Senate Leaders Okay With Search of Jefferson's Office

This is why John Adams and the Framers decided there should be a bicameral legislature. Unlike the dolts in the House, who are wrong on both the constitutional issues and the politics, Frist and Durbin have no problem with the FBI search of Jefferson's office.


"No House member, no senator, nobody in government should be above the law of the land, period," Frist said of the search of the office of William J. Jefferson (D-La.), who has been accused of bribery.

This was interesting:

The raid threw Washington into tumult last week, inflaming congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, and reportedly prompting Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to threaten to quit if the documents were returned.

I guess Gonzales and Mueller didn't like the idea of the House handcuffing the Executive branch's law enforcement function based on specious constitutional smokescreens.

"This debate is not over whether Congressman Jefferson is guilty of a criminal offense," Sensenbrenner said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "He cannot use the constitutional immunity of Congress to shield himself from that or any evidence of that. But it is about the ability of the Congress to be able to do its job free of coercion from the executive branch."

Sensenbrenner, Judiciary chair for the House, is either very misinformed as to the Speech and Debate clause, making some principled stand for unfathomable reasons, or has badly misjudged the politics of this situation. Or all three or some combination of the three.

I have lost faith in the Congressional leadership. A member of the opposing party is possibly hiding evidence relating to bribery charged in his office, and they choose that moment to make a stand against the FBI raiding their offices? Makes little sense to me. Particularly when that stand is predicated on bad legal arguments.

As a coworker remarked yesterday, maybe we should throw the entire House out, all 435 of them, and start over from scratch.