret violated the law. That is a betrayal.
This information may be useful in
- Understanding risks with the current Congressional oversight;
- Gaging whether there is adequate public oversight of the Congress; and
- Discussing Constitutional reforms required to compel timely Congressional action.
We reviewed the citations for accuracy and share the results, after the jump.
The House Judiciary report cites four (4) TPM articles. This review narrowly looks at the quality of the citations, and back-traces the attached arguments within the report with the original comments at TPM. We extrapolate from a statistically insignificant sample size to possible issues warranting public discussion, further analysis, commentary, and oversight.
Philosophy
The public conducts oversight of Congress. Congress no power to compel the public to do its staff work.
Members of Congress and their staff are elected to be specialists in legislating. The public is required to be a specialist in conducting oversight of Congress. Congress cannot justify thwarting the public from conducting oversight of Congress.
The failure of Congress to cooperate with public oversight and conduct timely oversight of the executive has prompted discussions to dilute Congressional discretion and realign Federal-State power.
We share this information to encourage the public to take a critical view of the House Judiciary Report: Do not get lost in the details, but ask why it took this pile of evidence for the Congress to still not stop funding nor timely confront the Executive. Until those obstacles are removed, Exeutive legal consel should be expected to do the same.
The American public is not required to cooperate with a government that defies written law. New systems of oversight and power delegation are perepetualy on the table as a check on abusive government power.
Relevance Theory
The citations help gauge how precise the final product was fact-checked before publication. The citation errors give a sense of attention to detail, the timing of the publication, and the extent of staff review.
We can compare the way the TPM-citations are couched to how the information was originally presented on TPM or other sources. This will give an indication how the report might be skewing, glossing over, or reframing information.
Findings Summary
- Citation 2 and 4 are primarily administrative issues with fact checking citations;
- Citation 1 discloses a breakdown in the Judiciary oversight timeline; and
- Citation 3 illustrates a faulty argument.
~ ~ ~
The Judiciary Report provides a comment, and the relevant citation to TPM is included. We analyze the citation, and discuss potential risk areas this citation may have for Congressional oversight.
Citation 1
This citation shows the Judiciary Report did not ensure the published report matches the original citation.
House ReportTextual Comparison
42 of 487: Enterprising journalists immediately began collecting and analyzing these reports and noted that, in a number of cases the prosecutors who had been forced out were highly regarded; and that, in some cases, the prosecutors were also handling highly sensitive matters, such as political corruption investigations of Administration allies.60
Note 60
See, e.g., Rood, "White House Pushes Out Another Prosecutor," TPMMuckracker.com, Jan. 15, 2007, http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002340.php. As Rood's opening sentences reads, "Strange days? Less than a week after news broke that the Bush Administration has forced the resignation of San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, we learn that it has done the same to Daniel Bogden, U.S. Attorney for Nevada."
The citation is incorrect, raising questions whether Judiciary staff relied on software to check items which should have been manually fact checked.
Summary of Inconsistencies
1. The text in the citation does not match the line-length of the TPM information;
2. The House Report has changed the spelling of Lam from Carole to Carol. There are 1,030 web references to "Carole Lam"; while 44,200 web references to "Carol Lam."
3. The House report does not include the embedded link, nor reference the embedded link contained within the cited quote from TPM.
4. The original TPM report does not capitalize "administration" or "attorney"
The staff writing the House Judiciary Report changed the spelling of the name, did not leave the original text as it was, and did not include in the published report "stet". It appears the staff saw in the original House report before publication an apparent spelling error, but did not check the original source before changing the spelling or formatting in the published report.
Textual Comparison [Emphasis added]We need to understand whether the software made automated changes which were not retroactively reversed, as staff should have done. These inconsistencies suggest:
This illustrates the differences between the TPM original comment, and the citation in the House Judiciary Report. The emphasis calls attention to changes in spelling, capitalization.
TPMM Comment:
Strange days? Less than a week after news broke that the Bush administration has forced the resignation of San Diego U.S. attorney Carole Lam, we learn that it has done the same to Daniel Bogden, U.S. attorney for Nevada.
House Report Note [Quotes removed.]
