One Hell of a Legislature

Here’s the kind of rare story that gets you pumped about separation of powers:

In 1543, George Ferrers, a member of the House of Commons from Plymouth, England, was arrested for debt while on his way to Parliament. Members of Parliament (and members of Congress) are protected from arrest for debt during the sitting of the legislature, so the House of Commons sent its sergeant to demand Ferrers' release. The jailers holding Ferrers impolitely declined, and a melee ensued: As one 16^th-century account puts it, the sergeant's assistant was "stroken down." Outdone, the sergeant retreated to the House of Commons, which suspended all other business to tend to this challenge to parliamentary power. The lord chancellor, a Crown official, offered to provide the sergeant with a royal writ for Ferrers' release. But the House turned him down, insisting that the sergeant should act "without writ, only by shew of his mace"—that is, on the authority of the House alone. The sergeant was sent back to the jail, more heavily armed this time, and the jailers caved in and handed over Ferrers. [my emphasis]

Bush and Co. have stretched the power of the executive to an extent not seen since the Johnson/Nixon/Vietnam years. Shame on them, of course, but it wasn’t done in a vacuum. In order for the separation of powers to work correctly, each branch has to do more than just protect its own institutional power – it has to try to encroach on the other two as well. From 2002 to 2006-ish, partisan loyalty trumped institutional loyalty (the notable exception being the Republican Congressional leadership's intervention in the Bill Jefferson investigation). The Gonzalez and Rice subpoena fights aren’t really Dems vs. Pubs, they’re Congress vs. the imperial Presidency.