Congress has issued the first subpoenas for White House officials over the US Attorney firings. Executive privilege claims come next. Then what? The White House will never budge, which tells me that eventually the US Attorney for the DIstrict of Columbia will have to decide whether to settle the question by picking up a contempt referral from Congress. He won’t do it either because he’s a hack or because he doesn’t want to ref a balance of powers fight, so unless Congress works up the balls for an impeachment I have a hard time seeing the White House not coming out on top.
***Update***
via dKos, the AP story:
Two congressional committees are issuing subpoenas for testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor on their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to two officials familiar with the investigation.
Presumably they started with Sara Taylor because you always try to roll the little fish before you move on to bigger game.
***Update 2***
The timing has to do with emails released last night that provided even more evidence of White House involvement in the U.S. attorney firings.
***Update 3***
Not an encouraging sign:
Statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT): “The White House cannot have it both ways — it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred. … Some at the White House may hope to thwart our constitutional oversight efforts by locking the doors and closing the curtains, but we will keep asking until we get to the truth.”
Asking the same thing over and over may sound pointless, but don’t mock Pat Leahy. That really works!
Zifnab
Ok, so here’s the pla… hey, what the fuck did you do with the comment section toolbar? There’s, like, all sorts of crazy crap in here. Dict? H1-4? Code? Table? This is admittedly rather robust, but I don’t know if its entirely necessary.
Formated
Text
Is
fun
Though
Zifnab
Oh. :'( It’s gone.
Rome Again
I’m not holding my breath that this Congress is going to do anything serious to hold this administration accountable for anything. I think they’ve already pretty much proven they can’t. TZ was right, the numbers just aren’t there, and Joe Lieberman is just a Republican sitting on the wrong side of the aisle.
After what I’ve seen so far, I’m not running out to:
a.) change my affiliation back to Dem (it’s gonna take a LOT more than what we’ve seen so far for that to happen)
b.) stomp pavement for any candidates either.
Punchy
That “subpeona this, bitches” you just heard came from Rove’s office.
And after all the courts have ruled, and these two trollops finally have to haul their fat asses down to testify sometime in July–of 2008–all you’ll hear out of their word holes is a perfect, uninterrupted string of “I plead my 5th Amendment rights” to every single question.
Here, I think a series of bitch-slaps works better than a few subpoenas.
Sri Ramkrishna
I’m with you RA. The dems have done nothing to assure us that they are going to hold accountability. They can do all the subpeonas they want but if they can’t even enforce Karl Rove to show up then really something is wrong. It only backs up the meme that they are ineffectual.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait until U.S. starts a war with Iran to truly convince people that things are going insane. *sigh*
Jake
One of the stock responses to concerns about the White House’s habit of using the Constitution as toilet paper has been: If you’ve done nothing wrong, what’re you worried about?
So while subpoenas may be useless in terms of getting someone to the Capitol Building, it continuously puts the denizens of 1600 Penn. Ave. in an awkward position. Although I can’t imagine one more uncomfortable than the current “Head Buried in Rectum” one they’re all in now.
Zifnab
Yeah, right. More likely people will just toss up their hands and talk about how it would be really nice if we weren’t in the grave we’ve dug for ourselves.
The one silver lining in all of this is that our military system was a bit out-of-control before we went into Iraq. Perhaps now, after we’ve ground our Vietnam era equipment to dust while spending hundreds of billions on weapons’ contractors’ shitty gear, we can rebuild from the ground up and cut out the epic amounts of fat in the defense budget. I don’t really see it happening, but its nice to dream.
ThymeZone
When will DOJ look into the constant, several-times-a-day crashes on this site, resulting in lost posts and multiple posts?
If this isn’t fixed, the Islamogaydemoncratillegalalienfascists win.
Zifnab
Actually, have you checked out Sara Taylor?
After Goodling, am I the only one who suspects that a prime prereq for getting into the Justice Department is being a grade A hottie? It’s like a parade of the blonde bombshell bimbos. I’m still waiting for Linsey Lohan or Carmen Electra to get subpoenaed.
Rome Again
Careful there TZ, you’re going to end up on that WordLust site again. LMAO
Pb
Zifnab,
That’s because they came from the political arm, which is essentially the marketing / sales department.
