Leahy on the Committee Subpoena Resolution 1999

What a difference.

Keep these on hand as well:

Patrick Leahy via his Senate Page
Hearing Statement on Presidential Pardons
at the Senate Judiciary Committee
February 14, 2001

(Bring a bag for this one)

Today’s hearing may perform useful and constructive service to the American people and our institutions of government. Or it may not. Today’s hearing may illuminate valuable lessons for the future. Or it may degenerate into partisan recriminations about the past. I hope it will do the former.

From what I have read about the pardon of Marc Rich, it appears to me to be another occasion on which I disagree with a president’s use of his constitutional pardon power. I have read that it was supported by a number of well-respected lawyers, by counsels who have staffed Democrats and counsels who have staffed Republicans. I understand that in addition to Mr. Quinn, from whom we will hear today, this effort also had the backing, for example, of Lewis Libby, who is currently serving as the Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney.

Concerns have been raised about the wisdom of President Clinton’s judgment in granting certain of his pardons and about the propriety of the process that led to them in the waning days and hours of his presidency. Last year we had a hearing on his clemency decisions regarding certain members of the FALN. I disagreed with him then, as well.

This hearing may yield insights that will help guide the current president and future presidents in the exercise of their constitutional power of clemency. I had worked last year with Senator Hatch in a bipartisan effort to improve the pardon process and to better ensure that crime victims and law enforcement views were taken into account. In advance of this hearing, last week I wrote to the White House Counsel asking what the current White House view is with regard to the pardon process and about those efforts to establish procedures to ensure that the views of crime victims and law enforcement officials were taken into account when the president considers use of his pardon power.

President Bush indicated that he has little enthusiasm for congressional investigations of President Clinton's final acts in office, including the pardons. Yesterday he told reporters: "I think it's time to move on." I am inclined to agree, and I am optimistic that we can make progress on a number of fronts. Yesterday Senator Hatch and I introduced a major anti-crime and anti-drug crime package, and we expect that the Senate today will be considering another bipartisan measure updating our intellectual property laws. Given that this Committee has chosen to return to the subject of the House hearings last week and to devote today’s hearing to the pardon of Marc Rich, I trust that there will be no bandying about of unsupported accusations or the return to the politics of permanent partisan investigation that so tarnished the last two Congresses.

We need to view President Clinton’s pardons as a whole and in their historical and constitutional context, not focus exclusively on one or two controversial cases. The pardon power lies with the president, just as it lies with the governor in each of the states. When I was State's Attorney for Chittenden County, I did not always agree when the Governor of Vermont used his clemency power, but I understood that it was his power to exercise as he saw fit.

The pardon power is absolute. It is absolute for Republican presidents, and it is absolute for Democratic presidents. There were numerous exercises of this constitutional power by the Republican and Democratic presidents with whom I have served over the last 26 years: President Carter used this power more than 560 times, President Reagan more than 400 times, and President Bush more than 75 times. They have not always been instances with which I agreed. President Clinton used his clemency power relatively infrequently by 20th Century standards – certainly less than President Reagan used it. I have served with five presidents, Democrats and Republicans, before the current occupant of the White House, and I have agreed with each of them on some of their pardon decisions and disagreed with each of them from time to time, but I recognized that they are and should be the president’s decisions to make.

When the Framers of our Constitution drafted the pardon clause in 1787, they considered the potential for presidential abuse of the pardon power. They debated whether one or both branches of Congress should play a role in the pardoning process. In the end, they rejected proposals to check the power through congressional oversight because, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, "one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men." By and large, our national experience supports that view.

By establishing the pardon power in the Constitution, the Framers recognized the important role it plays in our imperfect justice system. As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in a 1993 decision:

"Clemency is deeply rooted in our Anglo-American tradition of law, and is the historic remedy for preventing miscarriages of justice where judicial process has been exhausted. . . . It is an unalterable fact that our judicial system, like the human beings who administer it, is fallible. But history is replete with examples of wrongfully convicted persons who have been pardoned in the wake of after-discovered evidence establishing their innocence." (Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993)).