312 of 487:
Strange days? Less than a week after news broke that the Bush Administration has forced the resignation of San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, we learn that it has done the same to Daniel Bogden, U.S. Attorney for Nevada.
- The spell-checking function or automated word
processing software automatically updated "administration" to read
"Administration";
- The staff made and approved changes without noting errors in the original source;
- There was no retroactive review or audit of these automatic changes to ensure they were valid;
- There was an incomplete effort to ensure all citations, as published, were consistent with the original source material;
- Staff did not use the published citations to test whether they could find the original source material;
- Staff did not make comprehensive changes to the citations based on invalid citations; and
- Staff did not understand the scope of the problem of finding original material using the erroneous report citations
Timeline
There's another aspect to this note related to timelines. The House report provides a long narrative related to the US Attorney firings. This information sets the stage for subsequent actions.
In our view, this segment of the House report is misleading. The House report suggests there is a "backdrop", but appears to rely on a creative twisting of the timeline. The House Report implies that there was a large effort before detailed reporting; and that government-led inquiry was swiftly moving with the gathering momentum. The truth is the Judiciary Committee was behind the power curve, did not independently assert power, and was an obstacle to the growing momentum calling for an impeachment inquiry.
House Report [Emphasis added]
When Hurricane Katrina struck and the Administration's deeply inadequate response wasComment: The House Report leaves the impression, as a "backdrop," that Congress gathered information, documented that information, then the external reporting occurred.
left to an unqualified political appointee in charge of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, the gravity of the problem became tragically clear.56 Further reports have only
heightened concern about the scope and depth of the problem, such as the recent charge by the head of the non-partisan American Association for the Advancement of Science that unqualified political appointees were "burrowing in" to the civil service and taking over career jobs with responsibility for making and administering government science policy: "You'd just like to think people have more respect for the institution of government than to leave wreckage behind with these appointments," this official charged.57 Additionally, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has documented numerous other instances of government action being driven by political considerations, such as an aggressive White House campaign to deploy government resources in support of Republican political candidates and repeated examples of White House and Administration officials overruling policy recommendations of agency career professionals for apparently political reasons.58
It was against this backdrop that a series of disturbing reports emerged in early 2007 of federal prosecutors being forced from office in suspicious circumstances.59 Enterprising journalists immediately began collecting and analyzing these reports and noted that, in a number of cases the prosecutors who had been forced out were highly regarded; and that, in some cases, the prosecutors were also handling highly sensitive matters, such as political corruption investigations of Administration allies.60 The controversy took on further life when one of the removed United States Attorneys, David Iglesias of New Mexico, stated that his removal was "a political fragging, pure and simple."61
"against this backdrop that a series of disturbing reports emerged"However, it appears the House report inserted, as an afterthought, the clause following this phrase:
"Additionally, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has documented"
We encourage TPM readers to independently review the above language in the original report, and compare the citations the House Judiciary provided re the Government Reform Committee Reports. The cited Government Reform Committee documentation didn't get released -- "emerge" -- until after the reporting prompted government inquiry in 2008.
A close reading of note 58 shows us the "backdrop" for the House Judiciary action in 2007 was on the back of reports not released until May-Oct 2008, long after the public reporting on the US Attorney firing scandal started and Gonzalez had long been replaced. This is a convoluted timeline which defies reason.
It's unclear what the House Judiciary Committee is referencing, or whether it is referring to other documentation it has not fully disclosed or cited. This remains an issue for the Judiciary Committee leadership to explain, not for the public to attempt to independently reconstruct.
- Why is the House Judiciary Committee citing -- in its report -- "documentation" that was not released until 2008, well after the public reporting on the US Attorney firings?Legislative Privilege and Inadvertent Disclosures
- Is the House Judiciary really relying on "other" documentation it has in secret, has not cited in the report, that falls within a different timeline?
- Why is the House Judiciary citing as a "backdrop" -- for events going forward from 2007 -- information not published in the Government Reform Committee report released in 2008?
- Where are the real lines of evidence and other documentation -- unrelated to the House Government Reform Committee reports of 2008 -- which the House Judiciary Committee is really using to justify these statements?
