(Darryl) Levinson thesis (continued)

[Paul Horwitz]

Others may have more information at hand than I do on this question, but is 
this really a full and fair description of Senator Collins?  Whether or not 
she is ultimately a party loyalist, it seemed to me that she had been fairly 
active in subjecting the Administration to public scrutiny and criticism on 
Katrina.  Whether she was wrong not to accede to this particular request I 
cannot say, but there are plausible non-party reasons she might have done 
so; she might have thought the issue is being well canvassed by other 
committees (after all, jurisdictional disputes can be both intra-branch and 
inter-branch), she might have felt that the particular request was 
ill-founded or duplicative or pointless, she might think that Congress has 
already achieved a sufficient chastening of the Administration on the 
Katrina issue, and so on.  As to whether it says anything that Collins 
brushed off the request from a RINO Democrat, if that's what Lieberman is, 
well, maybe; or maybe the substance of his request was poor, or perhaps -- 
it's possible! -- Collins simply dislikes Lieberman personally.  I like 
Daryl Levinson's thesis, though I'm not sure I subscribe to it completely; 
but not every instance of refusing to launch a new investigation of the 
Administration need be ascribed to the Levinson thesis.

Paul Horwitz
Southwestern University School of Law
Los Angeles, CA

>From: "Sanford Levinson" <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>
>To: "Sanford Levinson" <SLevinson at law.utexas.edu>, <mgraber at gvpt.umd.edu>,  
>       <CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu>, <LawCourts-L at usc.edu>
>Subject: RE: (Darryl) Levinson thesis (continued)
>Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 09:58:14 -0600
>
> >From today's Washington Post:
>
>
>Brown Ignored Disaster Plan, New Report Says
>
>
>
>
>By Spencer S. Hsu 
><http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/spencer+s.+hsu/>
>Washington Post Staff Writer
>Thursday, March 16, 2006; Page A03
>
>Michael D. Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 
>deliberately ignored a new national disaster plan and circumvented his 
>boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in trying to manage the 
>federal response to Hurricane Katrina directly with the White House, 
>according to a new House report....
>
>Among other issues, the House report noted, "Brown's communications with 
>the White House . . . raise serious questions about when and how the White 
>House becomes involved in disaster response."
>
>Yesterday, Senate investigation chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) denied a 
>request by ranking member Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to subpoena 
>documents and testimony from Bush aides.
>
>"Virtually everyone in the White House who had anything of operational 
>significance to do with" Katrina has been "put off limits," he wrote. "This 
>has left us unable to obtain any real sense of what the White House did or 
>didn't do."
>
>Lieberman said a Congressional Research Service review found 75 cases in 
>which top presidential aides -- including chiefs of staff, White House 
>counsels and National Security advisers -- testified to legislative 
>investigators since 1926.
>
>Collins called Lieberman's request "neither warranted nor appropriate," 
>because it could deprive presidents of candid advice and violate executive 
>privilege. She said aides have provided three briefings and 23,300 pages of 
>documents.
>
>
>
>A.  Collins is supposed to be a "moderate Republican," but, at the end of 
>the day, she is a party loyalist, as predicted by the Levinson thesis (and 
>one has to assume that she doesn't feel any re-election pressures from 
>Republicans back in Maine).  (This should underscore the idiocy, for 
>members of both parties, of "voting for the person and not the party, 
>because at the end of the day party identification is by far the most 
>important variable in the contemporary Congress.  Any Democrat who votes 
>for Lincoln Chafee should be ashamed of him/herself.  Ditto for a 
>Republican who votes for Lieberman.)
>
>B.  Lieberman is widely thought to be a "DINO" (Democrat in Name Only), and 
>even he is contemptuously brushed aside (unless, of course, you think he's 
>simply grandstanding in a desperate attempt to stave off his primary 
>challenger in Connecticut).  In any event, so much for even a scintilla of 
>"bipartisanship" in the modern Congress (and further demonstration of point 
>A above.).
>
>sandy
>


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