We saw such an example just this week, when Earl Washington was released from prison after serving more than 17 years, including more than a decade on death row. Virginia Governor James Gilmore pardoned Earl Washington for the crime that sent him to death row based on DNA evidence that established his innocence. Were it not for an earlier act of clemency by a previous Virginia governor, Earl Washington would have been executed in 1994 for a crime that he did not commit.

In discussing individual pardons, we should not overlook the value of the pardon power in the vast majority of largely uncontroversial cases in which President Clinton and his predecessors have exercised it. Hamilton wrote that the pardon power serves the dual goals of humanity and good policy. Sadly, the many pardons that President Clinton granted in this spirit have been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the Marc Rich pardon.

President Clinton made a strong statement by commuting the sentences of more than 20 men and women who were serving long prison terms for relatively low-level drug offenses. Several of those released had been victims of domestic abuse. In many cases, the sentencing judge and prosecutor had recommended in favor of clemency. Some of those are compelling cases for presidential clemency. I hope that we will look at those pardons and begin to appreciate the injustice being caused by mandatory minimum sentences by taking away from federal judges the discretion that would allow them to consider the circumstances of the case before them before imposing sentence.

President Clinton also commuted the sentence of the first person who was sentenced to death under the federal drug kingpin statute. David Ronald Chandler was convicted in 1991 of ordering the contract killing of a man named Martin Shuler. The Government’s star witness was the triggerman, Charles Ray Jarrell, who recanted his testimony after the trial. Jarrell now claims that he killed Shuler – his brother-in-law – for family reasons having nothing to do with Chandler. Ben Wittes of The Washington Post reviewed the Chandler case in December 1998 and concluded as follows:

"I don’t pretend to know whether Chandler procured Shuler’s death or which of Jarrell’s stories is closest to the truth. . . . What I do know is that the only system that would err on the side of executing a man whose chief accuser has recanted is one that fundamentally doesn’t care whether it executes innocent people. If the death penalty is even to make a pretense of being something more than monstrous, the criminal justice system has to stop at nothing to avoid wrongful executions."

I share these views and commend President Clinton for his action in commuting Chandler’s sentence. Chandler would have been the first person put to death under federal law since 1963; now he will serve a life term.

If we view the controversies surrounding certain of President Clinton’s pardons in the broader context of our constitutional scheme, our justice system, history and pardon practice, we may well learn valuable lessons for the future. But we should keep in mind the old saying that hard cases make bad law: Rushing to amend the Constitution because of a particular pardon decision that we may dislike is no wiser than rushing to amend the Constitution whenever we dislike a judicial decision. We should not let public concern over the Marc Rich pardon -- understandable concern, in my view -- send us off on yet another reckless adventure to try to tinker with our national charter, and so imperil both the separation of powers and the "fail-safe" mechanisms in our criminal justice system that have served this country so well for so long.

I thank the witnesses for coming today, and look forward to hearing their testimony.

http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200102/010214.html

Patrick Leahy via Discover the Networks

U.S. Senator representing Vermont
Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee
Senior member on the Senate Appropriations and Agriculture Committees
Opposed U.S. military support for the Contras in their fight against the Marxist Sandinistas
Opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War
Voted against funding the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq
Voted against protecting U.S. military personnel from the International Criminal Court
Calls Guantanamo Bay detention center "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and it remains a festering threat to our security. . . . We're the country that tells people that we adhere to the rule of law. We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law. And in Guantanamo, we are not."
Has the tenth-highest lifetime liberal ranking in the Senate, according to the nonpartisan magazine National Journal

Considered by a consensus of Hill Republicans the "meanest, most partisan, most ruthless Democrat in the Senate," Patrick Leahy was born on March 31, 1940 in Montpelier, Vermont. He joined the Senate as part of the Democrat class of 1974 that was swept into office as a result of the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency and did great harm to the Republican Party.

