Democrat wants a ‘truth commission’

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee called Monday for a "truth commission" to investigate controversial actions of the Bush administration, including the firings of U.S. attorneys, the treatment of terror suspects and the authorization of warrantless wiretapping.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said his proposal is meant to launch a fact-finding inquiry into the key decisions of George W. Bush's presidency, including intelligence matters before and during the Iraq war and "scandals" at the Department of Justice. He said such a commission would not seek to prosecute former administration officials -- though he failed to explain, if there was such widespread misbehavior, why not.

Because prosecutions would require that certain extra je ne sais quoi -- "proof"?

"Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened," Sen. Leahy said as he outlined his proposal during a speech at Georgetown University, where he likened the proposed commission to the "truth and reconciliation" panels that investigated the apartheid regime in South Africa and the 1979 Ku Klux Klan massacre in Greensboro, N.C. He said the commission could be made up of "a group of people universally recognized as fair-minded and without axes to grind."

You know, the kind of people who compare the modern Republican Party to white supremacist murderers -- when the last two Ku Klux Klansmen to have actually served in the U.S. Senate are, um ... Democrats.

Leading to today's first question: If that last assertion were being delivered with an equally straight face at 11:45 p.m. on a Saturday night on your local NBC affiliate by Sen. Leahy's potential Democratic colleague, Al Franken -- would you be laughing out loud yet?

Sen. Leahy's proposal is similar to legislation introduced by another famously sober-minded and impartial lawmaker, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who wants to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Bush administration's activities on detention, interrogation and surveillance.

Congress has the authority to hold hearings and thus investigate anything it sees fit. Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this silliness is that it shows Democrats don't expect to be presenting us with much good news in the year to come, if they already foresee the need to ritually heave out and pummel the political corpses of the Bush administration, insisting "See? They still stink worse than we do!"

Incoming presidents routinely request the resignations of all sitting U.S. attorneys, who sit at the president's discretion. Bill Clinton accepted a lot more of those mass resignations than George W. Bush -- including the resignations of U.S. attorneys who had been actively investigating Clinton family misdeeds in Arkansas. If Sen. Leahy wishes to convert such posts to lifetime tenure, perhaps he can find a constitutional lawyer to tell him how.

Torture is a legitimate issue of national policy, though men who have never been in combat risk appearing a bit silly when they move from stating that Americans abhor systematic torture regimes -- of course we do -- to attempting to micromanage how a captain in combat decides to intimidate a prisoner with information that could save the lives of an entire patrol.

Of the issues raised here, warrantless wiretapping is the most serious because it clearly deals with the government's treatments of U.S. citizens in America.

Needless to say, none of these Bush initiatives could have prospered had not Democratic members of Congress routinely allocated funds to finance them.

But if Sen. Leahy and company really intend to do anything here other than partisan posturing, let them by all means put some teeth in the laws against snooping on Americans without proper, written search warrants accompanied by sworn affidavits of probable cause. Let them especially publish a "hot line" through which any communications company executive asked to do such a thing may reach a high-ranking U.S. attorney, specifically authorized to go find the government agents who have made such a request, placing them that very day in orange jumpsuits and leg chains, and trooping them out for the cameras.

Or is this to be just one more sideshow to keep Americans from dwelling on the current economic crisis? "Look! Over there! A Klansman! Oh, Sen. Byrd, never mind. Say, how's the new eight-lane coming between Bald Knob and Pickens? Stim-u-LUS! Stim-u-LUS! Stim-u-LUS!"