The Treason Called "Executive Privilege"

The execution of King Charles I:
How Parliament disposed of that tyrant's claims of "executive privilege"

“Treason is a matter of dates,” insisted Talleyrand, who despite being a physical cripple was ideologically double-jointed and thus (unlike many of his revolutionary comrades) was able to keep his head attached to its neck.

White House spokesliar Tony Snow displays more than a touch of Talleyrand in his ardent defense of what he once reviled – the concept of executive privilege.

In a syndicated column published in March 1998 (exhumed by the redoubtable Glenn Greenwald, and given wider circulation by Editor & Publisher), Snow waxed indignant about the Clinton junta's invocation of executive privilege in an effort to deflect the Ken Starr inquiry:

"Evidently, Mr. Clinton wants to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House compound on the theory that all such talk contributes in some way, shape or form to the continuing success and harmony of an administration. Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up.”

Nearly a decade later, as the spokesman for a regime whose criminal behavior eclipses that of the Clintonites, Snow has discovered that the concept of executive privilege is the highest and most sacred governing principle.

In fact, as he informed CBS's Harry Smith during their recent dust-up, from the perspective of the Bush regime, “Congress ... does not have constitutional oversight responsibility over the White House.”

Snow's comment was one of those instances in which the essential fascism of the Bush regime vents to the surface, in the fashion of a gust of superheated, toxic gases seeping to the surface as an overture to a volcanic eruption.

(Another memorable instance occurred last year when a loyal Bushevik in the "Justice" Department told Senator Patrick Leahy – in all apparent seriousness – that “the president is always right.”)

From the Bushevik perspective – which is the distillation of the power-obsessed cult that conservatism has become – the presidency is a self-existing entity superior to every institution under heaven (and, on a good day, superior in some respects to Providence Himself).

This doctrine is alien to our Constitution, and to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law. It does have a precedent, however, in the royal privilege claims asserted by King James I, the sexually depraved early 17^th Century English monarch, in his essay Basilikon Doron, a document intended to tutor his son in the ways of royal absolutism. The doctrine contained in that tract was nothing less than a prototype for the modern totalitarian concept of Fuhrerprinzip.

British legal expert Geoffrey Robertson summarizes James I's chief claims in his immensely important book The Tyrannicide Brief:

“James preached the benefits of what would now be described as a benign political and spiritual dictatorship, in which the King governed through an elite, chosen and discarded at his own discretion, comprising his ministers, his bishops and judges, who must never question the royal prerogative, for `that is to take away the mystical reverence that belongs to those that sit in the throne of God.'”

“In this Stuart utopia,” comments Robinson, “Parliament was irritating and irrelevant,” and the king was to be regarded as “`absolute master of the lives and possessions of his subjects; his acts are not open to inquiry or dispute, and no misdeeds can ever justify resistance.'”

James' successor was his small, stammering and petulant son Charles, who (in Robertson's words) “grew up in a narcissistic cocoon, unconcerned about the feelings and aspirations of other classes and citizens....”

Charles I was, in every significant way, a precursor to George W. Bush.

Charles built upon his father's legacy of regal lawlessness; his escalating conflict with Parliament included usurpation of the Parliament's power to enact taxes, and corruption of the judiciary into a servile tool of the throne through the notorious “Star Chamber” courts (which were inspired by similarly discreditable tribunals created by previous monarchs). He suspended habeas corpus and claimed the right to imprison people indefinitely at whim “by His Majesty's special command.”

Angered by these usurpations, and anxious to preserve the liberties won at Runnymede, Parliament enacted a document called the Petition of Right, intended to provide statutory protection for ancient rights; it reaffirmed the habeas corpus guarantee, extended protection against the quartering of troops in civilian homes, and prohibited the king from imposing martial law in peacetime.

Charles suffered the Petition's enactment, and promptly dismissed it. Eventually he dissolved the Commons, and during the entire decade of the 1630s refused to convene Parliament, ruling as a royal dictator. In 1642, the conflict between the Parliament and Throne blossomed into full-fledged civil war, which culminated with the trial, conviction, and execution of King Charles for treason.

“It had been with the criminal object of securing unlimited and tyrannical power that Charles I had levied war against Parliament and had set out to destroy the very people whose life and liberty he was obliged to preserve,” writes Robertson.

There is no reason to believe that Bush is less than deadly serious about his intent to deflect congressional subpoenas to protect his courtiers. Previous presidents who have dealt with similar challenges – Nixon, during Watergate; Reagan, during Iran-Contra; and even Clinton during the Lewinsky disgrace – have eventually deferred to Congress, rather than defying it.

