NBC/ABC/CBS: Subpoenas "too partisan", "waste of resources"

[Little-Acorn]

That was then. This is now.

http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/2007/fax20070323.asp

Ten Years Ago, Subpoenas Drew TV Yawns

When Team Clinton Was Subpoenaed, Reporters Found 'Hard-Charging Partisans' Wasting Tax Money

With the Democrats back in power, network anchors are dwelling lovingly on congressional hearings now with liberal stars like Al Gore and Valerie Plame. They've shown no loss of appetite for hearings on the U.S. Attorney-firings scandal, deemed a "constitutional crisis" by NBC Wednesday night. But ten years ago, when a Republican Congress prepared subpoenas for the Clinton White House on receiving political contributions from China, viewers heard the networks sing a very different tune.

> ABC wondered whether subpoenas and hearings weren't democracy in action, but a waste of America's resources. On the April 10, 1997 World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings promoted a story: "When we come back, two investigations of fundraising abuse, two of them on Capitol Hill. Is it a waste of time and money?" Reporter John Cochran underlined the problem of GOP partisanship: "Dan Burton is a hard-charging partisan and has resisted investigating anyone but Democrats."

ABC's Linda Douglass insisted there was public boredom at the end of a story on the July 18, 1997 World News Tonight: "Democrats gripe that the hearings are too partisan, so next week the committee will focus on foreign contributions to Republicans, all the while wondering if the public is paying attention to any of this."

> CBS cast the House subpoena plans as a partisan food fight. On the April 11, 1997 CBS This Morning, substitute anchor Cynthia Bowers began: "Not long ago, there was a lot of talk on Capitol Hill about returning a sense of civility to congressional debate. Remember that? Well, forget it. When the debate is over money and politics, the gloves come off in the House of Representatives."

Reporter Bob Schieffer warned: "The House committee trying to investigate campaign irregularities has broken into complete partisan disarray over how much power to give Republican Chairman Dan Burton....Democrats did everything but throw food when Burton laid out ground rules for the investigation, under which he could subpoena witnesses and documents without the Democrats' permission....Democrats say Burton is destroying the committee's credibility by concentrating only on Democratic irregularities....Democrats fear the probe is already out of control."

On July 31, 1997, the Senate committee probing the Asian money scandal voted unanimously to subpoena the White House after they took months to release documents about illegal donations to the DNC. The only network mention came from Bob Schieffer on the July 30 CBS Evening News â€" but nothing after subpoenas were issued.

> NBC theorized that the media were too Clinton-scandal obsessed in 1997. On June 17, 1997, Today co-host Katie Couric asked reporter Bob Woodward: "But are members of the media, do you think, Bob, too scandal-obsessed, looking for something at every corner?"

On August 1, even as the Senate moved to subpoena the White House, co-host Matt Lauer professed: "But there aren't any major storm clouds on the horizon for Bill Clinton, other than maybe Medicare reform." Newsweek's Jonathan Alter replied: "Yeah, but of course there are these possible scandals, but when the economy is doing well, the public really doesn't seem to care much about anything else."

On October 8, Today co-host Katie Couric framed the hearings for Sen. Arlen Specter: "Perhaps this is an intentional effort to embarrass the Democratic Party?" On the November 7 Today, NBC's Lisa Myers pressed Senator Fred Thompson: "Your hearings clearly reinforced the public's already low opinion of politicians and politics. Beyond that, what did it accomplish?"

[loosecannon]

Bush is backing himself into his own asshole

In other words, they think we’ll act like Republicans.

After Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the House Government Reform Committee issued more than 1000 subpoenas to investigate alleged misconduct by the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party, or two for every day Congress was in session.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be burdensome?

The Clinton Administration produced two million pages of documents, an average of 4,000 pages of documents for every day Congress was in session.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be intrusive?

Three Clinton Chiefs of Staff—Mack McLarty, Erskine Bowles and John Podesta—testified before Congress, as did four White House Counsels, the Chief of Staff to the Vice President, the Chief of Staff to the First Lady, and an assortment of White House officials with "deputy" or "assistant" or "deputy assistant" in their titles. A total of 134 Clinton Administration officials testified in public hearings on alleged Clinton Administration misconduct, and 141 Clinton Administration officials spent 568 hours in depositions before congressional staff. They testified to private discussions with the President, and the documents that the Clinton Administration provided included notes of discussions, internal e-mails and memos, and preliminary drafts of documents. Republicans in Congress routinely demanded documents detailing internal administration deliberations for evidence that political considerations had improperly influenced Clinton Administration policies, and the Clinton Administration routinely provided the documents that Congress demanded.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will pursue trivial matters without any sense of proportion?