Leahy graduated from Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont in 1961, and earned his Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law School in 1964. After serving for eight years as State's Attorney in Chittenden County, he was selected as one of three outstanding prosecutors in the United States. Leahy is the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a senior member on the Senate Appropriations and Agriculture Committees. He is the first and only Democrat senator to be elected in Vermont.

Leahy has long opposed anti-terrorism efforts. During the mid-1980s, the heart of the Reagan administration, Leahy served as vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was while in this position of power that he earned the nickname "Leahy the Leaker." According to a 1987 San Diego Union-Tribune report, in a 1985 television appearance Leahy disclosed classified information that one of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's telephone conversations had been intercepted. The information that Leahy revealed had been used in the operation to capture the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and killed American citizens, and the Union-Tribune claimed that Leahy's indiscretion may have cost the life of at least one of the Egyptian operatives involved in that operation. In 1987, The Washington Times reported that Leahy had also leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Leahy allegedly had said, "I thought [the operation] was probably the most ridiculous thing I had seen, and also the most irresponsible," and had threatened to expose the operation to CIA Director William Casey. A few weeks later, details of the plan appeared in The Washington Post, and the operation was cancelled.

Another example of Leahy revealing confidential information occurred just before the Iran-Contra hearings were to begin, when he allowed an NBC reporter to look through the Senate Intelligence Committee's confidential draft report on the burgeoning scandal. After NBC used the privileged information in a January 1987 report, Leahy came under increasing fire, and after a six-month internal investigation he was forced to step down from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Leahy's leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the Intelligence Committee's then-10-year history.

In the 1980s Leahy traveled to Nicaragua and opposed U.S. military support for the Contras in their fight against the Marxist Sandinistas. In 1990, he joined with Senator Robert Byrd in spearheading the fight to cut $500 million out of the emergency aid package President George H.W. Bush had requested for Panama and Nicaragua, saying that the funds proposed were "simply too much money" for "'two countries of slight economic, security and foreign policy importance to U.S. national interests." In addition, he joined with Senator Chris Dodd in sponsoring legislation to cut aid to El Salvador.

Leahy has long opposed a missile defense system; when the Senate passed a bill 97-3 to develop a system in 1999, he cast one of the three "no" votes.

Although he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee when the Patriot Act was drafted and passed, Leahy has been a strong critic of the Act.

He voted against the nominations of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales to be U.S. Attorneys General. At the January 2005 confirmation hearing of Gonzales, Leahy openly accused President Bush of violating numerous federal laws in order to torture terrorist suspects.

Leahy opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He also voted against funding the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and against protecting U.S. military personnel from the International Criminal Court. In contrast to his opposition to the aforementioned uses of military force, Leahy supported President Clinton's military ventures in the Balkans and Iraq. As far back as 1998 Leahy, in an effort to justify Clinton's action against Iraq, was saying: "There is no doubt that since 1991, Saddam Hussein has squandered his country's resources to maintain his capacity to produce and stockpile chemical and biological weapons." Yet in March 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq by President Bush, Leahy declared,"I cannot pretend to understand the thinking of those in the administration who for months or even longer seemed possessed with a kind of messianic zeal in favor of war." Among Leahy's comments about the Iraq War (and President Bush's prosecution of it) have been the following:

"The American public is sick and tired of being lied to."
"The President and Vice-President have been consistent alright--consistently wrong. There is no value in that."
"This President and Vice-President are masters at changing the subject. They have attacked John Kerry's distinguished military record, even though neither of them saw combat and many others in the administration used family connections or deferments to avoid military service altogether."
"Why do the President and Vice-President constantly change the subject when asked to explain why things are going so badly in Iraq? The answer is simple. They have been consistently wrong about Iraq, and the results speak for themselves."

Leahy was an avid supporter of Marla Ruzicka, an antiwar activist who worked closely with radical Marxists like Medea Benjamin and the groups Global Exchange and Code Pink for Peace. The stated objective of Ruzicka's work (prior to her April 16, 2005 killing by a suicide bomber in Iraq) was to help the victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leahy was able to put a provision into an appropriations bill for $2.5 million to compensate victims in Afghanistan and another $10 million to rebuild homes and provide medical assistance in Iraq. After Ruzicka's death, Leahy issued a statement saying he would carry on her work.