Bush will almost certainly defy Congress. And if the conflict escalates further, he may eventually have to exercise the usurped powers he claimed last October 17, when he signed into “law” two measures that would establish his own version of the Star Chamber courts and use the National Guard as his proprietary army.

Even if he should decline to employ such severe means, George W. Bush, like his predecessor Charles I, would have to make war on the legislative branch -- either literally or in everything but name -- in order to defend royal prerogatives alien to our Anglo-Saxon heritage of law.

That was treason in 1642, and it remains treason today – the sophisms of Talleyrand and Tony Snow notwithstanding.

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The Terrorists Among Us

“If it were up to me, I'd line 'em all up against a wall and shoot them.”

Such was the sentiment expressed by one of Richard Yancey's supervisors during his brief and robustly unpleasant stint as a collection officer for the Internal Revenue Service. Yancey has recounted his experiences in exquisitely revolting detail within the pages of his book, Confessions of a Tax Collector – which, given the rapid approach of Tax Day, is seasonally appropriate reading.

Why in the name of all that is rational are people afraid of al-Qaeda and remote Jihadists of a similar stripe when the IRS runs rampant within our borders, marinating its personnel in murderous hatred of the agency's victims?

“This is war,” Yancey was told by a superior early in his 13-year career. “Surely this simple truth has occurred to you at some point in the last six months. You are at war.”

“The language of war and the culture of conflict are the only means to prepare us for what is expected of us,” Yancey recalls in his memoir. “How else could they [those at the top of the agency's criminal hierarchy] demand what was expected of us? You can't take [taxpayers'] life savings, their car, their paycheck, the roof over their head and the heads of their children, without dehumanizing them, without casting yourself in a role that by necessity makes them the enemy.”

Those who are educated in the IRS's training madrassas are required to dehumanize the taxpayer. They are likewise taught to believe that the State – that holiest of institutions -- is never wrong.

On one occasion recorded by Yancey, he and other trainees were informed that the IRS had no use for agents “who anguished over each closure, as if their decision meant life or death for the taxpayer.” When one trainee objected that this often is literally the case, the trainer replied that the agency's role has nothing at all to do with “doing the right thing for the taxpayer”; it was simply that of “protecting the government's interest.”

“But what if the government's interest is wrong?” objected the blessedly obtuse trainee.

“Our interest is never wrong or right,” responded the trainee. “It just is.”

Some dare call this nihilism.

Former IRS District Chief David Patnoe has admitted that his agency specializes in terrorism: “More tax is collected by fear and intimidation that by the law. People are afraid of the IRS.”

To which Yancey adds that the agency uses terrorism to cultivate informants: “No one likes to hear this, but your neighbor is not your friend. All I had to do was flash my commission and I'd have your life story.... Your neighbor is going to tell the IRS where you work, what kind of car you drive, what kind of jewelry you wear....” And so on. Not content with compiling a financial profile, IRS investigators will squeeze from neighbors and associates whatever potentially compromising details they can find regarding the target of an investigation: “Drink a little too much? Seeing a psychologist? Had an abortion? Faking a disability? We'll know. And most of the time, we won't even have to ask.”

What can't be wrung from human sources, the IRS will obtain through data-mining by way of the Integrated Data Retrieval System, the agency's proprietary database. Through IDRS, Yancey notes, he could learn, almost instantly, more about taxpayers “than they know themselves.”

Yancey, incidentally, was referring to an information system he first used in the early 1990s, which is practically the Pleistocene Era where computer technology is concerned.

(For more about Yancey's book, please see my article “Repackaging the IRS,” originally published two years ago in The New American and now available at The Right Source.)

One of Yancey's most interesting observations is that IRS collection agents generally avoid going after organized crime figures – the case of Al Capone being relatively exceptional. This aversion is born out of understandable fear of violent retaliation, but also reflects the fact that the typical gangster, unlike the law-abiding taxpayer, enjoys political protection of some kind.

In every particular, the IRS is a criminal syndicate operating under color of positivist “law.” A federal lawsuit in Las Vegas – the city built by organized crime – is testing whether the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act (RICO) can be used against IRS agents, federal prosecutors, and police officials who participated in an unnecessary armed assault against a businessman in 2003.

