David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was testifying under subpoena yesterday to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. He took great delight in being a complete jackass, as Dana Milbank details.

Could the president ever be justified in breaking the law? “I’m not going to answer a legal opinion on every imaginable set of facts any human being could think of,” Addington growled. Did he consult Congress when interpreting torture laws? “That’s irrelevant,” he barked. Would it be legal to torture a detainee’s child? “I’m not here to render legal advice to your committee,” he snarled. “You do have attorneys of your own.”

He had the grace of Gollum as he quarreled with his questioners. In response to one of the chairman’s questions, he neither looked up nor spoke before finishing a note he was writing to himself. When Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) questioned his failure to remember conversations about interrogation techniques, he only looked at her and asked: “Is there a question pending, ma’am?” Finally, at the end of the hearing, Addington was asked whether he would meet privately to discuss classified matters. “You have my number,” he said. “If you issue a subpoena, we’ll go through this again.”

[...]

When John Conyers (D-Mich.) inquired about Addington’s pet legal concept, a “unitary executive theory” that confers extreme powers on the president, Addington dished out disdain.

“I frankly don’t know what you mean by unitary theory,” Addington replied. “Have you ever heard of that theory before?” “I see it in the newspapers all the time,” Addington replied. “Do you support it?” “I don’t know what it is.” The usually mild Conyers was angry. “You’re telling me you don’t know what the unitary theory means?” “I don’t know what you mean by it,” Addington answered. “Do you know what you mean by it?”

While I must admit chuckling all the way through the story at the spectacle, Phil Carter is not amused. “Calling Addington and Yoo hostile witnesses doesn’t begin to describe the level of their contempt for Congress, the hearing and the democratic processes that brought them to testify by way of a subpoena.”

Then again, it’s easy to have contempt for this particular process. Unlike Phil, I’m not an attorney. But it seems to me that these are precisely the kind of answers one ought expect from a hostile witness presented with inane, hypothetical questions.

Congress has every right — indeed, a duty — to investigate suspected wrongdoing on the part of the executive branch. But it’s far from clear how this set of questioning was supposed to be helpful toward that end. The man is an adviser to the vice president, not a would-be Supreme Court Justice. What difference does it make what his pet theories of executive power are? What matters is what actions the president and his team actually took.

Wouldn’t it have been far more useful, then, to ask specific questions about specific activities that took place in Addington’s presence? Indeed, it appears that, in the rare times that was the case, Addington was much more forthcoming.

Addington didn’t submit written testimony and barely had an oral presentation, preferring instead to simply answer — or, as the case often was, not answer — questions presented to him. Nor does the subcommittee yet have a transcript of the testimony available. But, relying on other press accounts such as Dan Eggen’s report for WaPo, Scott Shane’s NYT account, and this AP report it appears that Addington in fact cooperated when Members asked him substantive questions.

For example,

Addington, who has been widely described as one of the key forces behind the Bush administration’s most aggressive counterterrorism policies, said some reports of his involvement were overstated. He said, for example, that he was briefed by Yoo about his 2002 memo but that he had no role in shaping it. Addington also said he was more deeply involved in the CIA’s interrogation program than the one used by the Pentagon at the military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under the CIA program, high-level detainees were kept in secret prisons abroad and subjected to harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

Or,

Mr. Addington recalled discussing the document with Mr. Yoo and Alberto R. Gonzales, then counsel to President Bush.

“My memory is of Professor Yoo coming over to see the counsel to the president and I was invited in the meeting with the three of us, and he gave us an outline of ‘here are the subjects I’m going to address,’ ” Mr. Addington said.

“We said, ‘Good,’ ” he added. “And he goes off and writes the opinion.”

More questioning along those lines might have gotten us somewhere. Instead, we got nonsense about hypothetical child torture or questions based on journalistic fantasies of Bush’s mind.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum and Steven Bainbridge offer interesting insights on this that are in line with my own impressions. I’m rather pleased, having expected to be an outlier with this take. This, despite Drum seeing my “complete jackass” and raising it with an “Addington is not only an arrogant prick, he’s the kind of person who revels in being an arrogant prick.”

The government started its opening arguments at 1037 am. Live blog below the fold. As always, major breaking news will get separate posts.

They take us to the day (July 6, 2003) Joseph Wilson’s NYT op-ed came out and argues that it was a devastating attack. He also appeared that day on “Meet the Press,” questioning the WMD argument and “igniting a media firestorm.” A day later, “the White House admitted” some things “should not have been said.” White House then “began to push back.”

This case is about Scooter Libby’s “obstruction of the search for truth” by “repeatedly lying” to both the grand jury and the FBI. Using the word “lie” or variants repeatedly.

Calendar as prop to hammer home time line. Can’t find something startling Thursday that you learned on Tuesday.