The Clinton Administration provided records to identify who had attended White House movies, private White House dinners and lunch at the White House mess, and who had sat in the President’s box at the Kennedy Center. Congress took 140 hours of testimony in public hearings and depositions on whether the Clinton White House had misused the holiday card list for political purposes.

Are Republicans worried that Democrats will launch sweeping investigations based upon unsubstantiated allegations?

In 1997, Congressman Gerald Solomon, then Chairman of the House Rules Committee, notified the FBI with great fanfare that there was "evidence" that a Chinese-American fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee was guilty of espionage and had sold secrets to the Chinese. Two years later the Government Reform Committee launched an investigation into whether the absence of indictments was the result of political interference with the FBI’s investigation. The Government Reform Committee chairman, Dan Burton, subpoenaed the interview notes from the FBI’s investigation.

That proved to be a mistake.

No one the FBI interviewed had a clue what Solomon was talking about. And the interview notes that the FBI produced included the notes of their interview with Solomon. Solomon had talked to a Senate staffer at a congressional reception who told Solomon that he had heard about the espionage from an unnamed employee of the Department of Commerce. Solomon had never met the Senate staffer before and couldn’t remember his name, but described the staffer as "a male in his thirties or forties, approximately five feet ten inches tall with brownish hair."

When President Bush took office, of course, virtually all oversight by Congress of the executive branch stopped. "Our party controls the levers of government," Republican Congressman Ray LaHood explained in 2004. "We’re not about to go out and look under a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."

I watched the last six years of the Clinton Administration from North Carolina, well outside the beltway. As a citizen, I was appalled by the shameless partisan abuse of oversight powers by the Republican congress. I have no interest in getting even now that I am part of a Democratic majority in Congress and the President is Republican.

But we need to correct the utter failure of the constitutional duty of oversight for the last six years.

Oversight is not just about causing heartburn for the other party. A great American political scientist, Woodrow Wilson, wrote that "the informing power" of Congress —- the power to expose abuse of power, corruption and waste -- was probably more important than Congress’s "legislative function." Oversight investigations inform Congress’s decisions about legislation and funding. And oversight investigations provide unflattering scrutiny of abuse of power and corruption. Yes, political embarrassment can be a wholesome, proper purpose of oversight investigations. Political embarrassment punishes misconduct, and it is a deterrent to conduct that would be hard to explain in public.

Henry Waxman, the next Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, wrote in the Washington Post in 2004 that "the absence of oversight invites corruption and mistakes. The Founders correctly perceived that concentration of power leads to abuse of power if unchecked." The absence of oversight by the Republican Congress of the Bush Administration had done the Bush Administration no favor, Waxman said. "Lack of accountability has contributed to a series of phenomenal misjudgments that have damaged Bush, imperiled our international standing and saddled our nation with mounting debts."

President Bush isn’t likely to see oversight hearings by Congress as helpful, of course. But during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt welcomed scrutiny by the Democratic Senate into fraud and mismanagement by the military and military contractors. In fact, Roosevelt asked the chairman of the committee to be his running mate in 1944.

Now it is Bush's turn to bask in the scrutiny so wholesomely showered on Clinton when there was NO underlying crime to uncover.



As a citizen, I was appalled by the shameless partisan abuse of oversight powers by the Republican congress. I have no interest in getting even now that I am part of a Democratic majority in Congress and the President is Republican.But we need to correct the utter failure of the constitutional duty of oversight for the last six years.

And we need to teach those republicans a lesson about Karma and circles. So they think twice about pushing the envelope beyond an acceptable standard. One that they can honor when the crosshairs are aimed back.

And remove the criminals from the WH.

Clinton survived the unprecedented attacks on his credibility and honor by becoming even more popular with the American public. Bush will not fare as well as Nixon.

This dude refused to get warrants before he eavesdropped on American citizens and now he cowers behind some fictional executive proviledge to avoid his appointees being subpoened to testify before Congress?

[Dilloduck]

The
Bush is backing himself into his own asshole

In other words, they think we’ll act like Republicans.

After Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, the House Government Reform Committee issued more than 1000 subpoenas to investigate alleged misconduct by the Clinton Administration and the Democratic Party, or two for every day Congress was in session.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be burdensome?

The Clinton Administration produced two million pages of documents, an average of 4,000 pages of documents for every day Congress was in session.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will be intrusive?

