Just how far will they go?


Scary implications of Congressional powers
I haven't said much about the Alito confirmation hearings. They have gone about as I expected them to go, and I didn't want to heap anymore trash on the memory of a once great political party.

TigerHawk did make an excellent point here though.

The warrant is not necessary because the Congress has its own subpoena power, just like the judicial branch. My constitutional law knowledge is fading steadily from its peak twenty years ago, but I believe the judicial branch and the legislative branch have subpoena power and the executive branch does not for a good reason: neither the judicial branch nor the legislative branch can prosecute defendants (the Congress may bring no "bill of attainder," which is Founding Father talk for "legislative prosecution"). They can issue subpoenas, but they can't bring charges. The executive branch, which can bring charges, cannot issue a subpoena by its ownself. Yet another example of the wise checks and balances embedded in the Constitution and the common law of England.

But the fact of the Congressional subpoena power does not make Teddy Kennedy any less a hypocrite in demanding the coercive extraction of the records of a political organization. We need to say it again: Senator Kennedy took the scary position that it was just and appropriate for the Congress to extract by coercion the private, internal records of a political advocacy group just because it was considering the nomination of a person who had once been a member of that organization.

To understand how weird this is, consider the following "thought experiment": If the next Democratic SCOTUS nominee once belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union(as Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually did) and, say, Sam Brownback proposed issuing a subpoena for the "records" of the ACLU to help him "understand" the nominee's testimony, what do you imagine the reaction of the mainstream media might be? The implications of Senator Kennedy's demand for freedom of speech and association are appalling. Where's the outrage?

It looks like more and more Congressmen believe that there are no restrictions on Congressional power.

Again, this isn't a political party thing. Just look at some of the things Orin Hatch has said.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 12, 2006 at 05:15 PM  Tag


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