Our president has struck again. In a move that's thus far attracted disturbingly little media attention, the Bush administration has expanded its claim of executive privilege in the ongoing Congressional investigation into the firings of eight U.S Attorneys last year, essentially saying that it will not allow the Justice Department to pursue contempt of Congress charges against any current or former White House officials that it deems covered by a presidential assertion of executive privilege.
The phrase "executive privilege" is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, but as outlined in case law, the concept has been understood as a limited right of the president to get confidential counsel from his advisers. One problem in this case is that Bush has repeatedly maintained that he was not personally involved in firing the attorneys, so it's very difficult to see how executive privilege could apply here. Moreover, as the Supreme Court made clear to Richard Nixon in the Watergate tapes case, a president's right to privacy may be outweighed by the necessity of investigating possible criminal activity.
Even so, Bush is entitled to make his arguments in court, his very low probability of success notwithstanding. What is outrageous, and what could ultimately lead to a constitutional crisis, is Bush effectively ordering the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to ignore a Congressional contempt citation, which as federal law makes clear, the attorney is legally compelled to bring before a grand jury. Bush appears to be attempting to manipulate the legal system, such as to make it difficult or impossible for Congress to challenge his expansive conception of executive privilege in court, by simply ordering the Justice Department not to pursue any contempt cases. In other words, a preisdential claim of executive privilege trumps all. Bush's arguement, in essence: I control the enforcement mechanisms, therefore I am the law.
The legal rationale for Bush's position is a piece of pernicious nonsense known as the doctrine of the "unitary executive." This notion, until recently confined mostly to the ruminations of far-right legal scholars, more-or-less holds that the president has nearly unlimited authority to direct officials within the executive branch. The Bush administration, led by Dick Cheney with legal expertise provided by his chief of staff, David Addington, has expanded the doctrine even further, claiming the power to ignore and/or reinterpret acts of Congress in accordance with the president's conception of his constitutional authorities. Such declarations have largely taken the form of so-called "signing statements," the most notorious of which claimed the authority to ignore the McCain amendment prohibiting cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in American custody. If this idea is taken seriously, it amounts to a negation of the concept of separation of powers, an idea so fundamental to the Constitution as to shape its very structure.
A follow-up piece in today's Washington Post indicates that the Democrats plan to roll over and play dead on this one (imagine my total lack of surprise)--several former members of the Clinton Justice Department are quoted, thus providing invaluable political cover for the Bush position. One can only imagine that a President Hillary, given the authoritarian inclinations she's expressed in the past, would like to have the power to basically ignore Congress and the courts whenever it suits her fancy.
21 July 2007
Woke Up This Morning
Monday, June 11, 2007
Last night's brilliant installment of The Sopranos, the series' last episode and one of its best, has stirred up a bit of controversy this morning. At issue is the final scene, which played against viewer expectations, not only avoiding the expected melodramatic spectacle but ultimately cutting out in abrupt fashion (anyone who doesn't want to know what happened should check out here).
Going in to last night's finale, I was afraid we might be in for a slow and ponderous affair, particularly given the dire events of the previous week's episode—one of the most brutal and death-haunted of the entire series, which ended with Tony going to sleep in a safe house, holding a shotgun across his chest. The finale opens with the same image, but despite some dark moments, stays light on its feet—indeed, what with A.J. accidentally blowing up his car, some business involving Paulie Walnuts and a stray cat, and a memorable scene in which the villainous Phil Leotardo is dispatched in signature macabre fashion, this was one of the funnier episodes of the final season.
By the final scene, Tony's crew has reached a truce with the New York mob but he's learned that one of his associates is testifying before a federal grand jury, raising the specter of a likely criminal indictment. He arrives at the quaint-looking diner where he's meeting his family for dinner. Soon Carmela and then A.J. join him. The camera keeps cutting away to suspicious-looking strangers all over the diner, including a shady-looking character who walks into a men's room, unmistakably echoing the oft-alluded-to shooting scene from the first Godfather. There is also some crosscutting between the restaurant and the street outside, where a frustrated Meadow is making repeated attempts to parallel park. The editing is nervous and it's clear that we, the viewers, are running out of time. Will she make it in time? In time for what? Finally she gets the car parked and heads for the restaurant. Back inside we hear the front door's chime, prompting Tony to raise his gaze toward the doorway . . . and then nothing. A blank screen for several seconds. What happened? But then the credits roll, and the greatest dramatic series in the history of American television has come to an end with an unanswered look—in cinematic terms, a shot without a reverse shot. Does Tony see something horrible? Or is it finally the hit, the one you never see coming? Maybe, but there's no reason to think so. Most likely it's just Meadow coming through the door, better late than never.
