Moving at the lightening pace of a snail backing-up, the House Judiciary Committee has today, four months after their initial commitee vote of approval, finally issued a report to the full House on Contempt Citations against Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers for failing to honor Congressional Subpeonas to testify on the DOJ Purge.
WASHINGTON - House Democrats threatened Monday to hold President Bush's key confidants in contempt of Congress unless they comply with subpoenas for information on the Justice Department's purge of federal prosecutors last winter.
Naturally the White House was impressed by this bold move by the Democrats to enforce the - what do you call it, oh yeah - the Rule of Law.
The White House shrugged off the ultimatum, saying the information is off-limits under executive privilege and that the aides in question — White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former presidential counselor Harriet Miers — are immune from prosecution.
"It won't go anywhere," predicted White House press secretary Dana Perino.
Or will it?
The White House is naturally quite confident that Miers, Bolten (and Rove who is also threatened by this contempt action) won't be prosecuted because - well, they have the prosecutors under their thumb don't they?
Assuming the full House votes to confirm the contempt citations - isn't it sickening that we have to "Hope" for this? - the issue would then be referred to District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor, who like all of those who were placed in the Justice department in lieu of prosecutors who were either too aggressive with Republicans (Carol Lam) or too lenient on Democrats (David Iglesias) for the White House's taste was placed in his position using a loophole in the Patriot Act which by-passed Senate Confirmation.
With this in mind it should be a surprise that the White House sounds pretty smug.
The White House showed no signs of budging, maintaining that the law does not require a U.S. attorney to prosecute someone carrying out a president's invocation of executive privilege.
"This Congress is proving to be the all time champion of investigations," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "If the Judiciary Committee really wanted facts instead of headlines, they should have accepted the president's offer of accommodation to interview current and former advisers."
Although the DOJ has already Officially stated that it will not enforce the law - contempt of congress against White House officals, one thing that might undermine their confidence is the fact that the Patriot Act Loophole has since been closed, which means that Jeffrey A. Taylor's time as the DC USA is coming to a close.
In fact, by my Calender Taylor's last day should have been Oct 12th (120 Days after the repeal was passed) but so far he's still there which is weird and I think quite possibly illegal. So naturally, I'm not surprised - are you?
Anywho, with or without Gonzalez's handpicked stooge lackey Mr. Taylor we still have the Mukasey problem to contend with. The Waterboarding Wonder is about about as likely to enforce the law against his soon to be bosses former aides as he's likely to find and hang-on to the Constitution with both hands covered in super-glue.
Justice sure does get slippery after a thick coating of GOP elbow grease.
This is just one additional step in a long and drawn out political tango. The only real option left for finding out exactly how and why 9 U.S. Attorney's were summarily fired without any cause that anyone in the DOJ can find will be to implement Inherent Contempt. Once Congress votes to hold Miers, Bolten and Rove in Contempt letters will fly back and forth furiously while the Mukasey DOJ (God, it's hurts just to type that) sits on it's hands and spins over the corpse of their constitutional oaths.
Eventually, Congress will be forced to vote again - this time having absolutely no choice - they will find these three scoff-laws guilty of Inherent Contempt of the Congress and have the House Sargent at Arms arrest and detain them in the House's own jail just as previous occured in 1927.
In McGrain v. Daugherty, a recusant witness (the AG's brother) refused to comply with issued subpoenas. The Senate issued a warrant authorizing its sergeant at arms to take custody of the witness and bring him before the bar of the Senate to answer questions. The deputy sergeant at arms went to Cincinnati, Ohio to pick up the uncooperative witness to place him in custody. The witness objected by filing habeas corpus, but the Supreme Court upheld Congressional legal authority to use its own process to compel persons to appear and testify on issues needed to enable Congress to exercise its Constitutional legislative function.
This action by the House would force Rove, Miers and Bolten to - get this - file a writ of Habeaus Corpus or else be indefinately detained until they either they squawk or produce the documents which explain how - in all likelyhood - our Justice Deptartment was nearly hijacked by the RNC!!
This one case has so far been the only situation where the Democratic Congres has shown any true spine. Besides their stand on SCHIP, holding fast on this issue has managed to succeed in forcing half a dozen DOJ Officials out of office including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, otherwise Dems have repeatedly rolled-over on Funding the Iraq War, Illegal Wiretapping, Sabre-rattling at Iran, Granting Immunity to the Telcoms and now the Mukasey nomination. The one thing we can't afford to do is to let our Representatives once again turn gelatinous before this job gets done.
Any Vichy-Crats in the House who fail to fail to uphold the law and hold the Bush Criminals accountable will be getting a personlized Call-Out Action Diary from yours truly. Count on it.
In the meanwhile Rep. John Conyers deserves your praise and support, he's been fighting the good fight - albiet at sub-glacial speeds while dotting every "T" and crossing every "I" - and we should never forget it.
Conyers Blog
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Vyan
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