Not on My Beat

24 May 2006



DOJ Corruption Probe of Democrat Irks Congressional GOP

William Jefferson is a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana, and he is currently the target of an investigation into bribery charges. The Department of Justice searched his home and found $90,000 stashed in a freezer. However, when the DOJ searched his offices on Capitol Hill Saturday night, the Republican leadership on the Hill pitched a fit. Congress may yet emerge as a co-equal branch of government.

Congressman Jefferson, it must be noted, has not been charged with any crime at this stage. However, Vernon Jackson, the CEO of the Kentucky-based high-tech firm iGate, and Brett Pfeffer, one of the Congressman’s former aides, have pleaded guilty to bribery charges and they are cooperating with the authorities. Also, the House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation of its own.

One expected Congressman Jefferson to invoke the privileges of office in his own defense. He issued a statement saying “I believe that it’s completely inappropriate to use the police of the federal government to come into the office.” Under the American system, the executive branch can’t tell the legislature what to do nor vice versa. And this, according to Congressman Jefferson, was clearly a breach of that tradition.

That Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) agree is a bit more surprising. To date, the Republican controlled Congress has acted largely like the Supreme Soviet, rubberstamping the actions of the executive. The Speaker issued a statement saying that he will “seek a means to restore the delicate balance of power among the branches of government.” He also said, “Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this separation of powers line in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress. Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years.”

Newt Gingrich, definitely a partisan Republican but also a Man of the House, sent an e-mail to colleagues that said the raid Saturday night was “the most blatant violation of the Constitutional Separation of Powers in my lifetime.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said, “We are talking to Congress and hope to allay their concerns. I will admit these were unusual steps that were taken in response to unusual circumstances.” Perhaps, he feels that the separation of powers is as “quaint,” to use his term, as the Geneva Convention and that in time of war, the fuhrerprinzip makes it legal and constitutional if the president’s people do it.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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