The plaintiff, Robert Kahre, runs a construction business in which all of his workers are independent contractors paid in real money – gold and silver, issued by the US Mint, rather than the State's fraudulent scrip. As ICs, the workers are responsible to pay their own taxes.

In May 2003, Kahre's business sites were hit with – what else? -- a paramilitary raid by SWAT teams working in tandem with federal personnel. About fifty agents armed with submachine guns invaded Kahre's offices, confiscating papers, computers, and – of course – cash.

More than 20 employees and members of Kahre's family were handcuffed and held at gunpoint; the detainees included an 85-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy. Some of the victims of this act of State terrorism were held outside, in direct sunlight and 106-degree heat, without water, for hours at a stretch. One site was reportedly searched without a warrant. Kahre himself was arrested on a state warrant by an IRS agent, who didn't have jurisdiction over the matter.

On May 22, Kahre goes to trial, facing 109 charges, including failure to withhold taxes from his employees (which he doesn't need to do for ICs), conspiracy (which requires a predicate criminal offense, and there may not be one here), and “attempting to interfere with the administration of Internal Revenue Service Laws.”

The prosecutor at that trial will be Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Gregory Damm, who is the lead defendant in Kahre's RICO suit, as well as a separate civil rights action.

Damm has attempted, without success, to have the civil rights lawsuit (which was filed immediately after the raid) dismissed. In October 2004, Federal Judge Philip Pro ruled that Damm is “not entitled to absolute immunity for claims that he planned every phase of an unlawful raid.” In March 2005, an appeal by Damm and IRS agents was rejected by the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Three weeks after losing that appeal, Damm secured the first tax indictment against Kahre.

“Wouldn't you like to indict the person who just sued you?” commented San Diego attorney William Cohan, who is representing Kahre, to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Now that Damm is the defendant in two federal lawsuits filed by Kahre, he is ethically required to recuse himself from the case against the businessman. Yet he is still, as of now, scheduled to be the lead prosecutor when the trial begins on May 22.

Clearly, there was no justification for the armed raid in May 2003. Damm could very well lose the civil rights case, or be forced to settle it; in fact, the Feds might well do this in an attempt to pre-empt the RICO action. And it's difficult to see how a reasonably competent defense attorney could fail to persuade at least some jurors that the indictment against Kahre was an act of cynical retaliation by a petty, corrupt, and incompetent prosecutor.

Did someone say “incompetent”?

Roughly a year ago, a $14 million securities fraud case Damm built against a clique of shady attorneys – people accused, plausibly, of defrauding investors out of their money, which (unlike violations of the IRS code) is an actual crime – was thrown out of court because he refused to turn over more than 600 pages of discovery materials to the defense.

When James Mahan, the Federal District Judge at the trial, confronted Damm about this omission, the prosecutor replied with such flippancy that the Judge reportedly threatened to have him “spend the evening with the marshals” unless the materials were provided immediately. Among the facts Damm and his associates attempted to conceal was the fact that several prosecution witnesses who had already testified had struck plea bargain agreements.

How far down in the Great Chain of Being does this Damm guy have to be in order to earn a slap-down from a trial judge, after enduring one from the appellate judge to refused to dismiss the civil rights suit?

It would be easy for a defense attorney to portray Kahre as the victim of an incompetent legal bureaucrat looking to take out his frustrations on a helpless citizen – and that approach would probably play in Vegas. So as I lift my aquiline nose to the wind, I catch the faint scent of settlement offers in the clouds gathering over this case.

In addition to the Damm problems with this case, it's interesting that his supervisor, until less than a month ago, was Daniel Bogden, one of the eight US attorneys removed in the White House-orchestrated political purge. Perhaps the Feds will conclude that they have trouble enough in that US Attorney's office without pursuing the case against Kahre.

Then again, the Leviathan might want to make an example out of Kahre, and spare no expense to do so. In either case, the chief objective will be to do whatever is in the best interest of the apparatus of fraud, plunder, and terror of which the detestable IRS is a representative component.

Arm yourself to do battle with the Leviathan: Visit The Right Source for news, commentary, Kevin Shannon's talk radio show, and Tom Eddlem's "The Right Action" -- a freedom-centered program for activism.

The Right to Resist

John Coffin heard his wife Cynthia screaming. After racing to the garage, he saw her prone, agonized form pinned to the floor by two armed strangers who had violated the sanctity of his home.

Despite the fact that he was an unarmed, 55-year-old heart patient, Coffin did the right thing: He beat the intruders to within an inch of their lives.

