“Investigate Darrell Issa”: Or How To Apply The Chairman’s Own Methods And Style To Him
Among the many reasons that Americans hold the House of Representatives in low repute – at historically abysmal levels, in fact – is the blatantly partisan and ideological misconduct of so many committee chairs. Without any evident embarrassment these mighty politicians deny science, defy mathematics, and dismiss every fact that contradicts their prejudices. But bad as these chairs tend to be, none is quite as flamboyantly awful as Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Government Oversight Committee, a special investigative panel whose latest effort to conjure scandal from nothingness at the Internal Revenue Service would provoke his removal by a responsible leadership.
As we have pointed out repeatedly in these pages, and as testimony by the IRS inspector general has since confirmed, it is now clear that right-wing groups were not targeted for exceptional scrutiny. Moreover, there was no political motive in the agency’s treatment of the Tea Party and associated groups seeking tax exemption (in many cases illegitimately).
It is now equally obvious that the behavior of Issa himself, with his attempts to skew his committee’s investigation and conceal testimony that exonerated the agency, represents the most serious wrongdoing in the supposed “IRS scandal.” But this isn’t the first time that the California Republican, who happens to be the wealthiest man in Congress, has misused the broad powers of his chairmanship. Actually, that is all he does – as he demonstrated in equally opportunistic and amateurish examinations of both the Benghazi tragedy and the “Fast and Furious” affair.
Issa’s stewardship of the House Government Reform Committee has failed even by the standards of the Republican congressional leadership, which must have hoped that he would have collected some Obama administration scalps by now. He delayed the Fast and Furious probe solely to extend it into the election year, blustered against Attorney General Eric Holder, and accomplished…nothing.
There is little hope that Speaker John Boehner, who has enough problems maintaining a semblance of authority and dignity, will question Issa’s fitness to chair this important committee. But still we are left wondering: What would become of Issa if he were subjected to the Republican style of investigation? What if the presumption of guilt, the preference for insinuation over evidence, the omission of exculpatory facts, and the promulgation of conspiratorial speculations that feature in all of Issa’s theatrical probes were applied to him?
As the richest member of Congress, Issa seems to enjoy the same veneer of respectability that great wealth has provided to many dubious figures. But his past includes several troubling encounters with law enforcement, from alleged car thefts to weapons offenses. So what would the public learn from an Issa-style investigation of Darrell Issa?
First, the committee chair would reveal the troubling findings about Issa, namely that he was arrested not once but twice for illegal weapons offenses. Worse yet, he would explain, Issa had been convicted the second time. Then he would release slightly redacted copies of court records on file in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where Issa grew up, showing an arrest, charges of auto theft and carrying a concealed weapon only one month after his discharge from the Army in the winter of 1972. Those same records would also reveal that Issa and an older brother were both suspects in the theft of a “new red Maserati sports car” from an auto dealership, and that Issa was eventually indicted for larceny.
And then the committee might leak a second, even more damaging set of records showing that Issa had been picked up several months later on another weapons charge in Michigan, where he attended college. Police arrested him for possession of an unregistered handgun, leading ultimately to his conviction.
What we might not learn – at least not until the facts were excavated by less partisan probers – is that Issa was only 19 years old at the time; that the first set of charges in Ohio was eventually dropped by prosecutors; and that the Michigan charge was a misdemeanor, punishable by a $100 fine. Which young Issa paid.
Yet whatever Issa did as a foolish kid could be made to look quite sinister by a congressional committee chair like him, dedicated to trumping up minor irritations into major scandals. How fortunate he is that nobody in authority has ever misused the investigative power to smear him – and that those currently in authority over him have no appetite for reining in his abuses of that power.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, June 29, 2013
“Antonin Scalia And His Argle-Bargle”: He Doesn’t Want To Be Seen As The Bigot He Is
Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent (pdf) in U.S. v. Windsor, the ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, is not subtle in its anger. The conservative Supreme Court jurist refers on page 22, for example, to the “legalistic argle-bargle” the court majority uses as its rationale.
And as Paul Waldman explained, the dissent goes downhill from there.
Scalia is outraged at the majority’s contention that the core purpose of DOMA was to discriminate against gay people, and this, he asserts, means that they’re calling everyone who supports it a monster. “To defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution,” he writes.
And more: “It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.”
Yes, apparently Scalia is feeling a little defensive, so much so that he believes those who disagree with him are calling him an enemy of humanity. One gets the sense reading his dissent that he doesn’t want to be seen as a bigot, just because he’s on record describing homosexuality in his Lawrence v. Texas dissent as “a lifestyle” that should be seen as “immoral and destructive.”
But let’s also not overlook this curious argument from the beginning of his DOMA dissent:
“This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. “
Really? When it’s the Voting Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act on the line, Scalia doesn’t hesitate to take an axe to “democratically adopted legislation,” approved by the elected representatives of Americans who are able to “govern themselves.” But when it’s the Defense of Marriage Act, Scalia suddenly remembers his affinity for restraint?
