Adventures in My Mind
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Mar 21, 2007
Blind Loyalty
The president demands loyalty to him, but what about loyalty to us?
The Miami Herald's Leornard Pitts Jr. asks the question that begs to be answered: Where is the loyalty to the American people?
Much the same way it was a fool's game to say that the Clinton White House was the first to peddle influence, it would be even more ridiculous to say that the White House of King George III is the first to award loyalty among its friends. In both cases, however, I think it's fair to say that each took their pillars of political vice quite a bit further than anyone did before them.
With Clinton we saw the renting out of the Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder. At the time, it was a political scandal. Pols from both side of the aisle were appalled by such behavior.
"How could the august halls of the White House be sold for monetary favors?" they howled. "How have we sunk so low that anyone with enough lucre could sleep within the same walls as the Man Who Saved the Union?" they decried. "How do we gain control of the White House and rent out the Eisenhower bowling alley to the pharma lobbyists bowling league?" they schemed. You see, shame doesn't last long in D.C., especially when donations are involved.
Now we see the same type of never-seen-on-this-scale thing with loyalty in the Bush White House. Clearly every politician from local school board member to the POTUS uses loyalty as a reward for supporters, friends, and contributors. But one must ask if that loyalty has ever come at such a cost to the greater good, i.e., the common people.
Anyone remember good old Brownie, Mike Brown? His name is still, and will forever be, cursed along the Gulf Coast. That single reward of loyal support most certainly cost scores of lives and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, when his little guerdon, FEMA, failed miserably in its attempts to react to, first, warnings of impending doom at the hands of Hurricane Katrina and ultimately actual doom as the storms impact on Louisiana and Mississippi became evident.
In his article Pitts speaks of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" in talking about how loyalty above all else determined fitness for serving in beaurocratic Iraq:"People who applied to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the agency governing Iraq -- told Mr. Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, that they were asked in job interviews about their political party, their opinion of Roe v. Wade, their religious affiliation and whether or not they voted for Bush in 2000."So the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops and tens of millions of "free" Iraqis were, and still are, charged to a small cabal of right-leaning elitists who scoff at checks and balances and look to recreate the U.S. as a theocratic oligarchy?
And now we see the same thing playing out in the latest loyalty flap regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for what can only be described as a political reason: to protect Republican interests by padding the Justice Department with Bush lackies and FORs (Friends of Rove). Thanks to a little known and late-added provision in the PATRIOT Act, all eight posts have since been filled without approval of the U.S. Senate.
But here's the best part of this brewing Constitutional powerplay between the Congress and the White House: District of Columbia U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, will be the one to determine if the Bush administration is in criminal contempt of congress when they, in all likliehood, ignore upcoming congressional subpeonas for Carl Rove's and former presidential attorney Harriet Miers's sworn testimony.
"And what's the big deal about that?," you ask. Well, Taylor holds his position as a direct result of the PATRIOT Act provision mentioned above. He was appointed by the White House, without Senate approval, after his predecessor was promoted to another job within the DOJ. Sounds like this was the exact event that such a provision was created for.
I may be cynical, but even my active imagination has a difficult time envisioning Mr. Taylor recommending criminal charges in the matter. How about you?Labels: Politics
0 Comments | Link to this post posted by Teddy 2:06 PM