As it happens, the thugs who assaulted Coffin's wife, Cynthia (a nurse with no criminal record) were deputy sheriffs who had visited the home to serve John with a restraining order filed in a landlord-tenant dispute last April. Coffin had been served the same papers a few days earlier.

When Cynthia answered the doorbell and was greeted by deputy James Lutz with the TRO papers, she told him that John was in the bathroom. She then shut the door – which is exactly the right thing to do, given that police are now trained to seize on any opportunity to conduct a “consent search” -- and went to find her husband. She also began to lock other doors and close blinds; this is also entirely appropriate.

In his report, Lutz claimed that Cynthia was “obstructing his lawful duties.” In fact, she was protecting her family's rights. Lutz didn't have a search warrant, and she was determined not to let him confect “probable cause.”

Why were the Coffins so leery of police? Like an increasing number of honest, unassuming Americans, the couple had noticed that the police have turned feral. Their knowledge of this unfortunate fact is not derived from headlines, but rather a product of an unjustified assault John experienced in October 2003 after an unnecessary traffic stop conducted by a 24-year-old deputy named Grant Steube, who claimed that there was a problem with the license tag on John's car.

At the time of the stop, John was in his sister's driveway. He got out and demanded to know what the problem was. Steube ordered John back into his car and then – without legal cause or provocation – pepper-sprayed the then-52-year-old man, and then beat him repeatedly with a metal club called an asp.

Steube later admitted – gee golly Ned, oopsie-daisy, my bad, and all that – to misreading the license tag. As is always the case in such incidents, it was the victim of state-authorized violence who was charged with “resisting arrest” and “obstruction” of a police officer, but those charges were dropped. Steube, the assailant, was never charged or sanctioned in any way, (reg. required) and a lawsuit filed by the Coffins was summarily dismissed.

Given this history, it's understandable that the Coffins would treat an encounter with the Sheriff's department the way they did during the incident last April.

When John didn't materialize at the front door as quickly as Deputy Lutz thought he should, he summoned Deputy Stacy Ferris (a she-police, and hence useless). The two of them decided to invade the Coffin property without a warrant, by walking into the couple's garage. When Cynthia confronted them about their crime, she was threatened with arrest if she displayed “further resistance” -- a characterization containing a lie, since she had not “resisted” anything.

As she turned to go back into the house, Cynthia was seized by the deputies and placed “under arrest,” which in this case means she was assaulted and kidnapped without legal cause. When she struggled to get away, the deputies threw her to the garage floor, dislocating her arm. Her screams summoned John, who dispatched Deputy Stacy with a blow to the face, then grabbed her Taser and used it as a club on Deputy Lutz. After a brief struggle, Lutz pulled his gun and arrested John.

Asked by columnist Tom Lyons of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune how the Sheriff's Department could justify the invasion of Coffin's home and the violent arrest of his wife in the absence of a warrant or predicate crime, department spokesman Chuck Lesaltato simply muttered that the deputies “felt they had cause” and “felt they had been obstructed.”

“It is all about their feelings, it seems,” Lyons wrote in disgust. “But how much will deputies and prosecutors take into account the feelings of the husband who found two cops pinning his wife to the floor because she had the nerve to lock them out of her home?”

Last week, in a ruling as unexpected as it is uncommon and badly overdue, Circuit Judge Rick De Furia threw out all but one of the six charges against John Coffin (the surviving charge dealt with taking the Taser from one of the deputies) and reduced his sentence to the eight days he had served in jail and $358 in court costs.

“Law enforcement was responsible for the chain of events here,” ruled De Furia. The critical fact is that the deputies “broke the law” by invading the garage without warrant or probable cause; they committed an armed home invasion, and criminally assaulted an innocent woman.

“What took place in the house was unfortunate,” concluded De Furia, “but Mr. Coffin ... had a right to resist.”

Given the nature of the crime committed against his home, Coffin had a moral and legal right to gun down the invaders, irrespective of the costumes they were wearing. Given that I prefer not to see anybody violently killed for any reason, I admire and appreciate the restraint – and the courage -- he displayed in merely beating them severely.

The right to resist is what separates a citizen from a slave. God bless John Coffin for exercising that right, and Judge De Furia for recognizing and protecting it.

And let us pray that, somehow, the right to resist illicit state violence will likewise be recognized in the case of Cory Maye, before that young man is murdered by the State of Mississippi for the supposed crime of defending his home.

(Note: Part II of the Rio, Wisconsin story will be posted later.)

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