Punchy
Tim, all you can do is buy the condom and the red wine. You cannot actually force her to boom-chicka-boom, regardless of how badly your friends want you laid.
Perhaps Congress will go the roofie route, but that’s a bit dangerous, and fraught with legal issues. At least at this point they’re showing up at the door in a tux, and haven’t taken the myriad unanswered phone calls as a “no”.
Otto Man
It’s not the Democrats that are causing the crisis here. It used to be that when Congress issued subpoenas, the White House complied, in one way or another. The Decider, however, has surrounded himself with people who insist he is the King of Kings and needn’t concern himself with the petty demands of an unequal branch of government.
If the White House does snub the subpoenas, as they almost certainly will, then Congress is empowered to issue contempt citations. But as Tim notes, that flows through the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which in this particular instance, is a thorny route and one not likely to work.
What next? The next step is impeachment proceedings, which would likely take a full year to reach a conclusion, followed by trial in an evenly split Senate, where nothing would come to pass. Personally, I’d love to see the Democrats try that route, but I don’t see it happening this late in the term of a lame duck presidency.
I wish the Democrats could do more, but I’m not seeing a lot of constitutional options out there. And I’m not understanding why the scorn here is being placed at their feet, and not at the White House.
Otto Man
Tony Snow’s giving a press briefing right now. He looks like even he doesn’t believe the bullshit coming out of his mouth.
Jake
Shorter Zinfab:
I (Heart) Women Who H8 The Sun.
I’m no expert but I wouldn’t put Goodling or Taylor in the hot file. Of course, few people look their best when under the hot blinding light of investigation.
[Mwahaha!]
Tax Analyst
Otto Man definitely has THE point here. While there are admittedly plenty of things to criticize the Democrats for, they are NOT, repeat NOT, the ones fomenting a Constitutional crisis. They are, in fact, TRYING to follow the Rule of Law, but are being thwarted at every possible angle, opportunity and place by rank obstructionism by the White House and the lock-step support it receives from elected Republicans – even those who should or actually do know better. Can you imagine the outrage that would flow from the Republican Noise Section if the Democrats (if and when they regain Congressional & Executive control) tried to pull 1/100th of the crap the White House and affiliated co-horts have been trying to run past everyone?
But hey, a blow-job from a bimbo is a bigger deal than all this “Abuse of Executive Privilege” and “Rule of Law” mumbo-jumbo, isn’t it? So when does Paris Hilton finally get out of the slams, anyway? Her absence leaves such a big…uh…hole in the news these days.
srv
Here we go again, as was expected when the Dems finally got a majority. The DemoRats will pursue all these non-crimes until they trip somebody up and can convict (ala Libby) on some technicality and declare “victory”.
Can’t wait until a Dem gets elected and tries to sack 93 Federal DAs like Clinton did. I’m sure we’ll hear a collective scream from the left about that injustice.
Chuck Butcher
Sex sells, boring old Constitution doesn’t.
Punchy
PLEASE tell me you’re joking. Hottie? This hooch? Damn. If think she’s a hottie, then what’s Jess Alba or Juggs McTaters, a.k.a. Jenn Love(me) Hewitt?
Methinks Zinfab needs himself an eye checkup, stat.
cleek
the complaint is not about firing them, it’s about firing them for partisan political reasons (illegal), and then lying to Congress about it for five months (illegal).
Andrew
When your other government staffer dating option is Paul Wolfowitz, an average blonde chick looks pretty damn good.
Zifnab
They’re both busty, leggy, blondes. Am I the only one on this board that thinks these girls are a few steps up from Janet Reno or Madelaine Albright? I mean, show me the Clinton staffer who looked nearly as hot as these two.
Seriously, who would you pick?
Monica or Monica?
That said, I don’t think anyone really has room to be pissed at Reid or Pelosi or for that matter Waxman or Schummer or Murtha or Feingold. They really have busted ass to nail the Crook-in-Chief. It’s the Southern Bell Democrats, the Blue Dogs and the Liebercrats, who have been kneecapping our efforts nearly as much as their Republican counterparts.
