Keeping the Curtain Drawn

Trey Smith

When a democracy functions properly, media revelations of executive branch misconduct typically result in an investigation by the legislative branch. Watergate epitomized this healthy dynamic — illegal acts exposed by the Washington Post prompted congressional hearings and ultimately prosecutions. In other words, checks and balances functioned properly, and the system both cleansed itself of wrongdoers and rejected the Nixonian notion that no matter what a president does, it is inherently legal.

So when the New York Times this week ran the headline “Senate Will Investigate National Security Leaks About Terrorism ‘Kill List,’” it was a frightening sign that something has gone horribly wrong since the Woodward-and-Bernstein days.
~ from War on Whistle-Blowers Widens by David Sirota ~

If you don't understand the obvious implications here, let me boil it down for you. Upon hearing revelations that the president and his administration are violating federal law and the US Constitution, the US Senate is NOT seeking to investigate the president; they are seeking to find out who is leaking the information to the lapdog media and then to punish them! The US Senate is not interested in the wrongdoing itself; they are upset that this wrongdoing has been exposed!

Now, why would the Senate not be interested in halting these illegal actions? The ONLY reasonable explanation is that THEY are a party to it. They are just as culpable. Since they don't want to be held accountable for their actions, they certainly are not going to go after the president because he will point the finger right back at them.

And why should you or I care about these illegal shenanigans? Further down in his column, Sirota makes the point very, very clear.

If you are an Obama partisan who insists the crackdown is appropriate because your favored politician is in power, take heed of the president’s own warning. As he said a few years ago, allowing any executive to ignore the Constitution is problematic because “you never know who is going to be president four years from now.”

You also never know what other executive might make the same moves in your own hometown. After all, if a president is arguing that indictments, juries and trials aren’t necessary to execute someone, it’s not hard to imagine a governor or mayor arguing the same thing when locking people up.

That’s why this war on whistle-blowers is not just some theoretical problem only for academics to debate or for foreigners to worry about. It represents a genuine domestic threat to democracy itself. If through our silence and complacency we allow that threat to expand, we shouldn’t be surprised when more of us are in the government’s cross hairs.

In other words, a dangerous precedent is being established, one that may jump up to bite many of us on the butt...when we least expect it!