Three Clinton Chiefs of Staff—Mack McLarty, Erskine Bowles and John Podesta—testified before Congress, as did four White House Counsels, the Chief of Staff to the Vice President, the Chief of Staff to the First Lady, and an assortment of White House officials with "deputy" or "assistant" or "deputy assistant" in their titles. A total of 134 Clinton Administration officials testified in public hearings on alleged Clinton Administration misconduct, and 141 Clinton Administration officials spent 568 hours in depositions before congressional staff. They testified to private discussions with the President, and the documents that the Clinton Administration provided included notes of discussions, internal e-mails and memos, and preliminary drafts of documents. Republicans in Congress routinely demanded documents detailing internal administration deliberations for evidence that political considerations had improperly influenced Clinton Administration policies, and the Clinton Administration routinely provided the documents that Congress demanded.

Are Republicans worried that congressional investigations will pursue trivial matters without any sense of proportion?

The Clinton Administration provided records to identify who had attended White House movies, private White House dinners and lunch at the White House mess, and who had sat in the President’s box at the Kennedy Center. Congress took 140 hours of testimony in public hearings and depositions on whether the Clinton White House had misused the holiday card list for political purposes.

Are Republicans worried that Democrats will launch sweeping investigations based upon unsubstantiated allegations?

In 1997, Congressman Gerald Solomon, then Chairman of the House Rules Committee, notified the FBI with great fanfare that there was "evidence" that a Chinese-American fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee was guilty of espionage and had sold secrets to the Chinese. Two years later the Government Reform Committee launched an investigation into whether the absence of indictments was the result of political interference with the FBI’s investigation. The Government Reform Committee chairman, Dan Burton, subpoenaed the interview notes from the FBI’s investigation.

That proved to be a mistake.

No one the FBI interviewed had a clue what Solomon was talking about. And the interview notes that the FBI produced included the notes of their interview with Solomon. Solomon had talked to a Senate staffer at a congressional reception who told Solomon that he had heard about the espionage from an unnamed employee of the Department of Commerce. Solomon had never met the Senate staffer before and couldn’t remember his name, but described the staffer as "a male in his thirties or forties, approximately five feet ten inches tall with brownish hair."

When President Bush took office, of course, virtually all oversight by Congress of the executive branch stopped. "Our party controls the levers of government," Republican Congressman Ray LaHood explained in 2004. "We’re not about to go out and look under a bunch of rocks to try to cause heartburn."

I watched the last six years of the Clinton Administration from North Carolina, well outside the beltway. As a citizen, I was appalled by the shameless partisan abuse of oversight powers by the Republican congress. I have no interest in getting even now that I am part of a Democratic majority in Congress and the President is Republican.

But we need to correct the utter failure of the constitutional duty of oversight for the last six years.

Oversight is not just about causing heartburn for the other party. A great American political scientist, Woodrow Wilson, wrote that "the informing power" of Congress —- the power to expose abuse of power, corruption and waste -- was probably more important than Congress’s "legislative function." Oversight investigations inform Congress’s decisions about legislation and funding. And oversight investigations provide unflattering scrutiny of abuse of power and corruption. Yes, political embarrassment can be a wholesome, proper purpose of oversight investigations. Political embarrassment punishes misconduct, and it is a deterrent to conduct that would be hard to explain in public.

Henry Waxman, the next Chairman of the Government Reform Committee, wrote in the Washington Post in 2004 that "the absence of oversight invites corruption and mistakes. The Founders correctly perceived that concentration of power leads to abuse of power if unchecked." The absence of oversight by the Republican Congress of the Bush Administration had done the Bush Administration no favor, Waxman said. "Lack of accountability has contributed to a series of phenomenal misjudgments that have damaged Bush, imperiled our international standing and saddled our nation with mounting debts."

President Bush isn’t likely to see oversight hearings by Congress as helpful, of course. But during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt welcomed scrutiny by the Democratic Senate into fraud and mismanagement by the military and military contractors. In fact, Roosevelt asked the chairman of the committee to be his running mate in 1944.

Now it is Bush's turn to bask in the scrutiny so wholesomely showered on Clinton when there was NO underlying crime to uncover.




And we need to teach those republicans a lesson about Karma and circles. So they think twice about pushing the envelope beyond an acceptable standard. One that they can honor when the crosshairs are aimed back.

And remove the criminals from the WH.

Clinton survived the unprecedented attacks on his credibility and honor by becoming even more popular with the American public. Bush will not fare as well as Nixon.

This dude refused to get warrants before he eavesdropped on American citizens and now he cowers behind some fictional executive proviledge to avoid his appointees being subpoened to testify before Congress?

The government is full of American "Shia" and "Sunnis". All scum. Recall the whole lot of em. They're doing nothing but steal our money and waste time. Neither party is in any shape to give the other a lesson on anything. They are a circus ! :fu: