In light of the present difficulties of Congress in obtaining information from the executive branch, I propose the following constitutional amendment:

1. The executive branch shall, upon the request of any senator or congressman, promptly produce all documents and information requested within its possession or control to the requesting member, irrespective of classification, sensitivity, or any other danger to national security that might result from the disclosure of such documents or information to the member or to third parties. Such requests may be directed to any employee or officer of the executive branch, irrespective of position, rank or contractual provisions that may require non-disclosure. The duty of the executive branch to respond fully and completely to such requests shall extend to testimony by officers, employees and contractors of the executive branch before either house of the legislature and their committees

2. The agency receiving such request may, within 7 days, object to the production of the documents or information or any portion thereof by serving its objection upon the requesting member, setting out in detail the reasons for its objections, and unless 55% of the members of the house of Congress to which the requestor belongs votes to sustain the objection, the agency must comply with the request. The vote to sustain shall be privileged and each member is limited to 30 minutes of debate.

3. Each house of Congress may, by a two-thirds majority adopt rules limiting the access of all members to certain categories of documents and information, but may by a two-thirds majority exempt individual members from any or all such limitations. Any rules adopted under this section must be drafted with specificity as to the documents and information protected and any ambiguities shall be interpreted in favor of disclosure.

4. Executive privilege is hereby abolished. No member of the executive branch, including the president or vice president, may refuse to provide any information or documents required to be produced under this amendment.

Any other ideas for constitutional amendments? Put them in the comments.

Update: Upon further consideration, it occurred to me that it is usually the minority party that is refused information by the executive branch. Requiring a super-majority to sustain the objection of the executive branch creates a presumption that the information should be produced.

See the article below. With a small amount of googling, one can find a tremendous amount of dirt on the Plum Island facility. According to sources, it was privatized in 1991 and has been run since that time by a private corporation based in Maryland.

http://cryptome.org/piadc.htm

According to the Long Island Business News on August 10, 2006, the new facility will be a biosafety level 4, rather than the current level 3 on Plum Island. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4189/is_20060810/ai_n16656220.

What that means, dear reader, is that the facility that is being proposed for Flora, Mississippi, is more dangerous than a facility that is now located on an island because of the danger it poses to humans and animals.

Do we really want this facility here?

Over the past six months, even the power elite-serving NY Times has come to realize that the attorney general is a liar, an obstructor of justice, and, in general, a knave. To most of us, this was obvious six years ago, but one must make allowances for the politically-challenged.

This week was the last straw. Gonzales gave the finger to the Congress and the rest of the nation and Bush ratified that finger. The president should fire Gonzalez, and if he doesn't the solicitor general should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate him. If that doesn't happen, then Congress should impeach.

As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

New York Times: Mr. Gonzales's Never-Ending Story

Finally, a program on PBS featuring Greg Palast and his groundbreaking reporting (for the BBC) on how the Republican Party stole the 2004 presidential election.

One of the most effective means of stealing the 2004 election was voter caging—sending letters to newly-registered voters in Democratic areas with instructions not to forward. The Republicans then challenged the voters whose letters came back, including soldiers serving in Iraq and students who had been sent letters while on summer break.

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/330/video.html

The mainstream media in the U.S. have avoided this topic as they would a contagious disease.

There was, however, far more skullduggery going on in 2004 than just vote caging. Palast's book (see sidebar), which sets out detailed, virtually conclusive evidence that the election was stolen, is a shocker.

Not long ago I posted an article on the JP explaining how I would want the State of Mississippi to be different after my term of office had I been elected governor (fat chance).

http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/misspolitics/electedGovernor050907.html

Since it appears that the campaign for the U.S. Presidency is already in full swing, I am asking you, dear reader, a similar question: "If you were elected president, what would be your first official act?"

In other words, what do you think is the single most important thing our next president should do immediately?

According to the Clarion-Ledger, Flora is a finalist for a new federal laboratory whose purpose is ostensibly (according to the Department of Homeland Security website):

- to integrate those aspects of public and animal health research that have been determined to be central to national security;
- to assess and research evolving bioterrorism threats over the next five decades; and;
- to enable the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture (USDA), and Health and Human Services (HHS) to fulfill their related homeland defense research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) responsibilities.

