Dear A-Letter Reader:
Yesterday I chatted with you about corruption on Capitol Hill and how an out-of-control government has allowed lawmakers and bureaucrats to wield enormous powers over our lives -- and offered the chance to enrich themselves with bribes.
I mentioned that last weekend, FBI agents raided the Rayburn House Office Building, the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La). The FBI accused Congressman Jefferson of taking over $400,000 in bribes. Without regard for guilt or innocence, there is no precedence for the FBI or any other federal police to invade any office in the legislative branch in such a blatant violation of the separation of powers the U.S. Constitution provides.
"There is no excuse for the FBI -- for the first time in history -- searching a congressional office, and apparently doing so in total disregard of due process as it relates to the legislative branch," former Speaker Newt Gingrich, (R-Ga.), said in an e-mail to several members. Gingrich was particularly critical of what he described as the executive branch trampling constitutional lines of authority.
"The president should respond accordingly and should discipline (probably fire) whoever exhibited this extraordinary violation," he wrote. "The protection of the legislative branch from the executive branch's policing powers is a fundamental principle which goes all the way back to the English Civil War," Gingrich said. He described the incident as "the most blatant violation of the constitutional separation of powers in my lifetime." U.S. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn), the Senate Majority Leader agreed with Gingrich.
Well, I served in the House with Newt and I agree with him that this blatant FBI raid was way out of line. There are procedures to be followed when the executive branch wants information from the legislative branch and all these procedures were totally ignored.
But there is a supreme irony when U.S. Senators and U.S. House members complain about this FBI police raid on their domain.
The majority of these are the same legislative yahoos who have voted to strip every American of their personal and financial privacy. This constitutionally blind gang on Capitol Hill has voted to expand and renew the PATRIOT Act that allows secret surveillance and clandestine intrusion into our financial accounts, home and office records and computers. And when it is revealed that President Bush is not only violating laws requiring search warrants for wiretaps in thousands of cases, and allowing massive gathering of millions of Americans' phone calls, these distinguished ladies and gentlemen for the most part stand mute -- or sing their approval of such criminal acts.
Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore who served as deputy general counsel of the House said that the incident "raises some serious separation of powers questions when extraordinarily harsh and extreme tactics are used on the legislative branch."
Well, my friends, what about the rights of 300 million Americans now living in a police state where many of them are subjected to extraordinarily harsh and extreme tactics on a daily basis? Do our so-called "representatives" have more and greater rights than the rest of us?
That's the way that it looks from here,
BOB BAUMAN, Editor