In November 2001, Leahy was one of two Senators targeted in the anthrax attacks on the U.S. Capitol. On NBC's Meet the Press, Leahy claimed that the letter addressed to him had enough spores in it to kill over 100,000 people. A day later, however, Office of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge revealed that Leahy had no basis for making that statement: "I talked to the folks at the FBI today and they haven't opened it," said Ridge. "I'm not sure that we've got the scientific evidence that can corroborate that at this point."

In 1999 Leahy traveled to Cuba, where he dined with Fidel Castro. Although Leahy criticized the communist leader for his regime's tight control over the media and his poor treatment of dissidents, he also took the occasion to complain about the longstanding U.S. policy banning travel to Cuba. National Review's Jay Nordlinger described what he considered the inappropriate tenor of Leahy's account of the meeting. Wrote Nordlinger:

"The major issue to come out of Leahy's huddle with Castro? Ice cream. You see, Fidel had spoken up for Cuba's ice cream, and Pat had put in a word for Ben & Jerry's (Vermont's own). Said the senator in a post- huddle interview, 'Now my major diplomatic effort will be to get a hold of Ben Cohen [the 'Ben' of the company] and figure out how they can send down a case of Ben & Jerry's. Castro made me promise I would get Ben & Jerry's ice cream to him.' Then the big concern was what the dictator's favorite flavor was. It's not clear whether Castro ever got his Ben & Jerry's; it's pretty clear, however, that Leahy is not overly troubled by the fates of the ice-cream lover's victims. The statements Leahy has made about Cuba show a profound ignorance, whether willful or not, about that battered island."

Leahy is the highest ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he served as its Chairman from March 2001 to January 2003. He has a long history of opposing Republican nominees, having voted against William Rehnquist's nomination as Chief Justice and fought against the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He has also obstructed, via filibusters, the nominations of many of President George W. Bush's nominees, raising the ire of his Republican colleagues along the way. Yet when fellow Democrat Bill Clinton was president, Leahy vigorously opposed filibusters: "I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or supported; that I felt the Senate should do its duty." He also declared in September 1999, "Vote them [Clinton's judicial nominees] up, [or] vote them down." And in 1975, Leahy played an active role in reducing the number of votes required to end a filibuster. But now, with a Republican in the White House, he wholeheartedly supports filibusters to block judicial nominees.

When President Bush nominated Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court in October 2005, Leahy lamented the fact that Alito was not a diversity hire:

"Should Judge Alito be confirmed, the Court will lose some of that diversity. There was no dearth of highly qualified women, African Americans, Hispanics and other individuals who could well have served as unifying nominees while adding to the diversity on the Supreme Court. I look forward to the time when the membership of the United States Supreme Court is more reflective of the country it serves.

"As the grandson of Italian and Irish immigrants, I know that Italian-Americans and President Bush's guest, the Italian Prime Minister, will be feeling pride today. But this nomination does not add to the diversity of the Supreme Court or make it more reflective of America. I imagine that this announcement is a disappointment to many Hispanic Americans who had expected the President to seize this historic opportunity given to him for a third time, by nominating the first Hispanic to the Court. I also imagine that all the women here in our Nation's Capitol today to honor Rosa Parks — the first woman to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, for her work in bringing racial justice to our Nation - are somewhat saddened that the seat of the first woman to serve in on our highest court is not going to be filled by another woman."

Leahy has played a prominent role in the controversy over Guantanamo Bay. During a Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue, he called the detention center "an international embarrassment to our nation, to our ideals and it remains a festering threat to our security." Leahy also appeared on CBS's Face the Nation, where he stated: "We've actually created a legal black hole there…I think as long as that exists, we are going to have one more rallying cry against the United States. We're the country that tells people that we adhere to the rule of law. We want other countries to adhere to the rule of law. And in Guantanamo, we are not."