Some commentators are bemoaning the lack of either narrative resolution or crowd-pleasing spectacle (an argument that takes its most venal form in the suggestion that David Chase somehow "owed" a big finish to HBO subscribers—the popular arts apparently being, like pretty much everything else in America, first and foremost a consumer product). Some are even likening the ending to the almost universally despised Seinfeld finale from nine years ago, which likewise played against audience expectations. But the comparison doesn't fly. The Seinfeld ending felt empty and forced because its tone was completely different from that of any other scene in the history of the show. The opposite is the case here—Chase may be needling the viewer a bit with all the red herrings in the final scene, but he's doing so precisely by appealing to the cinematic codes he's created over the past eight years—the same nervous cuts, looks, and gestures that might have preceded a whacking in a previous episode are here absorbed into an atmosphere of more generalized paranoia. As ever on this most Freudian of dramas, no anxiety is ultimately resolved, only repressed for future recycling. The show doesn't even really end; it just stops.
It's an ending far truer to the spirit of the series than some nihilistic (or moralistic) spectacle would have been. The last nine episodes have made it clear—if indeed it wasn't before—that The Sopranos is less a mob drama than a dissection of the contemporary upper-middle-class American family. The scathing critique of American moral blindness manifests itself not only in Tony's sociopathic acquisitiveness, but also Carmela's self-serving rationalizing, the forcible suprression of any occasional qualms about where her lifestyle comes from—a quality apparently inherited by Meadow, who gives an eyebrow-raising speech in the finale about how seeing her father's supposedly unfair treatment by the authorities, which she frames as a mere consequence of his being "Italian," inspired her to study law. Clearly, it's time to close ranks. Only A.J. is able to see beyond the horrible moral logic of The Family, albeit in halting and callow fashion—his recent suicide attempt and newfound obsession with Islamist terrorism represent a sort of return of the repressed—but he too is finally bought off; Tony and Carmela dissuade him from enlisting in the army to fight terrorists in Afghanistan by getting him a job on a movie set.
Despite lives scarred by violence and horror, the Sopranos continue to float through reality on a tide of affluence, paying no heed to the forces that may be closing in. In a minor stroke of genius, the final scene is set to the Journey anthem "Don't Stop Believing" (which Tony plays on the diner's jukebox), recontextualized here as an ironic commentary on dunderheaded American optimism. Friends and relatives are dead and Tony may soon be headed for trial, but the family endures, suspended in time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, the reverse shot. As Sydney Pollock put it in Eyes Wide Shut, "Life goes on. It always does. Until it doesn't."
Last night's brilliant installment of The Sopranos, the series' last episode and one of its best, has stirred up a bit of controversy this morning. At issue is the final scene, which played against viewer expectations, not only avoiding the expected melodramatic spectacle but ultimately cutting out in abrupt fashion (anyone who doesn't want to know what happened should check out here).
Going in to last night's finale, I was afraid we might be in for a slow and ponderous affair, particularly given the dire events of the previous week's episode—one of the most brutal and death-haunted of the entire series, which ended with Tony going to sleep in a safe house, holding a shotgun across his chest. The finale opens with the same image, but despite some dark moments, stays light on its feet—indeed, what with A.J. accidentally blowing up his car, some business involving Paulie Walnuts and a stray cat, and a memorable scene in which the villainous Phil Leotardo is dispatched in signature macabre fashion, this was one of the funnier episodes of the final season.