Inadvertent disclosures about privileged communications can be the basis for a court order to strip that US government official of reliance on that claim of privilege. The public should discuss methods, when, as now, Members of Congress disclose internal deliberations, how it will proceed to compel disclosure of that disclosed communication.
The public should discuss the options to hold Members of Congress accountable to the same mandatory disclosure standards applicable to the Executive Branch on issues of privilege.
Constitutional Update: Compelling Withholds Until Executive Cooperates
- When does the leadership within the House Judiciary and Government Reform plan to disclose the lines of documentation they have directly suggested exist, but were not released until 2008?
- Does the Committee leadership plan to share with the public the specific communication, notes, and other memoranda that must have been shared before the 2008 Government Reform Committee; or does the Congress want to leave the public with the impression that it is fabricating timelines, pointing to reports which are outside the stated timeline, and not fully disclose the real information shared within Congress to justify these statements within the released House Judiciary report?
Constitutional Protection vs Illusion of Competence
- Why was the House Judiciary and Government Reform Committee leadership able to share information on concerns, but did not -- immediately, until Executive Cooperation -- withhold funds?
- Why was there no decision to withhold funds until these issues were resolved?
Information is gathered to support decisions. This Congress appears more interested in gathering information, regardless its relevance or accuracy, and avoid making decisions to punish the Executive.
It is difficult for the leadership to justify the Congressional inaction while the Congressional leadership asserts it was sharing concerns about supposed mounting piles of concerns.
Legislative Staff Complicity
- Why is the Committee leadership asking the public to believe that they had "no idea" what to do, but they are implicitly asking us to believe they were sharing information, concerns?
Members of Congress and their staff have a legal obligation to to defend the Constitution from reckless incompetence and maladministration within the Executive Branch. Yet the reports from Tamm suggest the Congressional staffers knew of illegal activity, but were not removing themselves, but turning a blind eye.
Power is first asserted to punish the Executive, then the Congress requires the Executive to react, respond, and justify why Congress should re-start the funding flows into the questionable, dubious, reckless, and illegal Executive Branch activity.
- Why was the information gathering more with an eye toward collecting information than with asserting power?
- What changes in the Constitution will compel the Congressional leadership -- when it is aware of Executive Branch non-cooperation and illegal activity -- to withhold money or increase oversight and strings attached with that funding until the Executive cooperates?
The House Judiciary report is either misleading on the timeline; or it has fatally disclosed that the leadership well discussed concerns, but did not agree to fully assert its oath of office using all lawful options including funding withholds. There was nothing forcing any of the committee leadership, with this many "concerns," to release any favorable committee report related to the questionable activity.
- Why were funds appropriated while the Congress was not getting full, adequate, and open compliance from the President and Executive Branch?It's questionable why the Judiciary Committee is referencing a different committee activity, work product, or hearing at note 58 -- Committee on Government reform -- but did not cited its own report or testimony in the House Judiciary report note 60 [312 of 487].
- Why did the House Judiciary report cite a Government Reform hearing at note 58; but did not siilarly cite a House Judiciary hearing, but relied on TPM reporting in the citation?This is an apparent perversion of the timeline. The "reports" were not emerging from the Congress or DOJ. The public reports emerged in the independent media, then the backdrop developed, then the government started the inquiry against the backdrop of independent, non-government inquiry. A better representation of the sequence of events stats with the pubic, non-government reporting which prompted government inquiry, not assertions of power.
- Is there a reason the House Judiciary Committee would rather cite the Government Reform products, but will not cite a hearing conducted under the Judiciary Committee?
The House report appears to be fabricating a timeline to have the public believe that the committee was in charge, leading the way; and that the public was reacting to this committee momentum with additional reporting. This is misleading and a smokescreen over what appears to be Judiciary Committee unwillingness to timely assert power related to the non-government-generated fact finding and inquiry.
The House Report leaves the incorrect impression that it was leading the way, and subsequent reporting confirmed what the Committee was still unearthing. The opposite is true: Despite the public reporting, the Committee was not swiftly moving to hold hearings and impose legislative punishment for these abuses.
Even if we accept the House Judiciary Report as true -- that there were "reports" within the Committee leadership, not yet published until 2008 -- the question is: Why did this admitted-to internal communication not prompt internal decisions to act, as opposed to not aasserting power through funding withholds until the Congress was satisified with the responses from the President?