After DeLay-style rule, people want to see more of the same but in the opposite direction. Bareknuckle, knock-down, drag out, cutthroat reform. People saw bullshit legislation get railroaded through Congress over the last six years. They saw shitty SCOTUS judges slip past filibuster under cover of “Upperdown Vote!” People are pissed off and disgusted and they want to see the same dirty pool used for our side. When DINOs defect, it makes all that much more difficult. Unfortunately, the Dem leadership is the most visible and the most easy to blame.
demimondian
For once, srv has it exactly right. After all, Clinton did it first, just like Reagan did. and our liberal media has been dedicating how many column inches to this firing? Unlike Whitewater, and Hillary’s bullshit cattle futures contracts, and Vince Foster’s directed suicide?
DougJ
Yeah, that’s how it was with BJ Klinton. How come you never talk about the 93 USA’s he fired in exactly the same manner that all previous presidents did? Even though it is completely standard to fire the old US Attorneys when you enter office, I think that Klinton did it to cover up the murder of Vince Foster.
taoless
perhaps it’s time for congress to pull a couple of extraordinary renditions, followed by some enhanced interrogation techniques.
les
Jesus, after all these months, idiots like srv are still out there? Every president, including King George, replaces substantially all of the USA’s at the beginning of the term. No president until the boy king has replaced 8 or 9 six years in, to bolster politically driven prosecutions. Does the stupid never cease?
DougJ
But not every president perpetrates atrocities like Socksgate. Or has his wife kill her lovers as part of a sick lesbian torture ritual.
Tax Analyst
Yeah…poor, innocent Scooter Libby…all he did was mislead and lie to investigators trying to determine who outed an ACTIVE CIA Agent…I mean who’s harmed by that? – as opposed to, say, Big Bad Bill getting his horn-swaggled in Monica’s Oral Orifice. But hey, I understand Scooter was “Too busy” to keep track of all the important things he was doing to accurately separate things he actually knew and things he didn’t want anybody to know…or something like that…anyway, Paul Wolfowitz says he’s a good guy…doesn’t that count for something?
pacified
is DougJ trolling or just stupid? I can’t tell anymore.
Chad N. Freude
Libby on a technicality:
Tell me, srv, do you ereally believe that perjury and obstruction of justice are a technicality? Or is it that the runaway jury seized on a technicality to convict an innocent man of four felonies?
Punchy
WTF is socksgate?
Andrew
Yes, he totally, really, actually believes that.
Andrew
I think it was when socks sold yellowcake to Iraq and then ordered Hillary to kill Vince Foster.
Zifnab
Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about all the Vince Fosters that Hillary Clinton didn’t kill?
Tax Analyst
Wait! You mean it was Socks, the Clinton’s CAT that killed Vince Foster? Or did this “Socks” cat-aracter just ORDER the hit? Why aren’t the “DemoRats” investigating THIS? How many other “Vince Foster’s” did That Darned Cat have murdered?
Oh, and I got some of that “yellow-cake” stuff off the catering truck the other day…it was lousy…
demimondian
Absolutely, and, like I said, he’s absolutely right. What Libby did wasn’t illegal, because the president (or his agent, the vice-president) wanted him to do it as a part of the presidency.
Why is that so hard to understand?
srv
And before any of this testimony, we now know that Fitzie already knew who was responsible for the leak. But he spent all the time trying to trap another guy.
Just a big show.
srv
The Unitary Cat Theory.
srv
He didn’t out her. Fitzmas knew that.
Even if he had, much less harm than her husband, a serial liar, trying to undermine national policy for partisan gain.
Pb
I guess the cat’s out of the bag, so…
DougJ has been using socksgate as a generic Clinton scandal for years now, but I think it’s time to retire it, because…
Sadly, (un)reality caught up to him–the Freepers actually have a socksgate of their own, guess what it is…
Chad N. Freude
So it’s not a crime to lie under oath if the prosecutor knows a related fact? Or the prosecutor is after another person? Is the determination of perjury an artifact of some kind of moral relativism?
Jes’ askin’.
Chad N. Freude
I would say that the Bush administration and the Congressional Republicans know a lot about serial lying.
srv
It depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is. Give me all those resources and I can get a conviction on a tuna sandwich.
Chad N. Freude
Actually it depends on what the definition of “perjury” is.
What resources are you referring to? One of the resources in this case was a jury. Are you contending that the jury did not act properly? (BTW, the cliché you’re quoting refers to a ham sandwich.)
srv
I’d like to point out that I am the victim of an actual ad hominem attack, unlike the rest of you nitwits.
h/t reddit
Boy, the hours you must have spent looking up the ‘e’ there, to point out I wasn’t using the cliché, since I didn’t say ham. Back to your body waxing.