By the final scene, Tony's crew has reached a truce with the New York mob but he's learned that one of his associates is testifying before a federal grand jury, raising the specter of a likely criminal indictment. He arrives at the quaint-looking diner where he's meeting his family for dinner. Soon Carmela and then A.J. join him. The camera keeps cutting away to suspicious-looking strangers all over the diner, including a shady-looking character who walks into a men's room, unmistakably echoing the oft-alluded-to shooting scene from the first Godfather. There is also some crosscutting between the restaurant and the street outside, where a frustrated Meadow is making repeated attempts to parallel park. The editing is nervous and it's clear that we, the viewers, are running out of time. Will she make it in time? In time for what? Finally she gets the car parked and heads for the restaurant. Back inside we hear the front door's chime, prompting Tony to raise his gaze toward the doorway . . . and then nothing. A blank screen for several seconds. What happened? But then the credits roll, and the greatest dramatic series in the history of American television has come to an end with an unanswered look—in cinematic terms, a shot without a reverse shot. Does Tony see something horrible? Or is it finally the hit, the one you never see coming? Maybe, but there's no reason to think so. Most likely it's just Meadow coming through the door, better late than never.
Some commentators are bemoaning the lack of either narrative resolution or crowd-pleasing spectacle (an argument that takes its most venal form in the suggestion that David Chase somehow "owed" a big finish to HBO subscribers—the popular arts apparently being, like pretty much everything else in America, first and foremost a consumer product). Some are even likening the ending to the almost universally despised Seinfeld finale from nine years ago, which likewise played against audience expectations. But the comparison doesn't fly. The Seinfeld ending felt empty and forced because its tone was completely different from that of any other scene in the history of the show. The opposite is the case here—Chase may be needling the viewer a bit with all the red herrings in the final scene, but he's doing so precisely by appealing to the cinematic codes he's created over the past eight years—the same nervous cuts, looks, and gestures that might have preceded a whacking in a previous episode are here absorbed into an atmosphere of more generalized paranoia. As ever on this most Freudian of dramas, no anxiety is ultimately resolved, only repressed for future recycling. The show doesn't even really end; it just stops.
It's an ending far truer to the spirit of the series than some nihilistic (or moralistic) spectacle would have been. The last nine episodes have made it clear—if indeed it wasn't before—that The Sopranos is less a mob drama than a dissection of the contemporary upper-middle-class American family. The scathing critique of American moral blindness manifests itself not only in Tony's sociopathic acquisitiveness, but also Carmela's self-serving rationalizing, the forcible suprression of any occasional qualms about where her lifestyle comes from—a quality apparently inherited by Meadow, who gives an eyebrow-raising speech in the finale about how seeing her father's supposedly unfair treatment by the authorities, which she frames as a mere consequence of his being "Italian," inspired her to study law. Clearly, it's time to close ranks. Only A.J. is able to see beyond the horrible moral logic of The Family, albeit in halting and callow fashion—his recent suicide attempt and newfound obsession with Islamist terrorism represent a sort of return of the repressed—but he too is finally bought off; Tony and Carmela dissuade him from enlisting in the army to fight terrorists in Afghanistan by getting him a job on a movie set.
Despite lives scarred by violence and horror, the Sopranos continue to float through reality on a tide of affluence, paying no heed to the forces that may be closing in. In a minor stroke of genius, the final scene is set to the Journey anthem "Don't Stop Believing" (which Tony plays on the diner's jukebox), recontextualized here as an ironic commentary on dunderheaded American optimism. Friends and relatives are dead and Tony may soon be headed for trial, but the family endures, suspended in time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, the reverse shot. As Sydney Pollock put it in Eyes Wide Shut, "Life goes on. It always does. Until it doesn't."
Justice on the Court
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The sports world is atwitter with controversy today over the suspensions of Phoenix Suns center Amare Stoudemire and forward Boris Diaw from tonight's pivotal fifth game of the Suns' best-of-seven playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, a quick summary: In the closing seconds of Game Four, Suns guard Steve Nash, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, was leveled by a hockey-style cross-check from Spurs forward Robert Horry. Horry was suspended for two games for the hit, but the resulting incident also led to the one-game suspensions of the two Suns players for violating a ridiculously inflexible NBA rule about leaving the bench during an "altercation." Neither player came anywhere near the incident—in the case of Stoudemire, probably the Suns' second-most important player, he took only a few steps toward Nash, who at this point was still lying on the floor near the sideline, before being restrained by one of his coaches. Nevertheless, he was suspended for one game. If online polls and message boards provide an accurate gauge of the public's feelings, a vast majority of NBA fans appear to find the suspensions of the Suns players unjust. Commentators like TNT's Charles Barkley and ESPN's Skip Bayless have complained about the league's excessively literal enforcement of a stupid rule and have rightly pointed out that the suspensions effectively reward the Spurs for starting a fight, since the Suns will lose one of their best players for tonight's critical game while the Spurs only lose a bench player for two games. Others have responded by defending the NBA's decision with some variation of the "a rule's a rule" argument.