The current facility is the Plum Island Animal Disease Center at Plum Island, New York. Display map of Plum Island facility in another window.

The facility was originally—and logically—a part of the Departments of Agriculture until June 2003, when it was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. Now that it is part of the same agency that gave you the Katrina recovery, there is some reason to be concerned about the safety of a facility that will be dealing with highly infectious organisms that can infect humans as well as animals. Up to now, the federal government saw fit to at least partially isolate the lab on an offshore island. 21 USC § 113a prohibits live foot-and-mouth disease virus on the mainland U.S. except under very special circumstances. Now Homeland Security wants to plunk it down near a small town in the most impoverished state in the nation, where it will be warmly welcomed as source of jobs. Whenever this administration tries to justify a questionable policy or activity, it has invariably used the term "terrorism," just as it is doing now.

I am suspicious.

Let's ask some hard questions before this project gets too far along:

1. What is this lab doing under the Department of Homeland Security instead of Agriculture? Is this grounds for confidence in the safety of the lab?

2. Why was the phrase "Animal Disease" taken out of the title and "defense" inserted?

3. Why isn't it cheaper and less disruptive to the employees of the present facility to build a replacement on Plum Island?

4. Will this facility be culturing virulent and dangerous organisms?

5. Is this facility involved with any phase of chemical or biological warfare?

6. Was there local opposition to rebuilding the facility on Plum Island, and if so, was it because the locals believed that with its expanded mission it poses a threat to health?

Sometimes I think that the politicians in this state would welcome a branch facility of Hell, so long as they could brag that it created jobs and made money for real estate developers.

Update 7/21/2007: Question 7 should be "Will security be contracted to a private corporation, such as Wackenhut?" TPM Muckraker is running an article today on Wackenhut's lax security practices:

Wackenhut has the contract to secure the Army's Holston Ammunition Plant in Tennessee. Last year, guards at the plant told lawmakers that boaters were easily able to float into restricted areas at the riverfront facility, and that Wackenhut only bolstered patrols when it knew that Army inspectors were up for a visit. Wackenhut has contracts to secure 31 nuclear power plants around the country. Last year, the Project on Government Oversight reported that Wackenhut nearly got employees killed by not stopping a mock terrorism-response exercise at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in time. Perhaps most egregiously, the Department of Homeland security opted last year not to renew Wackenhut's contract to protect DHS's Washington headquarters after guards told the AP about numerous security breaches -- including a botched anthrax scare. (Wackenhut security officials actually took the "suspicious white powder" into the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff and sprinkled it out of his window into the area below.)

It has been difficult to write about the crisis in Washington, D.C. these last few days; the possible outcomes are too awful to contemplate.

Bush has finally demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that he is not simply a bad president, but a knave, and that there is nothing he will not do to preserve his power and the power of his close supporters. That much of the mass media have not yet reached this conclusion—at least openly—is testimony to its stupidity and corruption.

For the first time in a political career notable for lack of compassion towards convicts, Bush has commuted Scooter Libby's sentence long before his conviction has been affirmed on appeal, for the obvious reason that that the sound of the cell doors closing behind him might have persuaded Libby to spill the beans on Karl Rove, vice president, Dick "Go fuck yourself" Cheney, or even the president himself.

With a sufficient robo-Republican minority in the Senate Bush can defeat any impeachment proceedings, We hanged Nazis at Nürnberg for doing exactly what Bush has done: attacking a nation that was no threat to either its neighbors or the United States. If he cannot be impeached for lying the nation into an illegal war he is virtually immune from being removed from office, no matter how heinous his crimes

Since the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is charged with prosecuting contempt of Congress charges, Bush, through his buddy Gonzales, can squech any efforts by Congress to enforce its subpoenas through the judicial system.

That leaves only the inherent contempt power of Congress, which can send its sergeant-at-arms to arrest a recalcitrant official and haul him/her before the appropriate chamber to be held in contempt. Anyone want to make bets on what will happen if the sergeant-at-arms of the house attempts to arrest Karl Rove or Dick Cheney? The thought of such a confrontation is enough to sicken this constitutionalist and small-r republican.

The nation is presently as close to a coup as it has ever been. The institutions of our government are being stressed to the breaking point.

Let us pray that they hold.