 Pete Hoekstra (R-Mi) is the Chairman of The House Select Committee on Intelligence. Instead of using that power to fulfill his oath of office "to protect and defend The Constitution of The United States" he more often uses it to protect the Bush Administration from being held accountable to The Constitution.
Just a couple of months ago he and Sen Rick Santorum (R-Pa) ran to the microphones and proclaimed that the weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) had indeed been found in Iraq. Unfortunately for Santorum and Hoekstra, nothing could be further from the truth, even the Bush Pentagon said in its report that "... these are not the Weapons of Mass Destruction..." (that we used as a pretext for invading Iraq). What the Iraq survey group had found in Iraq were a few dilapidated and degraded chemical munitions that Saddam had stashed around the country prior to the first Gulf War in 1991. These munitions were old, unusable, forgotten and abandoned long ago and they posed absolutely zero threat to the world. But like Chicken Little, Hoekstra and Santorum went running around proclaiming the sky to be falling.
Hoekstra went on many right wing media outlets and attested that this was proof that Bush was not a liar... there were WMD's in Iraq. After a couple days the story faded away because no credible authority could be found to back up Hoekstra and Santorum's assertions.
The next media blitz from Hoekstra came as a result of the leak of a letter that Hoekstra had sent to Bush railling against the White House for not notifying his committee of certain intelligence operations being conducted by the White House. Bush then notified Hoekstra of some of the details of some of the programs and once again the matter was dropped. If you think about this incident in terms of the Constitutional responsibility of Bush to advise congress, then you can see what the problem with Hoekstra is... A Federal District Court Judge, last week, in an opinion on the Secret NSA warentless wiretapping of American citizens, wrote that "there are no powers that do not derive from the Constitution". Bush uses his doctrine of a "Unitary Executive" to violate the law and the Constitution and Hoekstra uses his position to protect Bush from being held accountable for the abuse of his Constitutional Powers.
An example; Hoekstra had heard from the Intelligence Community that the White House was involved in certain covert operations, which Hoekstra declined to enumerate, without having notified his committee or congress of them. The President is prohibited by The Constitution from engaging in such covert operations without "the advise and consent of Congress" and Hoekstra sends him a letter. Hoekstra has caught George W. Bush in a crime, a constitutional abuse of power and he sends him a letter. He does not hold hearings, he does not investigate, he does not prepare Articles of Impeachment, he sends him a letter and then once again the whole matter is dropped.
Now we have the story that a Federal District Court Judge in Detroit has ruled against Bush in a Federal case brought against him concerning the NSA warrentless wiretapping of American citizens. The Court ruled that Bush had violated the 1st Amendment, the 4th Amendment, The constitutional "Seperation of Powers" and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This doctrine of a "Unitary Executive" is something that has been made up by the Bush administration under the tutelidge of the Neo-Con radicals that control foreign policy within the Administration. Our form of government as defined by The Constitution is a seperation of powers between three co-equal branches. The Executive, The Legislative, and The Judiciary, they are co-equal none of the branches is more than the others. The un-constitutional doctrine of the "Unitary" Executive holds that the Executive branch (Bush) has certain inherint powers not specified in law or the Constitution to do anything that he (Bush) feels is necessary without regard to the law or the Constitution in his exercise of National Defense.
The Congress of the United States and the Federal Judiciary are charged in The Constitution with the responsibility and duty to "protect and defend The Constitution of the United States" A Federal Judge in Detroit has fulfilled that oath; Pete Hoekstra has ignored it. We need to have our Congressman put away their partisan mindset and fulfill that oath for the sake of our Republic and if they will not protect the integrity of the very Constitution that gives them that power and responsibility then it is our responsibility to remove them from office and replace them with someone who will... fortunately on Nov 7th we will have the opportunity to remove Pete Hoekstra from the Congress. On Nov 7th we can vote for Kimon Kotos who is challenging Hoekstra. We can replace a man who is ignoring the Constitution and his oath of office with a man who is dedicated to the Constitution and will take his oath very seriously. It is all a matter of the will of the people; if we have the will, if we register, if we vote, then we can take control of our government and insure that the future history of this Democratic Republic continues and that it does not lapse into a facist dictatorship. |
