Posted on 12/14/2005 10:06:20 PM PST by nickcarraway
WASHINGTON -- All's well, Senator Byron Dorgan of the great state of North Dakota has done come clean. Senator Dorgan is the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. In that capacity he accepted $67,000 in contributions from Indian tribes represented by the recently indicted Jack Abramoff, a fabulous fixer here in the capital of the Free World. Abramoff, a Republican, has obviously been an equal-opportunity fixer, and apparently Dorgan was not above accepting his help, though Dorgan claims he never met the rogue and never backed any of his programs knowingly. Now there is an adverb to contemplate, "knowingly." The senator's aides admit that their boss did advocate some of Abramoff's programs while he was accepting the tribes' contributions, but he did not do so knowingly.
That is a good start on Senator Dorgan's road back to respectability. Yet there is another far more serious bit of funny business he has been involved in. He, along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton Administration. In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans. It is time to let the public see this report.
The report is the work of the staff of Independent Counsel David Barrett. He was tapped back in the Clinton days to investigate allegations that then Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros lied to the FBI and committed tax fraud in attempting to conceal money he had paid a mistress. Cisneros pled guilty back in 1999, and that would have been the end of it had Barrett's investigators not found serious misbehavior in Justice and in the IRS related to Cisneros' problems. Cisneros was a very promising Texas Democrat and the Clintons did not want him to come a cropper.
When Barrett completed his report the Clintons' lawyers led by that legendary Clinton pettifogger, David Kendall, tried to kill off the report either by gutting it with redactions or by getting it buried altogether. Kendall entered some 140 motions pursuant to this goal. The report has been ready for publication since August 2004 but Kendall's nuisance tactics have worked, and now what do we hear from the Clintonistas? They complain that Barrett has cost too much and taken too long. As they are themselves are the reason for much of the cost and delay, advocates of good government should be up in arms. This stratagem has been used too frequently by the Clintonistas to smear an officer of the court.
Barrett wants the report released in full. The reports of every other Independent Counsel have been released to the public in full, with only minor redactions where classified material might be revealed. There is a serious public-policy concern for releasing this report. It is the first independent investigation of the IRS by investigators armed with subpoena power. Civil libertarians concerned about the heavy-handedness of the IRS and its use as an instrument of political repression by the executive branch of the government know that this is very important.
Senator Dorgan has led the campaign to deny the report's contents to the public. Last April he attempted to end Barrett's funding. He was thwarted then, but more recently he tried a new ploy. With Democratic senators Richard Durbin and John Kerry, he bootlegged into an Iraq-war appropriations bill an amendment that would suppress the report completely. Some Republicans defeated this attempt, but Dorgan and his allies are clever. Into a later appropriations bill they got language that would suppress 120 pages of the report relating to Clinton Justice Department and IRS misbehavior. If the butchered report were published in this shape, they promised to do nothing further to delay its appearance. Amazingly key Republicans in these negotiations agreed, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Joe Knollenberg. As things stand now, the expurgated report will appear and the public will be none the wiser as to how the IRS and Justice Department can be used to obstruct justice and harass private citizens.
Corrupt administrations in the future will have a free hand at playing politics the way they are played in a banana republic, or 20th century Arkansas.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His latest book is Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery Publishing).
bump for later
Why the Clinton Administration turned me into a Bush Republican 101.
BUMP!
So what is it that these two sick scumbags, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Joe Knollenberg, are trying to hide?
Dorgan looks dirty.
If all the classified DOD stuff can be leaked, why can't this?
I have to believe that the President of the United States has access to the full report. I am disgusted beyond that I am denied the fruits of that spent money. I want to see the whole report. This thing BETTER be "leaked", and soon.
The Clintons did that to a lot of people. For their own self-aggrandizement, they did incredible damage to their party. They don't care. It's all about them.
bttt
Ping
If any of this is leaked, the Dems and MSM will be screaming for an independent cousel/prosecutor to investigate. They will make Scooter Libby look like small potatoes. If a Dem leaks something, nothing happens, but if a Pubbie leaks this, all hell breaks loose.
BUMP
I would guess 2 of 400 FBI files.
Any comments, Hillie?
A "cropper"?
Welcome. FR has helped keep my sanity for many years now. It's better than prozac.
Somebody be hidin' sumthin!! I can't wait to read it, but I know it won't be in the New York Times or LA times, or even the Chicago Trib. To many questions on this and something has to give.
O'Reilly did a segment on this before he jumped the shark. One of the Clinton rape accusers(Juanita Broderick I believe) had the IRS sicked on her. Despite only making 30K and filing the short form she was audited several times. O'Reilly got the treatment too.
The IRS employees complicit in this need firing.
Come a cropper
It is pretty complicated, but a search on google will make it even more so. Bob Tyrrell likes to use words not commonly known.
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