Arguably, it is reckless when Committee leadership are aware of a problem, but they continue to fund a questionable operation while they "wait" for a straight answer. Wrong answer. If the Exeutive will not cooperate with Congressional oversight, that funding should have been stopped. At a minimum, Congress should have conditioned additional funding streams with burdensome requirements giving the Executive the "easier option" of cooperating. Inexplicably, Congress did not, as it should have, exercised that option.
The funding streams did not stop. There is only one reasonable answer: Despite the legal duty to enforce the Constitution against domestic enemies, the Members of Congress and their staff knew of a problem, did not act, failed to assert power, and despite questions provided funding to a larger pile of questionable activity. The purpose of having a Parliament was to take away from the King the exclusive power to spend money. Congress missed this lesson, rubber stamped 2001-9, but, as an after thought, issued a report detailing its complicity with this reckless spending, mismanagement, and illegal activity.
Congress was absurdly waiting for the Executive branch to agree with the oversight before Congress first moved to shut off funding until the President cooperated. Arguably, this is a reasonable basis to raise questions of Member of Congress alleged malfeasance, especially given the Geneva and FISA implications during wartime. Nuremberg showed that policy makers can be adjudicated with war crimes when they engage in malfeasance and refuse to confront illegal activity.
It appears the House Judiciary Committee is rewriting a timeline, focusing on a pile of evidence, but has no reasonable explanation why it did not shut off funding -- as required -- pending Executive Branch cooperation and compliance certification. At a minimum, Congress should have increased oversight, attached more strings to the funding, and created more conditions for the Executive to comply until he fully met he legal obligations under the US Statute, Geneva, and FISA. Congress refused to do this.
Our job, outside Congress, must be to examine what Constitutional reforms are required to ensure that a lazy Congress does not, as this one continues to do, defer to the Executive Branch; but does condition funding on continued Executive Branch legal compliance.
- Which specific Constitutional obligations -- outside the ignored oath of office and Supremacy Clause -- are required to compel Members of Congress to condition funding with Executive Branch legal compliance, cooperation, and cooperation with oversight?
~ ~ ~
Citation 2
This citation shows the House Judiciary report has a problem fact checking. The published citation is not easily connected with the relevant information.
This citation shows the House Judiciary report has a problem fact checking. The published citation is not easily connected with the relevant information.
House Report
56 of 487: In 2007, Bob Kengle, former Deputy Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division and a Justice Department veteran, said that he left the Division because he reached his "personal breaking point." He explained, "in short, I lost faith in the institution as it had become. This was not the result of just one individual, such as Brad Schlozman, although he certainly did his share and then some. Rather, it was the result of an institutional sabotage after which I concluded that as a supervisor I no longer could protect line attorneys from political appointees, keep the litigation I supervised focused on the law and the facts, ensure that attorneys place civil rights enforcement ahead of partisanship, or pursue cases based solely on merit."173
Note 173
Kengle, "Why I Left the Civil Rights Division", TPMMuckraker.com, Apr. 30, 2007,
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003120.php.
he memo from the 30th, is a clarification of comments made to TPM. The memo is not signed or dated on the last page.
Textual Reference
It does not appear House Judiciary staff used the citations to independenty fact check the published inforation contained within the report. Had there been fact checking on this citation, the staff should have caught the inconsistency between (a) the name of the cited statement connected with Kengle; and (b) the cited title for that TPMM-URL for the Kiel by-line.
The citation at note 173 does not match the information available at the provided link.
Invalid Citation, URL Reference
The House Judiciary Report citation does not go to the cited report, but to a TPM article by a different name, which posted the cited material.
House Judicairy Report Citation:
Kengle, "Why I Left the Civil Rights Division", TPMMuckraker.com, Apr. 30, 2007
Title Available At House Judiciary-Provided TPMM URL:
Former DoJ Official: I Left Due to "Institutional Sabotage"
By Paul Kiel - April 30, 2007, 12:44PM
The House Judiciary-provided URL does not go to the cited article name, but to a TPM-reposting of the original article posted here. During fact-checking, staff should have placed the Judiciary-provided URL into the web-brower, then noted the cited title and by-line did not match the text in the citation. The House Judiciary citation should have stated, "Available through ___" or "Referenced here ___, available here."