Exactly one year ago yesterday, following some of Scalia’s partisan antics, a constitutional law professor at UCLA said the conservative jurist “has finally jumped the shark.” At the time, that seemed like a reasonable assessment, and yet, Scalia somehow manages to get worse.
Update: Sahil Kapur takes the next step, listing “the top 10 quotes from the staunchly conservative jurist — a mix of rage-filled metaphors and legal punches.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, June 26, 2013
“The Arrogance Of The Third Political Branch”: The Supreme Court Uses Judicial Activism For Conservative Ends
We prefer to think of the Supreme Court as an institution apart from politics and above its struggles. In the wake of this week’s decision gutting the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, its actions must now be viewed through the prism of the conservative movement’s five-decade-long quest for power.
Liberals will still win occasional and sometimes partial victories, as they did Wednesday on same-sex marriage. But on issues directly related to political and economic influence, the court’s conservative majority is operating as a political faction, determined to shape a future in which progressives will find themselves at a disadvantage.
It’s true that the rulings voiding the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 show how the liberalizing trend on some social issues is hard for even a conservative court to resist.
The Defense of Marriage Act was invalidated because one of the conservatives, Justice Anthony Kennedy, has joined much of the American public in an admirable move toward greater sympathy for gay and lesbian rights.
And the decision on California’s anti-gay marriage law was reached by an ideologically eclectic majority on procedural grounds. Five justices held that the case had been improperly presented because the state of California declined to appeal a lower court’s ruling voiding the law.
This led to a middle-of-the-road outcome. The court declined to declare a national, Constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but did give gay-rights advocates a victory in California. By leaving the issue in the electoral sphere in most states, the court opened the way for further advances toward marriage equality, since public opinion is shifting steadily in its favor, fueled by strong support among younger Americans.
The marriage rulings, however, should not distract from the arrogance of power displayed in the voting rights decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts. His opinion involved little Constitutional analysis. He simply substituted the court’s judgment for Congress’ in deciding which states should be covered under the Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required voting rules in states with a history of discrimination to be pre-cleared by the Justice Department.
The court instructed Congress to rewrite the law, even though these sophisticated conservatives certainly know how difficult this will be in the current political climate.
Whenever conservatives on the court have had the opportunity to tilt the playing field toward their own side, they have done so. And in other recent cases, the court has weakened the capacity of Americans to take on corporate power. The conservative majority seems determined to bring us back to the Gilded Age of the 1890s.
The voting rights decision should be seen as following a pattern set by the rulings in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Citizens United in 2010.
Bush v. Gore had the effect of installing the conservatives’ choice in the White House and allowed him to influence the court’s subsequent direction with his appointments of Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Citizens United swept aside a tradition going back to the Progressive Era — and to the Founders’ deep concern over political corruption — by vastly increasing the power of corporate and monied interests in the electoral sphere.
Tuesday’s Shelby County v. Holder ruling will make it far more difficult for African-Americans to challenge unfair electoral and districting practices. For many states, it will be a Magna Carta to make voting more difficult if they wish to.
The Constitution, through the 14th and 15th Amendments, gives Congress a strong mandate to offer federal redress against discriminatory and regressive actions by state and local governments. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her scalding but very precise dissent, “a governing political coalition has an incentive to prevent changes in the existing balance of voting power.”
In less diplomatic language, existing majorities may try to fix election laws to make it far more difficult for their opponents to toss them from power in later elections. Republican legislatures around the country passed a spate of voter suppression laws disguised as efforts to guarantee electoral “integrity” for just this purpose.
Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against “judicial activism.” Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution.
It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, June 27, 2013
“John Roberts Gets His Trophy”: Inventing A Previously Unheard Of “New Constitutional Doctrine”
In my focus on the joyful and immediate exploitation of the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder by southern Republicans who behaved like they were in the midst of a jail break, I probably gave too little attention to the audacity of the decision itself. Ari Berman of The Nation offered some immediate observations, beginning with the stunning contrast between the Chief Justice’s solicitude for Congress is his dissent against the invalidation of the Defense of Marriage Act with his breezy contempt in Shelby County v. Holder:
In his dissent in the Defense of Marriage Act case today, Justice Scalia wrote: “We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation.”
Justice Roberts wrote in his concurrence: “I agree with Justice Scalia that this Court lacks jurisdiction to review the decisions of the courts below… I also agree with Justice Scalia that Congress acted constitutionally in passing the Defense of Marriage Act.”
