Thursday, May 24, 2007

What IS the people's business?

Watching a portion of "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" late night; what was featured was Monica Goodling's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee investigating into whether the Justice Dept.'s firing of 8 federal prosecutors would have been illegal. Seems now, from Goodling's testimony, that some illegality could indeed be at issue. On the show afterwards was one Democratic member of the House of Representatives and a Republican by the name of Lungren. I specify Lungren in particular because he was highly dismissive of the whole case against Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General who heads the Justice Dept. Indeed, he felt that the investigation was costing too much money, too much time and was a distraction from doing "the people's business." An echo, undoubtedly, of GW's own complaints that Congress should simply get back to legislating rather than investigating.

Quite frankly, I have no idea how long Lungren had been in office. But I do know this, that soon after Bill Clinton became president, the then minority GOP began initiating investigation after investigation into alleged scandals (ultimately, non-scandals). And a Lungren then, would have argued that such investigations were the people's business. Or at least a vindictive party's business because a Democrat had actually won the White House. And the former President didn't exactly demonstrate the arrogance of telling Congress to get back to legislating instead of investigating. By the way, wasting millions of tax dollars into Monica Lewinsky, Travelgate and Whitewater. So, how much money is today's Congress wasting on investigating those firings of 8 GOP federal prosecutors for alleged political reasons? Probably not as much money as the GOP managed to waste investigating Clinton's two terms in office. And those firings of 8 federal prosecutors seem far more legitimate a cause to investigate than pushing for a cause to impeach a president over a private lawsuit. Political rationales that lay behind these firings of those prosecutors would, as far as I know, be the people's business. Whereas the private lawsuit, Jones v Clinton was not.

So what was recently legislated that also had many GOP in Congress signatures? It was addressed at length by Cal Thomas and also by Lou Dobbs of CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight." It was an illegal alien amnesty bill. I'll agree with Dobbs, there is no question this is about amnesty. Just as I'll agree with Thomas, this time, that it is too cute by half in a post 9/11/2001 world that we could be giving amnesty and citizenship to people who are not only criminal but who could even be terrorists; as investigated into by Dobb's team. Yet, this is exactly what GW wants and this is what the current bill would give him. Dobbs later discussing with Ed Rollins his opinion on the GOP in general? According to the polls, 42% of the likely voters now classify themselves as independents. And Rollins had little good to say about the current crop of GOP in Congress. I am a registered Republican, not that I'm always going to vote that way and the GOP have given me plenty of reasons why I won't. So this "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" bill as currently drafted is supposed to be the "people's business" is it? Make that, Mexico's business, the illegal aliens' business, the corporate lobbyists' business; but most advisedly, "the people" have nothing to do with this.

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