- Why doesn't the title of the article listed in the House Judiciary report at note 173 match the information at the TPM URL?Textual Comparison
The information in the House Judiciary report matches the text lifted from the TPM website at the cited URL and the original memo.
However, fact checking of the citation would have revealed the error in the citation, and inconsistency between the citation and the information within the TPM by-line. Indeed, the text in the three (3) sources match, suggesting the real source of the quote (and incorrect citation) was not the citation or the supposed original source, but something else.
There are intermediary steps which Judiciary has the burden to disclose. House Judiciary has the burden to reconcile this inconsistency with a coherent explanation.
House Report, TPM Reference, Original DocumentWe judge the change in the capitalization [i, from "in short"] from the original source 3 to source 1 and 2 is important. It gives insight into the software citation rules the staff is using.
[ "Quotations" removed]
Source 1: House Judiciary Report [56/487]
in short, I lost faith in the institution as it had become. This was not the result of just one individual, such as Brad Schlozman, although he certainly did his share and then some. Rather, it was the result of an institutional sabotage after which I concluded that as a supervisor I no longer could protect line attorneys from political appointees, keep the litigation I supervised focused on the law and the facts, ensure that attorneys place civil rights enforcement ahead of partisanship, or pursue cases based solely on merit.
Source 2: TPM Posting, embedded text
In short, I lost faith in the institution as it had become. This was not the result of just one individual, such as Brad Schlozman, although he certainly did his share and then some. Rather, it was the result of an institutional sabotage after which I concluded that as a supervisor I no longer could protect line attorneys from political appointees, keep the litigation I supervised focused on the law and the facts, ensure that attorneys place civil rights enforcement ahead of partisanship, or pursue cases based solely on merit.
Source 3: The original letter
In short, I lost faith in the institution as it had become. This was not the result of just one individual, such as Brad Schlozman, although he certainly did his share and then some. Rather, it as the result of an institutional sabotage after which I concluded that as a supervisor I no longer could protect line attorneys from political appointees, keep the litigation I supervised focused on the law and the facts, ensure that attorneys place civil rights enforcement ahead of partisanship, or pursue cases based solely on merit.
The "intermediary step" appears to be a secondary software system which stores information, prepares that citation, and automatically retains data. The error appears to be the failure of the staff to ensure that the citation software correctly links the citation in the software with the real citation and text.
These embedded rules must be understood and mitigated before the House Judiciary Staff publishes information. Something fell through the cracks.
The process used to oversee the production of this work product needs to be reviewed in the context of: What oversight system have we developed, did we develop a review process that would catch these things; and how can we apply these insights about our internal operations to ensure we understand what analogous processes broke down in the Executive Branch. The Judiciary Staff needs to demonstrate it is taking the time to understand what it failed to do; and generalize these lessons before continuing its engagement with the Executive Branch.
Going forward, the same risk-assessment must be done on the tools and methods the Executive Branch was using; and understand the robustness of the Executive Branch's mitigation plans.
Judiciary Staff are hinting that they may need additional oversight within their area of analysis before they can independently apply these lessons to a different branch of government.
The House Judiciary appears to have had high confidence in the information provided within the quote; but did not re-check the citation to determine that the citation would go to the quoted material. The link goes to the information, but not to the matching TPM by-line.
It appears Judiciary learned of the cited quote, not the cited article, through TPM; but then changed the source from the original TPM reporting to the citation of the former DOJ employee. It appears they found the quote, then tried to find the source. This process appears to have been incomplete. A complete process would have linked to the correct TPM URL with a proper citation; or it would have linked to the currently published URL with a comment about embedded comments. One or more steps did not happen. This is not how a Judiciary Staff should do staff work, nor document information.
We believe the House Judiciary likely knew of the information through informal talks with TPM; then helped facilitate posting of information on the TPM website and providing background information to TPM off the record.
It appears as though someone on the House Judiciary staff would have known about the content of the information provided to TPM, but did not think to ensure the published citation correctly provided readers with the by-line on the TPM website at the cited URL.
