The House Judiciary Committee is holding another round of hearings on executive power and the Bush administration. For the most part, the same cast of characters have been brought in to say the same predictable things.
I am not going to complain, yet again, the consistent omission from these hearings of a political science who studies presidential power. The panelists was stacked with lawyers. And if they were not lawyers, they were the head of some cause group. I continue to wonder why the Congress wishes to leave out an important perspective on presidential power?
That said, the Democrats continue to try to screw up their electoral chances by bringing to the front individuals with whom most thinking persons in the heartland would find crazy. Case in point. Chairman John Conyers (D. MI) invited Vincent Bugliosi, whose claim to fame was the prosecutor of Charles Manson (and do we really need to praise his skills in that case since it would have taken a moron not to convict Manson), to testify as he has written a book with the low key title, "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder." Or former member of Congress Elizabeth Holtzman, who left the Congress in 1981 (!), recommending her book (for all its goodies), "The Impeachment of George W. Bush." If Joe or Jane Lunchbox were to tune into C-SPAN at the moment, they would find these people hysterics and would make the connection that they were testifying to Congress at the invitation of the Democrats. If you get the chance, check out Jeremy Rabkin's nonplussed testimony at what he was hearing by his fellow panelists, which he implored to keep in mind the America that is outside the Beltway Bubble.
