On snits

OK, yesterday I had a little one of my own, regarding the Congress — so I offer a quasi-apology, since I like to encourage where I can, for their abrupt stiffening of spine yesterday. The House is the people’s portion of government, as opposed to the Senate which is more a corporate presence — and as the people are yelping, the House is attempting to stand up [with rare success ... even more reason to encourage them.]

But yesterday, they managed a real coup — they pulled the e-brake on the FISA vote, for awhile anyhow — Jane Hamshire entitled her post “Flipping Bush the FISA Bird: Happy Valentine’s Day” and her tag line was right on target: “Damn satisfying. I don’t even smoke and I think I need a cigarette.”

Your representatives still need encouragement — you’ll find a petition to sign in the last piece here. I just wrote mine, going through the Leahy link, my comments directed in particular to my Senator, newly elected Blue Dog Claire McCaskill who failed to live up to her responsibility on this:

I am particularly alarmed at the Senate vote on immunity. The 2006 change of leadership was a clear signal that fear-mongering was a thing past and accountability was premium. What happened? If this had been split along party lines I would have understood it — it wasn’t.

If a bank president asked you to rob a bank and told you not to worry, he’d look the other way, would you? The question of immunity is a moral one — and breaking the law, then insisting that others break it with you, does NOT make it right.

This is a Constitutional challenge and I urge you to uphold your oath.

Then, as a cherry on our Valentines cake, the House FINALLY [months and months and MONTHS late] held Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers in contempt for their refusal to testify on the 8 Gate scandal [remember that one? Lawyers bleeding everywhere? Karl Rove sniggering like a loon?] The reads today cover this topic.

The Republicans were so outraged, they stormed out of the place. Snit, snit, tantrum, snit! After 7.3 [according to my pal, Mark Morford] years of shoving the Dems around, the Pubs can’t take a little pushback? Get used to this sulky, whiny stuff, dearhearts — we’re going to hear a lot of it in the coming years [God/dess willing!]

Froomkin’s got the freshest reads on this, out just a few minutes ago — so I’ve posted that link; too big to include it all. And DO open the link to the first piece to see the picture/run the video of the Pubs gathered in protest on the steps — and ask yourself … did all the Pub women get the ‘red memo?’

Maybe it was a Valentines thing? Which reminds me, I forgot to send you YOURS — here ’tis.

Have a good, restful weekend — don’t watch any TV or scan the headlines; read a novel, try a new recipe, sleep in late, whatever. [If you live in Colorado, build a snowman!] Give your brain a break as Mercury stutters in space and prepares to go direct — next week will be soon enough for “more.”

Jude

The House Strikes Back
Dan Froomkin, WaPo
Friday, February 15, 2008; 2:02 PM

After years of going belly-up before President Bush, particularly on matters of national security, Democrats in one chamber of Congress yesterday apparently decided they’d had about enough.

Defiantly rejecting what they called Bush’s fear mongering, House Democrats refused to vote on a broad surveillance law their Senate colleagues had sent them the day before.

And, for good measure, they voted to hold Bush’s chief of staff and former counsel in contempt. [...]

West Wing Aides Cited for Contempt
Refusal to Testify Prompts House Action
Paul Kane, Washington Post
Friday, February 15, 2008

[open link for video]

The House yesterday escalated a constitutional showdown with President Bush, approving the first-ever contempt of Congress citations against West Wing aides and reigniting last year’s battle over the scope of executive privilege.

On a 223 to 32 vote, the House approved contempt citations against White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers over their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the mass firings of U.S. attorneys and allegations that administration officials sought to politicize the Justice Department.

The vote came after a morning of tense partisan bickering over parliamentary rules, including a GOP call for a vote on a motion to close the chamber that briefly forced lawmakers to leave a memorial service for Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who died this week. The conflict was capped later in the day when most House Republicans walked off the floor and refused to cast a final vote. They accused Democrats of forcing a partisan vote on the contempt citations instead of approving a surveillance bill supported by Bush.

Democrats said they were left with no choice but to engage in a legal showdown with Bush because he has refused for nearly a year to allow any current or former West Wing staff member to testify in the inquiry. Citing executive privilege, the president has offered their testimony on the condition that it is taken without transcripts and not under oath.

“This is beyond arrogance. This is hubris taken to the ultimate degree,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the closing moments of the debate.

The administration immediately condemned the House action, noting that no White House official has ever been cited for contempt. “This action is unprecedented, and it is outrageous. It is also an incredible waste of time — time the House should spend doing the American people’s legislative business,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

Until now, the most recent Cabinet-level officials cited for contempt were two administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency, in 1982 and 1983, over their refusal to cooperate in House oversight investigations.

The contempt resolution against Bolten cites his refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents and e-mails sought by the House Judiciary Committee in its now year-long investigation into the dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. Miers is cited for refusing to testify after she was subpoenaed to appear before the panel last summer.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved contempt citations for Bolten and former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, who also refused to appear before that panel. The full Senate has not acted on the matter.