It appears Judiciary knew of the document and contents independently, but wanted to give credit to TPM, not the real source of the information about the quoted material within the House Judiciary document. It's possible to find the information, but the cited URL would logically trigger a citation that cites Kiel, not the DOJ attorney; or the opposite: A different URL, directly to the TPM-hosted statement.
- Why didn't Judiciary cite the real source of the information?
Someone appears to have communicated with the House Judiciary staff office with the information, then someone retroactively attempted to find a public source; then assign that source as the citation. That is not how citations should work. The correct citation should be, "Hand delivered document on ___-date, by staff member, available from ____ website."
The House Judiciary Comittee appears to have a source of information that it does not want to disclose; is getting information through methods it does not want to reveal; and has incorrectly assigned the "source" to a citation that it did not really use. Had the documented source within the House Judiciary report been bonafide, the staff would have noted the dates in the citation do not reconcile with the public information; and that the citation does not match the documents and real sources they relied.
Again, this supports the reasonable conclusion someone retroactively did something; or they did not do something before publication. Not only was the stepped skipped, but there was no detection of this lapse before publication. Until these discipline issues are confronted, the public should reasonably expect Congress to gloss over "lapses" within the executive branch.
Until Congrss understands what's broken down in its supervision process to report credible, correct, traceable infromation within its documents, it is not well positioned to detect much less challenge similar potential issus within a competing branch of government, especially where the executive is not cooperating nor providing coherent answers. Those incoherent exeutive branch responses will only be credibly challenged and detected if Congressional staff can demonstrate they have a coherent, robust, and traceable process in house to do the same on a work product within their exclusive control.
Applying Details About This Citation To Oversight On Executive Branch Action
This detail is important when analyzing whether the President and WH-DOJ legal counsel similarly retroactively did something. It appears the House Judiciary is not conducting exacting oversight on its own documents. Similar flaws in the President's explanations should not expect to be detected or confronted.
The public cannot reasonably expect the House Judiciary Committee or its staff to credibly track whether the "authorizations" for abuse were or were not reasonable if they refuse to consider the possibility that the authorizations were, after the fact, retroatively created.
- Where is the forensic analysis of the information contained in the retroactive development of this citation?The public needs some independent assurances, outside Congress, to ensure that the data used to make decisions cannot be tampered with; and that the timelines used to showcase oversight issues cannot be tampered or misconstrued.
- Is there anyone in Congress that can do forensic analysis of the House Judiciary citations?
- If there is no capability within Congress to independently understand this retroactive citation problem, should the public be confused why Congress will not or cannot adequately review whether the President's "authorizations" re FISA violations, CIA abuses, Geneva violations were or were not retroatively created?
- What was the real source of the material cited in the House Judiciary report?
- When will the House Judiciary leadership disclose the results of this investigation into these citation errors to include findings on whether the archived files of the original draft reports do or do not reconcile with the real citations?
- When will the House Judiciary leadership disclose a timeline of how the House Judiciary Report was updated; and which changes were made to the document showing when the citation error occurred?
- How does the information within the House Judiciary report related to this citation square with the real source of information contained in what appears to be a separate file, unrelated to the internet, within the Congressional correspond logs?
- To what extent is House Judiciary relying on privilege claims it claims the President cannot rely?
- Conversely, if the President for bonafide reasons is stripped of privilege on specific documents, what plan does Congress plan to disclose similar documents; or does Congress plan to assert privilege over questions of malfeasance re FISA and Geneva?
~ ~ ~
Citation 3
This citation illustrates how some key conclusions have been overstated without carefully considering other factors. Italics missing in citation. See "Citation 4" re 71 of 487 for details.
House Report
58 of 487: On October 30, 2007, the Subcommittee held a hearing focusing exclusively on issues in the Voting Section. One of the key witnesses was John Tanner, then head of the Voting Section. Among other things, Mr. Tanner was questioned concerning his previous controversial comments defending the Department's decision to overrule staff in favor of preclearing the Georgia voter ID law. Mr. Tanner had explained that "primarily elderly persons" are the ones adversely affected by such laws, but "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." So, anything that "disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities," he added.194
Note 194
Kiel, "DoJ Vote Chief Argues Voter ID Laws Discriminate Against Whites,"
TPMMuckraker.com, Oct. 9, 2007,
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004414.php.