Leahy has the seventh-highest seniority in the Senate, and his lifetime liberal ranking, according to the nonpartisan magazine National Journal, is 10th overall in the Senate. However, even his Democratic colleagues call him "imperious" and a "pain to work with."

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2038

Ping

I am an old guard Vermonter. THe facts of Leahy's treasonous and duplicitous conduct have never been put before the public in Vermont. NPR and the Burlington FRee Press are both liberal socialist media forms , who have refised or failed to reveal the truth about Leahy to the Vermont public.

Te Republican Party of Vermont is too genteel for the revelations to be made to the public through campaigns against Leahy, even "Republican" candidates unning against Leahy are too genteel to get down and dirty by telling the truth.

It would be wonderful if Tom DeLay moved to Vermont and won Leahy's seat from it. It wouldn't take much to reveal the truth about Leaky Leahy.

I have known about Leahy since the mid 1980s and have NEVER voted for him.

He could croke tommorrow and I would dance for joy.

I am an old guard Vermonter. THe facts of Leahy's treasonous and duplicitous conduct have never been put before the public in Vermont. NPR and the Burlington FRee Press are both liberal socialist media forms , who have refised or failed to reveal the truth about Leahy to the Vermont public.

Te Republican Party of Vermont is too genteel for the revelations to be made to the public through campaigns against Leahy, even "Republican" candidates unning against Leahy are too genteel to get down and dirty by telling the truth.

It would be wonderful if Tom DeLay moved to Vermont and won Leahy's seat from it. It wouldn't take much to reveal the truth about Leaky Leahy.

I have known about Leahy since the mid 1980s and have NEVER voted for him.

He could croke tommorrow and I would dance for joy.

ping

Landmark: Release Secret Info on 'Leaky Leahy'

Thanks mew.

You're welcome. Thanks for digging this up!

I can't get Patterico Pontifications site to come up... he had a slew of stuff on this; As the other side is fond of saying, "I question the timing". LOL

Thanks for posting this. I hope one of the GOP reads it for the record.

Send this to Rush and Sean. I am sure they will give it air time.

Thanks for the post and ping.

It's important to keep reminding people of the traitorous conduct of Leaky Leahy. Many younger people are probably not even aware of his criminal actions while a US Senator.

He could croke tommorrow and I would dance for joy.

Oh me too! I caught some of the Senate committee meeting yesterday on CPSAN and when Leahy was speaking I had that exact same thought!

Sometimes the only way to stop the federal bureaucracy from taking silly or dangerous action is to shine the spotlight of congressional oversight hearings on the matter.

Question: Who oversees Congress?

Answer: Nobody.

Anyone who answers, "the voters" is naive, at best.

My bag is full after reading about Leahy. Sheesh!

Yesterday I posted about how I feel about those who enlist and serve in our military, especially during a time of war, and when they could have more lucrative careers.

http://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=635

Well, James Robbins, over at the National Review, reminds us that this Sunday is Medal of Honor day, and suggest everyone read some of the stories behind our highest military award. Many are stories of soldiers and Marines going above and beyond the call of duty, sacrificing their own lives so that their brothers in arms might live. It is the ultimate sacrifice and hearing, reading or seeing these always makes me weep.

To commemorate this event, Congress has designated March 25 as National Medal of Honor Day. The purpose of the holiday is to recognize the heroism of the more than 3,400 recipients, educate the public on the medal and what it means, and to celebrate and honor the more than 100 living recipients of the medal.

http://www.homeofheroes.com/

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/moh1.htm

Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh; that is to say, over fear: fear of poverty; of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
- Henri-Frederic Amiel

I will post one such story here…
http://asecondhandconjecture.com/?p=642#more-642

Oops. Disregard.

This is such a sick joke.

Congress has completely invaded the private lives of the citizens through expansive illegal power expansion. forced every man, woman and child to be enslaved with paying for debt illegally forced upon them without their consent.

Can Congress stop there? NO, now they going to stick their saddest nose where it legally does not belong under the disguise of "oversight" and invade the office of the executive!

Congress as a whole is one sick, pathetic and corrupt body.