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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (19551)	5/24/2006 9:57:54 AM
From: MrLucky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540882

Then, there was this thing called ABSCAM. Maybe the author didn't know about it ...or something.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (19551)	5/24/2006 10:46:26 AM
From: mph	Respond to of 540882

These guys are politicians first and party faithful second, IMO. Funny that they're bristling, on a separation of powers basis, when some of the same leadership is proposing oversight of the federal judiciary. The latter is causing some strident opposition, particularly from the Ninth Circuit. Personally, I'm not particularly concerned about a theoretical separation of powers violation wrt to search of the Congressman's office.(I think that's just a smokescreen) I'm more concerned about the overt strikes against the judiciary. But, in both cases, the bodies have brought the problem upon themselves through the failure of self policing. The Ninth Circuit really walked into about 9 months ago when it whitewashed an ethics case against Judge Manuel Real of the CA Central District. The dissent, written by Justice Alex Kozinski, was prophetic about the danger of Congress attempting some regulation of the judiciary if it failed in its own internal oversight function. I think the Washington episode is different because the search was incident to a criminal investigation, which was not within the purview of Congress itself. Criminal laws can't be suspended, nor can members of Congress be deemed exempt. Search warrants are just part of the law enforcement landscape. Judicial ethics violations can be, but are not always, criminal violations. If the conduct was criminal, I'd expect the police/executive branch to be involved. It's certainly happened to several CA state judges in recent years, who have been tried and convicted for such things as fixing traffic tickets, possessing child pornography and failing to account for campaign funds. In those cases, the State Judicial Commission initiated its own investigation, which paralleled the criminal proceedings. Nothing wrong with that. Merely being in a separate branch of government does not provide immunity to criminal prosecution. ___________________________ Kozinski was absolutely right, IMO. The justices closed ranks around Real and did whitewash the episode. This is no different than Congressmen/Senators of whatever political stripe expressing concern over invasion of what they consider to be their inner sanctum.