Comparison [Emphasis added]
The text from TPMM:
Tanner explained that "primarily elderly persons" are the ones affected by such laws, but "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." So anything that "disproportionately impacts the elderly, has the opposite impact on minorities," he added. "Just the math is such as that."Report:
The Department's analysis in these cases was illustrated by then-Voting Right Division Chief John Tanner who said in defending Department's decision to approve the Georgia Photo ID voting law that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first."Analysis
The House Judiciary Report has deleted the reference to "elderly" in the context of who is affected by the laws; and changed the object of the decision; and its defense and justification to whether there was a narrow objective of solely "not helping" elderly minorities. This seems a stretch.
We view the report's phrasing as slightly misleading. It cannot be argued that the "decision to approve" was premised only on the fact that early minority death. It may have been a factor; but the House Report does not adequately discuss other factors which may or may not have had greater or less weight in the decision.
The original TPM comment didn't prove the decision was made with that primary objective; but the House Report leaves the incorrect impression that the justification for the decision is linked primarily, solely, exclusively, and exhaustively with this narrow objective. Whether this is true or not as a product of the subcommittee investigation, is a different matter and is conclusory, not the product of credible legislative inquiry as reported in the report.
The way the report has been written is troubling. With this many alleged crimes, its unfortunate the House Judiciary has left the impression that it needs to reach conclusory statements based on dubious arguments and propositions. This suggests the Committee, despite this much time doing nothing by way of an impeachment, has been stretching accusations to justify a pile of evidence; but did not focus its energy on the strongest lines of evidence that would justify public support for the timely, effective use of Congressional power.
It appears the House Judiciary has gotten lost in a pile of evidence, and missed the big picture: Constitutional power must be asserted to defend the Constitution, check abuses, and timely defend the Constitution.
A better approach for purpose of timely confrontation with alleged Executive abuses would be to focus the committee staff on the strongest lines of evidence; assert power against the Executive along the strongest lines; and leave the less-clear lines of evidence for subsequent legislative follow-up.
It may be true that the DOJ has worked with a state legislagure to meet adverse objectives. However, by refocusing the original TPM comments to suggest a tighter, causal relationship does a disservice to the integrity of the House Judiciary Chairman.
A subcommittee conducted a hearing ["On October 30, 2007, the Subcommittee held a hearing focusing exclusively on issues in the Voting Section."]. However, the House Judiciary Report does not cite a committee transcript, but the witness' statement in TPMM the witness said they said. The TPM statement wasn't under oath; and its an open question why the Judiciary Committee has not cited testimony under oath.
~ ~ ~- Why didn't the Committee staff cite the original testimony, but relied on TPM information presented not under oath?
- Why didn't the "Subcommittee" have a follow-up review after October 31, 2007 to review the TPM reporting, the issues raised by the (apparent) differences between the witness statement before the committee and reported in TPM; and resolve these issues under oath?
- Is the Committee willing to incorporate minority views in the analysis of the discussion over how these conclusions were reached?
Citation 4
This citation shows how original text formatting was changed, and not adequately annotated in the published report.
This citation shows how original text formatting was changed, and not adequately annotated in the published report.
House Report
71 of 487: The Department's analysis in these cases was illustrated by then-Voting
Right Division Chief John Tanner who said in defending Department's decision to approve the Georgia Photo ID voting law that "minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first." 283
Note 283
Kiel, "DoJ Vote Chief Argues Voter ID Laws Discriminate Against Whites,"
TPMMuckraker.com, Oct. 9, 2007,
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004414.php.
Comment: Italics (in original) is missing from the cited title:
This missing italics suggests the Judicairy Committee staff, when conducting online searches, knew that some words in the responses were italicized; rather than check where the italics was related to a search term or a title, the staff presumed the italics was associated with the search.DoJ Vote Chief Argues Voter ID Laws Discriminate against Whites
This raises additional questions about whether the original documents were or were not correctly cited; and whether added or deleted emphasis has or has not been documented.