Rather than explaining all the reasons why the NBA's decision is moronic, wrong-headed, infuriating, and sadly typical, I'd like to focus on an aspect of the controversy relevant even to non-basketball fans. NBA enforcer Stu Jackson may have summed up the philosophical issue at stake here best when he said yesterday in defending his decision, "It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of correctness." Asked to clarify that comment today on ESPN radio, Jackson explicitly equated the two concepts, saying that his decision was fair because it was correct—that is, because it represented a consistent application of a rule that he deemed to have been clearly violated. But is fairness always the same thing as correctness? The equation seems to preclude the possibility that a rule itself can be unjust or that it should be interpreted in light of the specific circumstances of a given situation, notions that I think would seem reasonable to most people. Even so, the idea that fairness is the same as correctness informs much of our social life in this excessively literal-minded era, when everyone from sports commissioners to high school principals boasts about "zero tolerance" policies and our law books are cluttered with mandatory-minimum sentences and "three strikes" statutes. In order to change these policies, it is first necessary to free the concept of justice from the bonds of legalism in the public mind. Many fans hope that this week's incident will lead the NBA to finally rethink the leaving-the-bench rule over the offseason, but it's also an occasion, however trivial, for a more fundamental sort of rethinking.
The sports world is atwitter with controversy today over the suspensions of Phoenix Suns center Amare Stoudemire and forward Boris Diaw from tonight's pivotal fifth game of the Suns' best-of-seven playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, a quick summary: In the closing seconds of Game Four, Suns guard Steve Nash, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, was leveled by a hockey-style cross-check from Spurs forward Robert Horry. Horry was suspended for two games for the hit, but the resulting incident also led to the one-game suspensions of the two Suns players for violating a ridiculously inflexible NBA rule about leaving the bench during an "altercation." Neither player came anywhere near the incident—in the case of Stoudemire, probably the Suns' second-most important player, he took only a few steps toward Nash, who at this point was still lying on the floor near the sideline, before being restrained by one of his coaches. Nevertheless, he was suspended for one game. If online polls and message boards provide an accurate gauge of the public's feelings, a vast majority of NBA fans appear to find the suspensions of the Suns players unjust. Commentators like TNT's Charles Barkley and ESPN's Skip Bayless have complained about the league's excessively literal enforcement of a stupid rule and have rightly pointed out that the suspensions effectively reward the Spurs for starting a fight, since the Suns will lose one of their best players for tonight's critical game while the Spurs only lose a bench player for two games. Others have responded by defending the NBA's decision with some variation of the "a rule's a rule" argument.
Rather than explaining all the reasons why the NBA's decision is moronic, wrong-headed, infuriating, and sadly typical, I'd like to focus on an aspect of the controversy relevant even to non-basketball fans. NBA enforcer Stu Jackson may have summed up the philosophical issue at stake here best when he said yesterday in defending his decision, "It's not a matter of fairness. It's a matter of correctness." Asked to clarify that comment today on ESPN radio, Jackson explicitly equated the two concepts, saying that his decision was fair because it was correct—that is, because it represented a consistent application of a rule that he deemed to have been clearly violated. But is fairness always the same thing as correctness? The equation seems to preclude the possibility that a rule itself can be unjust or that it should be interpreted in light of the specific circumstances of a given situation, notions that I think would seem reasonable to most people. Even so, the idea that fairness is the same as correctness informs much of our social life in this excessively literal-minded era, when everyone from sports commissioners to high school principals boasts about "zero tolerance" policies and our law books are cluttered with mandatory-minimum sentences and "three strikes" statutes. In order to change these policies, it is first necessary to free the concept of justice from the bonds of legalism in the public mind. Many fans hope that this week's incident will lead the NBA to finally rethink the leaving-the-bench rule over the offseason, but it's also an occasion, however trivial, for a more fundamental sort of rethinking.
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