Jake
Don’t you mean Sucksgate?
tBone
While it’s impossible to be sure who actually committed all of these murders, I think it’s safe to assume that Socks had a
handpaw in many of them.The one thing we do know for certain is that all of those murders were carried out on the direct orders of a coked-up Bill Clinton. No one can dispute that.
Zifnab
Fitzgerald was going after Cheney and Rove for the leak. Libby lied to cover up, but got caught in his dishonesty. Fitzgerald can prove that Libby lied, but because Libby didn’t tell the truth, Fitzgerald can’t use Libby’s testimony against Karl and Dick.
So Libby is taking the fall for Cheney and Rove, because he threw himself under the bus to save his two conspirators.
When a mob underboss refuses to squell and gets thrown in jail for lieing to the police, do you say, “Well, you should have gone after the head mafio so his underling should get to walk once he’s done hamstringing the case”? When Scooter feels read to snitch, he can go free. That’s how you break up a mob racket.
Chad N. Freude
I use the US international keyboard which has a bunch of international characters including, oddly enough, é. But let’s not let ignorance of facts interfere with an opportunity to say something snarky that could be construed as an ad hominem attack.
Chad N. Freude
Previously,
And now, tonight’s episode of The Sopranos in the White House.
cleek
please note all the other people he talked to who didn’t lie to Fitzgerald and weren’t therefore convicted of four felonies.
RSA
Fitzgerald must be some prosecutor: simply by asking questions he traps Libby into lying to the grand jury. Damn his insistence on honest answers! I’m glad that other people, such as the police, never ask suspects questions for which they already know the answers.
demimondian
Really, it sounds more like a summary of a plot sequence for _The Young and the Restless_ or _Desperate Housewives_.
I mean, really, Chad — do you expect any of us to take that seriously?
Chad N. Freude
Well, yeah, the true story that the serial was inspired by.
But I was just caught by the announcer-synopsis style of Zifnab’s post, and this crowd certainly reminds me of the Sopranos: unquestioning loyalty, godfatherism, lying, killing (well, admittedly the Soprano mob kills directly, while the White House version arranges to have military personnel killed by others, but the parallel’s there).
srv
Yeah, it was all dishonesty when it was actually Richard Armitage (not a Cheney eunuch) who gave Novak the scoop. Who then called Rove and proferred that info. Yeah, then Libby threw himself under the bus to protect Rove who had confirmed something Novak already knew from Armitage.
Andrew
Oh, so now you’re working for Socks? What other tasty treats is he having you investigate?
Jon H
Well, it would be unstatesmanlike for Leahy to say, “Can you smell what I’m cookin’?”
DougJ
I can’t talk about Socksgate anymore? Fine, how about the Socks-for-food scandal that Clinton coordinated with Kofi Annan? Surely that was worse than anything that’s gone on in this administration.
Chad N. Freude
Hey, srv –
srv
I had a dream, and it was Chad at some French cafe. A group of American hating mimes were pecking away at his UN keyboard with their gay baquets.
Tulkinghorn
If Fitz knew about that specific leak, he was also learning about a whole series of leaks that appeared to be a conspiracy. Conspiracy is a crime too, and he never was able to complete the investigation because TO THIS DAY Libby has not testified truthfully about who planned, coordinated and conducted the conspiracy. Of course, Cheney’s own handwriting appears to condemn him, but Libby’s testimony is needed.
In this situation, where you find a mid-level perp lying like a rug in order to protect the big boss, you throw the perp in prison for as long as you can, or surrender to organized crime. Then again, we know how republicans are soft on crime, so there is little point in expecting you to respect the rule of law.
Tulkinghorn
It actually refers to indictment of a ham sandwich, not a conviction, whether of ham or any other lunchmeat. The phrase was coined by Sol Wachtler, a criminally inclined Republican judge, if you accept the claims he made in his prison memoir/apology “After the Madness”.
I actually like many of Wachtler’s decisions as a judge, but he started his career as a GOP machine pol, in a path that led to paranoia, narcissism, and a series of criminal misogynistic acts that were in startling contradiction to his greatest judicial accomplishments.
Dreggas
Poor Ol’ Gonzo just can’t help himself: more here