Those Activist Judges...

Yet another activist court at work this week, Bush! Busy thwarting the will of the people. It seems now that the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Tuesday that your Cheney was not obliged to reveal the composition of that select body he consulted with while developing your energy policy. The joint suit filed by the Sierra Club (those wild-eyed, tree hugging liberals) and Judicial Watch (a bunch of wild-eyed, trouble-making conservative legal eagles) was turned down on the basis that "even influential participation" by who knows what Ken Lays and other (corporate? surely not!) consultants did not give them an actual vote on the National Energy Policy Development Group that your Cheney headed, and that presumably made decisions about the nation's energy policy.

What policy, you may ask? Well, I ask, Bush. Hard to determine. Aside from occasional raids on the acreage of our national patrimony, it seems to have been largely laissez-faire throughout your tenure in office. Laissez, that is, the corporate interests to faire whatever they deem necessary to turn their profits. We've talked about this before, you and I. Notably absent from that policy has been any substantial or consistent effort toward conservation, or any serious support for scientific research into alternative energy sources. The bill that is currently under consideration in the US Congress is, according to the Sierra Club's chief attorney, nothing more than "an energy industy wish list." Not being as well-informed as I might be on the subject of this legislation, I'm inclined to credit what he says. It fits the pattern.

At any rate, the difference in this deplorable story between a consultant and a lobbyist seems negligeable. You'd think--I'd like to think--that there might be some interest, in the higher echelons of your administration, in the kind of transparency that lends the government its credibility. But no. Your Cheney has fought tooth and nail for this week's decision for the past… what? Four years? And the Supreme Court lent a convenient hand, last year, when the issue threatened to raise some uncomfortable questions during your re-election campaign: they provided you with a timely postponement until after the election. (This, I recall, was the occasion for the famous Scalia duck blind argument, explaining his refusal to recuse himself in view of his fine duck-hunting relationship with one of the principals in the suit.)

So what does your Cheney have to hide, the rest of us would like to know? He argues the principle of the thing, as I understand it: that the executive branch should be entitled to consult with whomsoever it pleases, without having to disclose the content of its confidential discussions. But this is the people's business, for God's sake, Bush. Is this not the height of arrogance, for a group of hand-picked men (and women?) to sit in secret and make decisions for an entire nation? I think that as both a voter and a citizen, I deserve to know if Ken Lay contributed his wisdom--not to mention his integrity and his business acumen--to the creation of an energy policy that directly affects the way I live my life.

I gave up on Ralph Nader a long time ago, Bush. I happen to believe that he sacrificed the good of the country to his ego in the past two elections. But I do believe he has it right in his indictment of the power of corporations in the halls of Congress--and, it would seem, in the back rooms of the White House. You can no longer persuade me that this is government for and by the people. It's government for and by the corporate interests.

Sorry to be cynical… but so much for the beacon of democracy.