Repeated references to Iraq, the State of the Union, the Niger yellowcake controversy, and so forth as “background.”

Vice President learned from Marc Grossman on June 11, 2003 about the Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame relationship. Bob Grenier told Scooter Libby that Plame worked in the unit responsible for sending Wilson on trip to Niger. He also got separate confirmation from Cathie Martin, most likely in June.

Libby also got morning intel brief from Craig Schmall on Saturday June 14, which included a discussion of Wilson, Plame, and the trip to Niger.

Monday June 23rd, Libby complained about unfair CIA leaks with Judith Miller, mentioning that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA on background, attributable only to “a senior administration official.”

ALL OF THIS OCCURRED BEFORE the Joe Wilson op-ed. This was a direct attack on the integrity of the president and vice president about the most important matter of public policy.

Scooter Libby cut the column out and marked it up. Frustrated by what Wilson was saying. VP’s “right hand man” as both chief of staff and national security advisor.

Libby focused on this controversy “day after day after day.”

Timeline:

6 July: Wilson op-ed and MTP appearance
7 July: Libby tells Ari Fleischer Wilson’s wife works for CIA
8 July: Libby meets with Judith Miller again at St Regis Hotel dining room, defending Iraq intel and asks to be identified as “former Hill staffer” with regard to Joe Wilson wife story.
8 July: Libby talks with David Addington, WH lawyer, and asks vague question about CIA officer sending husband on trip
10 July: Libby calls Tim Russert to complain about Chris Matthews’ unfair treatment on “Hardball,” hoping Russert would intercede
11 July: CIA Director George Tenet
12 July: Makes on-record statement to Matt Cooper and Judith Miller at Cheney’s direction. Cooper asks “what have you heard about Wilson’s wife sending him on a trip?” and Libby answers “I heard that, too.” This was a confirmation of what Cooper had already heard.

“It should be noted, Novak relied on two sources, neither of which was the defendant.”

Late September: Criminal investigation announced about the leaks.

Grand jury had two missions: Find the facts of who leaked Plame’s CIA status to the press and to investigate whether a cover-up had occurred. Defendant swore an oath promising to tell the truth.

Fitzgerald played tape recorded testimony and displayed the court reporter’s transcript from Libby during the grand jury about his conversation with Tim Russert, saying that Russert had ASKED HIM about it. He says he answered “No I don’t know that.”

Fitzgerald interprets this as Libby lying to the grand jury and claiming he learned it from Russert. My take was that Libby was just lying to Russert in order not to be on the record confirming Plame’s status.

After another 10 minute break, Fitzgerald played a tape recording of Libby telling a grand jury that he had heard about Wilson from reporters. Which would appear to be true. He didn’t FIRST hear it there, though.

A third tape has Libby saying that he had told Matt Cooper that he didn’t know Joe Wilson had a wife. Which, again, doesn’t strike me as the same as lying to the grand jury.

Fitzgerald closed by saying that “this case is not about bad memory” and that “having a bad memory is not a crime.” It’s about lying under oath.

Dick Cheney’s staff is routinely reviewing all legislation to ensure it does not diminish presidential authority before forwarding to President Bush for his signature, reports the Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage.

The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president’s desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.

The officials said Cheney’s legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington, is the Bush administration’s leading architect of the “signing statements” the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president’s right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution. The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to Congress, among other laws.

Previous vice presidents have had neither the authority nor the interest in reviewing legislation. But Cheney has used his power over the administration’s legal team to promote an expansive theory of presidential authority. Using signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all previous administrations combined.

“Addington could look at whatever he wanted,” said one former White House lawyer who helped prepare signing statements and who asked not to be named because he was describing internal deliberations. “He had a roving commission to get involved in whatever interested him.”

Knowing that Addington was likely to review the bills, other White House and Justice Department lawyers began vetting legislation with Addington’s and Cheney’s views in mind, according to another former lawyer in the Bush White House. All these lawyers, he said, were extremely careful to flag any provision that placed limits on presidential power. “You didn’t want to miss something,” said the second former White House lawyer, who also asked not to be named.

While the constitutional significance of the “signing statements” is dubious at best, the fact that the vice president’s chief counsel is vetting laws does not strike me as problematic. Surely, the president has the authority to staff policymaking decisions as he sees fit. Nor is it unreasonable for the Executive branch to want to safeguard its power from potential encroachment from gigantic legislative bills that number in the hundreds, if not thousands, of pages.

What is odd, however, is that they do not simply advise the president to veto the bills in question of that grounds rather than carrying on the “signing statements” charade. While it’s not inconceivable that some Justices will take those into account–after all, some take foreign legal decisions under advisement–it’s a rather circuitous and risky means to solving a problem that the president has direct power to fix.