Seperating Congress from its "powers"

David Limbaugh:

For a long time, Democrats have been picking on President Bush -- "King George" -- for "consolidating executive authority" and usurping legislative authority, not to mention tons of other things. But he does himself no favors by ordering that documents seized from Representative William Jefferson's office be sealed for 45 days.

Jefferson is the subject of a federal investigation into whether he accepted a bribe from two people -- who have already entered guilty pleas -- to promote a high-tech business venture. Authorities say they have a videotape of Jefferson receiving a $100,000 bribe and that they found $90,000 in cash in a freezer at his Washington D.C. apartment.

Last Saturday night, the FBI, with a duly executed search warrant in hand, entered and searched Jefferson's Capitol Hill office and seized a number of his documents. Members of both parties of Congress expressed outrage at what they claim is an egregious violation of the separation of powers doctrine.

The FBI, of course, is part of the executive branch. The congressmen's objection is that for an agency of the executive branch to raid the office of a member of the legislative branch, constitutes a dangerous executive encroachment on the legislature. They say this is the first search of a congressman's Capitol office in the more than two centuries since the first Congress convened.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a nearly unprecedented joint statement condemning the FBI raid and demanding that the FBI return the documents.

With all due respect, these claims are preposterous, and I don't believe President Bush should have intervened, even if just to provide a cooling-off period. There are principles worth vindicating here, and compromise for the sake of short-term harmony can sometimes damage those principles.

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The Constitution establishes a government of laws, not men; and no men, including government officials, are above the law. While legislators are bellyaching about the excessive authority of the executive branch, they are, in essence, arguing for excessive authority and privilege for members of their branch. We have no kings. We have no royalty among legislators. If they are suspected of violating the law, the executive branch has an obligation to investigate and to employ its full powers in doing so -- including that of reasonable searches of their offices and seizures of their relevant effects.

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The most rational assertion by a House member I have seen on this issue was that because of Congress's oversight position, the executive should not be able to willy nilly go through its records without some oversight to stop them from removing oversight materials. The problem with this argument in Jefferson's case is that he has made no assertion of having any oversight files in his office. Most such files would be held by committees, unless some congressman somehow turns his office into a file room. At best, it is a weak argument in the face of the manifest issues facing Jefferson that have nothing to do with oversight. The Constitutional provision that the Reps have been sighting has a specific exception for felonies, which would seem to be a perfect fit with Jefferson's alleged conduct in the "caught on tape" moment. One should not overlook the irony of the oversight argument since Congress excercises it by issuing subpoenas to the executive branch.