When the report cites case law, or makes other changes to the text emphasis, it's whether similar emphasis issues match the extent of Addington's selective parsing in the Iran-Contra Minority Report.
Conclusion
The House Judiciary Committee Report politely references four (4) TPM citations. The good news is someone is reading TPM. The bad news is there appears to be some unanswered questions about how the Judiciary Committee reached its conclusions, and the quality of the citations.
Our concern is the House Judiciary Committee, despite this pile of evidence, appears to have waited too long. There should have been intermediary steps to challenge the Executive, long before the pile of evidence grew this large.
Nothing prevented the national leadership, seeing an end to the House term, from prospectively assigning to the Senate the independent duty to carry the flag and lead the confrontation with the Exeutive. Accordingly, it appears this report is more of a smokescreen, and not intended to be used to guide staff or Congress to conduct specific oversight.
We are concerned about the creative timelines Judiciciary seems to have adopted. The Judiciary's own citations contradicts its (apparent) misleading narratives and timelines.
This report is not wanting for length or citations. Our concern is the quality of the citations raises questions about some of the motivations for the references, and raises questions about other relevant decisions and issues which have been glossed over or not contained within the report. The attention to detail should give some pause to the American public before we can trust the House Judiciary to independently confront the Executive.
House Judiciary should be commended for providing a lengthy report, but these accolades should be tempered with additional public oversight. The public needs to understand more details about the fact checking that went into this report, and why some of the specific evidence lines and arguments appear to be conclusory
Recommendations
The public needs to discuss tools to conduct better oversight of Committee work before final reports are issued; and ensure Congress timely asserts power to put the Constitution before the Executive.
A. Committee Staff work Preparing For Executive Oversight
Congress should review the House Judiciary report and issue a change page as the errors are discovered. This information should be available for public inspection on the web.
House Judiciary should review the staffing check sheets used to review this report prior to publication; and examine which faulty assumptions must be mitigated before they can credibly, independently challenge the Executive Branch.
The Judiciary Committee leadership should review the errors, examine patterns, and openly discuss how these systemic problems may or may not be within the responsibility of Congress to manage.
Congress should discuss the reasons the public should or should not be concerned with the quality of the oversight and sourcing with this report; and explain what systemic problems have been noted and how they will be managed to ensure that the Congress can conduct oversight of the Executive Branch.
B. Public Oversight Goals
TPM readers should review the legal citations in the House Judiciary Report. Readers should note where text is removed; and determine if the way the case is cited or summarized misrepresents the statute, legal opinion, or original citation.
The public should, while reviewing this report, discuss whether the Congressional committee process can be trusted to operate on its own; or whether reforms are required within the Constitutional framework to compel timely Congressional action when confronted with Executive illegal activity, non-cooperation, or abuse of power.
The public needs an answer: What level of evidence is required before the Congress will assert power; what scope of illegal activity, abuse of power, and non-cooperation is required before Congress will, not just threaten, withholding funds and increasing strings attached to continued appropriations.
The public should review what lawful options, outside Congress, are required when one chamber of the House refuses to act; and parallel action should be taken in a separate chamber. The House as a body dissolves every two year. Nothing stopped the public from pressuring the Senate to take the lead, and review the issues the House Judiciary has raised.
C. Duties of Judiciary To Clarify the Report
Judiciary should disclose the timeline of information it has related to the 2007-8 dialog with the House Government affairs committee, and disclose which documents or other memoranda it has that are outside the 2008 citations.
Other Notes:
272 of 487: "Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war"
Comment: It is a fauly premise to argue that Executive power is not reviewable. We the People may, at any moment, revoke this delegation of power; and supplant this Constitution with a new one. It is a misreading of FISA to pretend that an express restriction of power relative to the warrant requirement is unreviewable.
The President has no power to independently assert power which violates the Constitution, especially when the Executive agrees to be bound under FISA. Power has been delegated so that it may be used. This US government, including Congress, has turned a blind eye to illegal use of power. We still have no straight story of how the abuse of power was, in secret, deployed against the American citizens. Power is delegated so that leadership, in secret, can lawfuly do things. It appears this leadership, despite teh promise of legality, in secret violated the law. That is a betrayal.
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