Bipartisanship Finally Comes to Congress: FBI Raid Rage Hypocritical at Best

By: Steve Yuhas

Leave it to a raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on a member of Congress’ office to become a bipartisan attempt to show a united branch of government.

When the FBI found some $90 thousand in Louisiana Democrat William Jefferson’s congressional office last week a few days went by without a peep about the raid and the power of the FBI to find wrongdoing and prosecute it. Enter a few high ranking Republicans and Democrats with questionable ethics issues under their belts and the stage became set for the Greek tragedy that would soon follow.

The long and short of this debate is whether or not the FBI (a part of the executive branch) has the authority to search and seize evidence from another branch of government. Members who support an absolute separation of power, except when it comes to individual freedoms – that authority is somehow lost in the debate – believe that the FBI has no business in the Congress; at the other end of the spectrum are those members who believe that the FBI is there to enforce the laws of the United States and since nobody is above them members of Congress can be just as at risk for searches and seizures as anyone else.

One would think that in a time when Democrats were attempting to show Republicans as a cult of corruption unlike anything ever seen before that they would be all for FBI raids on the offices of wrongdoers in Congress. Not exactly.

It would also be logical that Republicans who paint themselves as law and order tough as nails and everyone is equal when it comes to the law (remember – we impeached a president over lying to a grand jury) would also have no problem with a search of a congressional office.  Alas, on both sides of the aisle there are those who believe that wrongdoing, of the criminal kind (we will forget ethical problems for purposes of brevity), should be shielded from the Justice Department and it should be done so using the obtuse notion of separation of powers.

There is no doubt that our Founding Fathers wanted and wrote the Constitution so that the legislative branch was the most powerful because it was the branch closest to the people. What the Founders did not envision was a time when people like Dan Rostenkowski and Randy “Duke” Cunningham would become members of the Congress and use it for personal gain.

It is obvious that lamenting the culture of corruption is not the Democrats only problem – it is remembering that they have their own share of ethics problems that when stacked against the GOP are equally appalling, but that is for another day.

The fact is that the FBI is charged by the Congress to enforce the laws that the Congress writes and now there are members of the Congress who would like for the rules to apply for the rest of us, including the President of the United States and judges appointed for life, but using the logic of the “out of bounds” rule for Capitol offices – not for Congressmen and women.

What an interesting premise and bountiful possibility for those members of Congress who would take the lessons learned by those who came before them and made a fortune from public service if they could simply write themselves out of the criminal code in the same way they wrote themselves out of so many other laws (occupational safety laws and the Freedom of Information Act just to name a couple).

The bipartisan attack on the FBI that reportedly came close to forcing the resignation of virtually the entire upper echelon of the Justice Department after President Bush came close to disallowing the evidence collected to be used in any way due to separation of powers leads to only one question. If the FBI is not the agency that can investigate members of Congress and if Congress is left only to make law for the rest of America and have the FBI enforce it against us – who then will be the responsible investigating authority for the Congress?

Will the Sergeant at Arms be responsible for criminal prosecution? A voting majority on the Ethics Committee? Who? Who do the Congressmen on the right and the left want to be responsible for looking after the people who control the purse, write the laws and spend the money of the American people if not the law enforcement agency that the Congress created to do just that?

Nobody?

The strange thing is the bedfellows that this controversy, a controversy that shouldn’t be, comes on the heels of the Congress being apoplectic that the new chief of the CIA, General Michael Hayden, acted within the law and was overwhelmingly appointed to his post after being called everything in the book and featured on the cover of a weekly “news” magazine with a caption about whether he has your number.

In the case of the NSA wire taps there was outrage in the Congress that the President and the NSA is not above the law, when President Clinton lied under oath there was Congress again telling the world that nobody is above the law and when federal judges are accused of wrongdoing they are hauled before a committee on the hill and berated by a panel of garbage men turned career politicians about not being above the law.

So is Congress above the law?  One need only ask Republicans and Democrats who came out against the raid of a Congressional office. The people of America own the Capitol and the building and equipment in them; not individual members or members of any party. We have a right to expect that the Congress that writes the laws that the rest of us are forced to live by are also being upheld by the people who wrote them.

It is one thing for Congress to exempt themselves from individual pieces of legislation, but to say that there is a separation of powers exemption that allows members of Congress to commit criminal activity so long as they are in their offices then why have laws at all. Let there be anarchy and let everyone do whatever they want to do.

The fact is that I’ve never been more disgusted by any member of Congress than those who believe that there is a separation of powers issue when it comes to criminal wrongdoing. I am a partisan and a Republican, but if I lived in a district where anyone came out on the side of Congress being exempt from the FBI or criminal investigation then I would elect the other guy just to make a point.

It may not be a big point and it may not change things, but few things make me more upset than a hypocrite and there is nothing more hypocritical than the Congress who demand subpoena power for everything from IPods to oil and rant and rave about Executive privilege when it is used by the President, but invented a new one to protection for themselves.

Congress is not above the law and if they came down off of their elevated perches and took time to talk to the people they would realize that there is a ground swell of support to throw out the wrongdoers and it would be political folly to side against the FBI.  Sometimes it takes a groundswell of upset voters to get the Congress to act – just ask the Minutemen who are building a fence along the border – they’re not above the law, but it seems the Congressmen in border states are.

Steve Yuhas is a columnist and radio talk show host on KOGO AM 600 and may be reached at www.steveyuhas.com or steve@steveyuhas.com