If you were granted subpoena power, what would you investigate?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Who wouldn’t I want investigated might be a much shorter list.
In no particular order:
I think those four would combine to be a knock-out punch for this War Council. The public would also get behind investigations on issues that directly affect them.
I’d go after Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hadley, Armitage, Rove, Rice, Powell, Libby, Alito, Roberts, Gonzales, Bush 41, Kissinger, Blackwell, Jeb…
…reopen BCCI, Iran-Contra…
…investigate and subpoena the oil execs again, and Diebold, ESS, and that third voting machine company…
…I’d nail the folks involved in the 9/11 warnings that went unheeded, go after the video tapes that haven’t been released, nail the FBI for overuse of the NSLs, go for records of who the NSA was told to spy on as well as who they spied on w/o being told…
Then, after issuing those, I’d probably go get lunch, and hook up cable in my office in a bunker in a secure, undisclosed location so that I could watch the news of all the suicides.
By early afternoon, I’d be able to have all the assets siezed and investigate at my liesure, and probably give a press conference stating that we’d need a special election to fill Congress and the WH with folks to replace all those lost to moments of panic.
It would be a great day. And that would be just the first day.
Plamegate who really outed her and why.
Gannongate who was he sleeping with and where is he now and who is paying his way.
And then all the above mentioned by others.
A real investigation into 9/11.
Vote Fraud…from 11/2000 to today;
1.) Florida recount..who really won?
2.) electronic voting..tampering with machines.
3.) Ohio 2004..why democratic districts had fewer voting machines.
4.) Disenfrachisement of minority voters, including poor of any color.
Everything and everyone re: Medicare D.
I’d ask Richard Clarke and Sibel Edmonds for their opinions on who should have to answer what under oath, and heed their recommendations.
-Authorize the biggest top-to-bottom audit of Federal Government expenditures in US Government history. Force a special prosecutor to be name with both legal and accounting experience to look at every dime the federal government has spent in the last 6 years.
-Everything else. Give Conyers a blank check to investigate anything and subpoena anyone.
YES!!!
Find out what money has gone to the CIA.
And what they did with it.
A corporation as big as the CIA?
With unchecked and uncounted federal funds?
With unlimited access to financial data?
With the ability to literally “make things happen”?
It’s a wonder they do not own the universe by now.
Or…do they?
AG
P.S. I was going to answer “Find out who killed JFK + MLK”.
REALLY bring the chickens home to roost.
But this is better.
MUCH better.
All the federal stuff y’all posted above plus I will want to know why it’s OK for cops to kill injured and mentally ill people in my city and state and get away with it. I also would haul in all feddies involved in the Green Scare cases and make them come clean about why they want ‘muricans to be frightened of tree sitters and bunny lovers and not clinic bombers and weirdo christofascists with weapons. Perhaps some of you have been fooled by their propaganda.
Connections between power players and the futures contracts manipulation that showed someone had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
and analysis for it.
Yeah, so name names… qui bono?
…Starting with all the signatories of the Project for a New American Century.
This whole mess goes back to the fallout over Watergate and Nixon’s aborted power grab, with many of the same players trying again to turn our representative government into a dictatorship. Money buys power and power brings in more money from those who want to be associated with the circle of favorites. Money also buys secrecy, and that commodity is essential to covering the darkest deeds.
The class inequalities (Katrina, education, medicare), torture and rendition, secret police and wiretapping, stolen elections, fraud and waste and pork and massive no-bid contracts, illegal invasions and holy war, the outing of those spies who could give us truth about WMDs, signing statements and abuse of the secret classifications, Bush’s complicity in 9/11 and extension of War Powers to mean that he rules by whim, etc. and etc., everything dovetails into an unprecedented powergrab by the plutocracy.
Bush is just a face: the PNAC signers needed some dynasty in front to provide stability. Unfortunately, amenable sock puppets tend to be weak in other ways, and we’ve gone straight to Caligula and Nero without passing through Julius or Marcus Aurelius.
If we can save and restore our government, we can start to drain the cesspool. (Think of D.C. as a Toxic Waste Site!) But once we become a dictatorship, there is no going back… not for a long, long time. The power inequality is too great.
Do you really want to see Bush “elected” time and time again with a 95% majority and strutting around in a crimson codpiece and Cross for Gallantry? Until George P Bush is of age? A Century of the Bush tribe groomed for the throne?
Do you really want to see America fighting phony wars on all battlefronts just to keep the military-industrial-religious complex wallowing in money?
Do you really want to see this country following the same path as Nazi Germany, with the additional horror of knowing what is happening but going down that road anyway, until a new International Court is convened to deal with the War Criminals?
The powergrab isn’t a quick snatch at opportunity, but a well-plotted scheme extending over decades: a malevolence that has festered and spread. It will take more than one election or one commission to clear the problem.
Brilliantly said, hauksdottir. Thank you.
I might only add that we’re farther along that dark, dark road than we realize, so it may already be too late for a collective adjustment. Additionally, there’s simply too much to lose by vested parties; the greater good stands between the junkie & the needle.