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The drone strike that killed Quasem Soleimani has rekindled the decades long argument about the President's powers to unilaterally order military attacks.
Currently the guideline is the War Powers Act which requires the President consult with Congress before engaging in hostilities. It was enacted in response to the unilateral escalation of our involvement in Viet-nam.
In the half a century since the War Powers Act was enacted situations have developed every few years where a President wants to take military action against some foe but fears if he tells Congress word will leak out and undermine the opportunity to accomplish the mission. So Presidents have often acted unilaterally. Each time it sparks a fight that sucks up lots of time and energy and nothing gets resolved. The War Powers Act clearly needs some tweaks.
Presidents ordering military strikes unilaterally is an uncomfortably close step beyond a President using the military to protect his/her own political interest. Even if the Presidents sole motivation is to act in the countries interest a President usually surrounds himself with like minded people. So the decision making process is prone to infection by group think that allows an administration to convince themselves to take a certain course of action without really vetting all the consequences. Who can forget our invasion of Iraq based on the administrations conviction Iraq was building nuclear bombs, which turned out to be completely false.
On the other hand, democracy is like a bureaucracy, it has great difficulty making quick decisions and is lousy at keeping secrets.
As voters we need to demand Congress work out a process that requires the President to consult with Congress that can produce quick, but secret decisions. That probably means the entire Congress cannot be involved.
Here is one possible approach. Set up a protocol for regular meetings between the administration and the small group representing Congress. Those meetings should happen periodically even if no imminent action is planned in order to pre-authorize action by the President for specific types of anticipated possible events.
The meetings should be top secret, they should be recorded and it should be a Federal crime for anyone to say anything about the meeting before any specific military action that requires surprise contemplated at the meeting has occurred or is determined to be no longer feasible.
This is the highest form of national security so any journalist who learns information about the meeting and publishes that information in any form while the action contemplated has yet to be completed can be required by law to reveal the source of their information, and be subject to criminal penalties.
If a leak does occur an independent commission to investigate the leak should automatically be convened, perhaps composed of the members of the intelligence committees of both the house and the Senate, or a panel of Federal Judges.
This needs to be something everyone in Government acknowledges is beyond partisanship. So, to provide public accountability the recordings and transcriptions of the meetings should be publicly disclosed within two years, absent temporary continuance from the Supreme Court based on ongoing, immediate security needs.
Those of my generation have now witnessed three Presidential impeachment proceedings in our lifetime. Presidents Nixon, Clinton and Trump.
Republicans are now trying to deflect calls for witness testimony in the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump by arguing no witnesses were called by the Senate in the Impeachment of Bill Clinton. Is that a legitimate comparison?
First, the alleged crimes:
Nixon and Trump both were accused of actions that undermine the democratic process. The Nixon administration authorized a burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices to try to gain a political advantage, and worked desperately to cover it up. President Trump sought to withhold military aide Ukraine needed to counter the military threat to their democracy from Russia. Witnesses in the House impeachment trial from within the Trump administration understood the goal was simply to pressure Ukraine to investigate the alleged activities in Ukraine of the son of Joe Biden in the hope the investigation would harm Biden politically.
Bill Clinton was subject to an evolving series of investigations by House Republicans. First they investigated alleged improprieties in a land deal in Arkansas (Whitewater) prior to his election. That investigation was expanded to cover a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former Arkansas state employee (Paula Jones) against Clinton. Later allegations of a sexual act with a consenting adult (Monica Lewinsky) in the White House were included in the investigation.
Although the Whitewater matter was investigated for over a decade by State and Federal authorities and no prosecuting authority ever found evidence of legal improprieties by the Clinton's sufficient to support charges. The Paula Jones lawsuit was dismissed as without merit, then after an appeal settled by the parties. But during the Jones lawsuit Clinton had testified in a deposition he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky, which became a perjury issue when Clinton later admitted to a "sexual relationship" with Lewinsky. Clinton claimed he did not have intercourse with Lewinsky therefore his testimony was not perjury.
House Republicans impeached Clinton for lying under oath and obstruction of justice, both charges rooted in the recorded deposition testimony in the sexual harassment lawsuit in which he attempted to hide sexual activities with a woman not his wife. The charges were pertinent to his character but not related to illegal political activities.
Second, the Judges:
Nixon faced a Democratic House and Senate, so he resigned when it became clear he would be impeached, in part because the House public hearings had demonstrated to the public that the burglary was authorized at the highest levels, and that the administration went to great lengths to cover up the crime.
Clinton, a Democratic President, faced a Republican House and Senate. After the hearings leading to impeachment in the Republican House, the Republican Senate did not call witnesses and Clinton was acquitted on both counts by a bi-partisan vote (the Senate consisted of 55 Republicans and 45 Democrats at that time).
Trump has been impeached by a Democratic House after extensive testimony alleging he was trying to use the military aide package as leverage to gain a personal political advantage. The House also subpoenaed many members of the administration who could have provided testimony to clarify what happened but the Trump White House ordered the potential witnesses to not obey subpoena's - arguably obstructing justice.
Now President Trump is be judged by the Senate. Mitch McConnell says there will be no witnesses, citing the Clinton impeachment as precedent. But the Clinton impeachment was based on testimony in a lawsuit that was already on public record. There was no point in having other witnesses, there was nothing they could add.
Quite different from the impeachment of President Trump. His alleged conduct goes to matters central to his duties as President, and what happened is peculiarly within the knowledge of the folks in the White House, many of whom the President would not allow to testify in the House proceeding.
If the Senate hears all the witnesses and the votes on a party line vote to exonerate President Trump, I will not complain. The public will have had access to all the facts and can decide for themselves at the next election what they think.
But by all appearances the Senate Republicans are ready to act as soon as possible to exonerate President Trump to avoid harm to the Republican parties chances in the coming election. To me that would be corruption of the sort I have always identified with the fake democracies around the world, not with the supposed beacon of democracy in which we live.
If you want to help preserve our rule of law based democracy, don't just like this post, share it with others. Voter outrage is the only thing that will push Mitch McConnell to proceed with a real examination of President Trump's conduct so he can be legitimately impeached, or exonerated.
Fox News manages to interject the phrase " high tax" as a caustic modifier almost every time it mentions the city of San Francisco, the State of California, or Democrats in general.
Facts about State "high taxes."
The wealthiest and most economically diverse states in the union that have high taxes and provide a lot of services and are mostly blue states that contribute more money in taxes to the Federal Government than they get back from the Federal Government.
The poorest, least economically diverse states all have low taxes and provide few service, are virtually all Red States, and generally get more money back from the Federal Government than they contribute in taxes.
Facts about high taxes Fox News never talks about.
For the Federal government the Republican low tax policies Fox news promotes have been in effect about 50 of the last 100 years. During those years the top income tax rate on rich folks has been 40% or below. During the years Republican low tax policies have dominated the National debt has grown faster than GDP - as a country our net wealth has gone backwards averaging a net loss of about -.5% of GDP per year.
The other half century when Democratic high tax polices dominated the top income tax rate averaged about 70% on the top income of the wealthiest taxpayers. Those years of control by "tax and spend" Democrats saw no net increase in the National debt, and we averaged GDP growth of about 2.7% per year. In other words we got 2.7% wealthier per year as a country.
The history of the last 100 years is pretty clear that high taxes on the wealthy make us a richer, stabler country. Low taxes are a penny wise - pound foolish option that, while it makes the rich feel relatively richer, in fact makes even the rich poorer and the rest of us a lot poorer. The the red states that buy into the ideologically driven representations on Fox News and elect low tax Republicans are undercutting this countries potential, and their own economic vitality.
