I'm sure no one here would believe the Bush administration would bow to pressure from a right-wing anti-environmental group and refuse to abide by an international treaty. Yeah, right. But not to worry -- it's only Canadian border security that's at stake.
SOMETIMES history plays as farce the first time around, which raises the question of what it might conceivably do for a second act.
While we have spent the last few years fretting and chattering and speechifying about a secure border, it has been Dennis Schornack’s job — as American head of the International Boundary Commission — to locate it. He has had his hands full.
Evidently swaths of our northern border have disappeared in the undergrowth; parts have not been seen in years. It falls to the commission to whack the weeds, prune the trees and generally to excavate a boundary for the most part established in 1783, when John Adams, Ben Franklin and John Jay sat down at a treaty table in Paris. That, anyway, was Mr. Schornack’s job until two weeks ago, when he was fired by the White House...
Part of the Commission's mandate is to establish a ten-foot buffer zone along the border, and it has the authority to remove barriers from that zone. But when Mr. Schornack asked Shirley-Ann and Henry Leu to move a newly constructed concrete wall that extended three feet into the zone, they refused -- and brought in the big guns.
At that point Mr. Schornack collided with something more obdurate than concrete. The Pacific Legal Foundation stepped in to represent the Leus. The fund crusades against “government regulators and environmental extremists.” It has defended President Bush’s environmental record and challenged the Environmental Protection Agency for declaring tobacco smoke a carcinogen; ExxonMobil and Philip Morris are among its supporters. For the record, the foundation’s fund-raising expenses are in themselves larger than the boundary commission’s total budget.
To their lawyers, the Leus had a clear-cut case of violated property rights. The couple were the victims of an overreaching government, bent on “irresponsible exercises of authority.” On April 6, they filed suit against the commission, in Seattle.
Mr. Schornack hired counsel and prepared a countersuit. He says he was then tackled by Justice Department lawyers, who urged him to settle the case. Mr. Schornack refused; to his mind, property rights should not trump national security. And he figured the Leus — who were planning future construction — had set a dangerous precedent: What if everyone decided to build on the border? Wouldn’t that make life easier for terrorists and drug smugglers? The Leus themselves had reported “border runners” on their property; smugglers had been apprehended nearby. Mr. Schornack felt he had taken an oath to uphold a treaty, and he intended to honor it.
Mr. Schornack expected the US government to back him up, but instead he got a call from a Bush flunkie who questioned his party affiliation (he's a Republican who campaigned twice for Bush and served as an aide to former (thanks, witless chum) Michigan Gov. John Engler), impugned his patriotism, and reminded him that he worked for Bush. He was told to back down, or else. When he refused, he got a "You're fired!" fax from the White House.
Now he's suing the President, and his attorney has some interesting history with the Bush administration's ideological purity requirements:
Mr. Schornack is filing suit against the president, on the ground that Mr. Bush had no authority to fire the head of an autonomous international agency. The case is expected to be heard in Seattle this week. Representing Dennis Schornack will be Mike McKay, who is familiar with the you-work-for-the-White-House speech. His younger brother, John, was one of the United States attorneys dismissed last year by the Justice Department.
Small world.
H/T, Helen. Cross-posted at Birmingham Blues.
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