Yet that reasoning didn’t stop Justices Roberts and Scalia from striking down the centerpiece of the Voting Rights Act yesterday, a hugely important civil rights law that has been passed by Congress five times with overwhelming bipartisan approval. Why didn’t the court defer to Congress on the VRA, which has a far more robust Congressional history/mandate than DOMA? And how did Roberts and Scalia reach such contradictory conclusions in the different cases?
But more fundamentally, as 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner notes in a scathing review of Shelby County v. Holder for Slate, Roberts kind of made up the constitutional foundation for the decision: a previously unheard-of doctrine of the “equal sovereignty of the states.”
Roberts, of course, is rather famous for his specific hostility to the Voting Rights Act, as Adam Serwer pointed out at MoJo when this case was first argued:
Shelby County offers Roberts an opportunity to complete a mission he began three decades ago. When the chief justice was a young lawyer, in 1981, Southern legislators hoped an ascendant conservative movement could pressure Reagan into opposing an extension of the VRA. In June of that year, Reagan wrote a letter to Attorney General William French Smith requesting an “assessment” of the law. “I am sensitive to the controversy which has attached itself to some of the Act’s provisions, in particular those provisions which impose burdens unequally upon different parts of the nation,” Reagan wrote. “But I am sensitive also to the fact that the spirit of the Act marks this nation’s commitment to full equality for all Americans, regardless of race, color, or national origin.” Reagan didn’t go as far as former segregationist and then-Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) by opposing the Voting Rights Act in its entirety, but his administration fought efforts to strengthen the law.
Additionally, Roberts has been around the block enough times to know that a legislative “fix” to Section 4 either won’t happen (that’s my bet), or would take long enough that long-stalled voter suppression efforts in the Deep South will find their way into statute books and election procedures. Yes, the Justice Department and civil rights advocates will try to use Section 2 remedies in the absence of preclearance powers, but winning such cases typically requires after-the-fact demonstrations of harm to minority voting influence.
It took a while, and required looking far away from the congressional history of the Voting Rights Act, and inventing a new constitutional doctrine, but John Roberts got his trophy this week. He should have had the sense of decorum to assign the opinion to someone else.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, June 26, 2013
“John Boehner’s Dilemma”: Your Choice Mr. Speaker, Tea Party Uprising Or Latino Uprising
On immigration, Speaker John Boehner is caught between two unpleasant possibilities: A Tea Party uprising or a Latino uprising. Eventually, he’s going to have to choose which presents a bigger risk to his party.
So far, all of his rhetoric and body language suggests he is trying to protect his House Republican caucus from a Tea Party uprising that would take out incumbents in Republican primaries, and perhaps himself from a challenge to his speakership.
Even though the Senate passed landmark immigration reform with a supermajority of 68 votes, Speaker Boehner is refusing to bring the Senate bill to the House floor. He is insisting the House pass its own legislation with “majority support of Republicans,” a needless standard designed to produce a far more right-wing bill than the Democratic-led Senate can tolerate, increasing the chances of a deadlocked House-Senate negotiation.
If it even gets that far. Considering how House Republicans recently failed to come together to pass a farm bill, it’s not a given the House can pass any immigration bill with Republican votes alone.
Failure to pass a final bill suits Tea Party Republicans just fine. But if Boehner buries a widely supported bipartisan Senate bill, the uprising he faces may be far worse.
On Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told CNN, “This has the potential of becoming the next major civil rights movement. I could envision in the late summer or early fall if Boehner tries to bottle the bill up or put something in without a path to citizenship … I could see a million people on the Mall in Washington.”
This is not idle musing. This has already happened.
In December 2005, the House passed legislation that would turn undocumented workers into felons. A wave of mass protests by Latinos swept the country the following spring, lasting for three months. Half a million poured into the streets of Los Angeles, and 400,000 marched in downtown Chicago. Seeing the strength of the Latino vote, the Senate quickly backed off of the House approach and in May 2006 passed an immigration bill providing a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented.
Neither the House nor Senate bills became law. But back in 2006, with conservative Republicans controlling both chambers, gridlock was a win for the protesters. Today, with immigration advocates so close to winning historic reform, gridlock would be a devastating blow.
And if the highest-ranking Republican in the country was the clear roadblock, the Republican Party in general would be on the receiving end of visceral hatred, most likely voiced once again in the streets.
A wave of protests targeting Republicans that matched or surpassed the level of street heat generated in 2006 would be devastating to the Republican Party’s attempts to win back the Latino votes that proved decisive to Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 victories. With the Latino share of the electorate continuing to rise — most ominously for Republicans, in their lone bastion of strength, the South — killing immigration reform could fast-track a demographic disaster that would condemn Republicans to minority status for a generation.
In the end, Boehner will have to decide which uprising he wants to face least: A Tea Party uprising that could spell personal defeats for himself and his friends, or a Latino uprising that could spell the end of the Republican Party.
If he takes the long view, he will recognize that his speakership won’t last for long if his party crumbles all around him.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, June 28, 2013
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