The furor over the fired prosecutors began in January 2007 when congressional Democrats learned that seven U.S. attorneys had been fired on the same day, Dec. 7, 2006. Most senior staff members of the Justice Department resigned as the congressional investigations unfolded, and former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who resigned in late August, is the subject of an internal investigation into whether he tampered with a likely witness.

Democrats said their votes were meant to compel more information from a White House that has blocked their efforts to complete their investigation. “Absent this resolution, the Congress has yielded to the executive the principle of whether they participate in oversight,” said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

By law, the contempt citations go to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey A. Taylor, but the White House and the Justice Department have said that no executive branch employee will face a grand jury inquiry.

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey has told Congress that current and former White House officials who have refused to testify in a congressional inquiry probably did so based on the Justice Department’s ruling that Bush’s assertion of executive privilege was proper. That means that the Justice Department cannot now criminally charge someone for defying Congress based on its own previous legal advice, he said.

Yesterday, an aide to Mukasey, who is traveling overseas, said the attorney general will review the situation but is likely to stand by that position.

House Democrats had looked ahead. They included in yesterday’s resolution a second provision that allows the House general counsel to file a civil lawsuit in federal courts to compel Bolten’s and Miers’s testimony.

Democrats hope that this strategy will let them push the matter into federal courts, where they think they have a chance of at least establishing a legal precedent on executive privilege.

“I think we still have to establish what the law is,” said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who has helped lobby rural and moderate Democrats for five months to support the contempt motions.

Republicans said the House Judiciary Committee should accept the White House’s offer of limited testimony to learn as much as they can before Bush leaves office next year. “I don’t think throwing the president’s chief of staff in jail is going to do the trick,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.).

Many Republicans accused the Democrats of avoiding the more important business on an expiring surveillance law. “It’s security for America versus partisan politics,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.).

Ultimately, most Republicans stormed off the floor and refused to vote on the contempt citations. Only three Republicans — Reps. Walter B. Jones (N.C.), Wayne T. Gilchrest (Md.) and Ron Paul (Tex.) — supported the contempt citations. ++

An Accountability Moment That Must Not End
John Nichols, The Nation via CommonDreams
Friday, February 15, 2008

There have been far too few accountability moments since Democrats retook control of the U.S. House and Senate in January, 2007.

But one came Thursday, when the House voted 223-32 to hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas to testify before Congress in relation to the firing of nine United States Attorneys in 2006.

A pair of resolutions — one that directs the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C. to bring criminal contempt charges against Bolten and Miers to a grand jury and another that authorizes the House general counsel to bring a civil suit against the White House to settle the question of whether the testimony of Bolten and Miers should be covered by executive privilege — received the backing of 220 Democrats and three anti-war Republicans (Ron Paul, the renegade presidential candidate from Texas; Wayne Gilchrest, who lost his seat in a Maryland primary Tuesday; and Walter Jones of North Carolina).

The move was opposed by 31 Republicans and one Democrat (Texan Henry Cuellar, who backed Bush for reelection in 2004 and this year backs Hillary Clinton.) At the behest of House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, 163 Republicans were recorded as “not voting.” Ten Democrats did the same.

Thursday’s House decision was historic, not just for its specific response to the lawlessness of two prominent members of the Bush-Cheney administration but for its broader message. With this action, Congress is beginning to reassert itself as a separate and equal branch of the federal government.

If the imperial presidency is to be ended, however, it will take more than an accountability moment.

The House Judiciary Committee and the House as a whole - which delayed the contempt vote for far too many months because of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s misguided caution about confronting the administration - must now aggressively pursue Miers and Bolten.

As American Freedom Campaign campaigns director Steve Fox correctly notes, “In order for our system of checks and balances to be effective, Congress must have oversight over the executive branch. When Bolten and Miers - with the encouragement of the President - refused to comply with the congressional subpoenas last summer, they were tacitly saying that this oversight power no longer existed. If they are not held in contempt — and prosecuted in the courts — our Constitution will have been defiled.”

But nothing that is wrong with the Bush-Cheney administration or the federal government began with Miers and Bolten. And no fix will be complete if it stops with them.

The Judiciary Committee must hold to account the president and vice president who encouraged Miers and Bolten to disregard the rule of law.

Miers and Bolten refused to testify not as individuals but as members of an administration that has assaulted the constitutionally-defined system of checks and balances at every turn. They acted always, and in every way, at the behest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

It is important to hold the former counsel and the current chief of staff to account. Certainly, as People For the American Way Director of Public Policy Tanya Clay House says, “Congress has a responsibility to enforce its congressional powers, and moving forward with contempt citations is the appropriate response to this administration’s stonewalling and arrogance.”

But this “appropriate response” must not be seen as an end in itself.

For there to be accountability, more than a moment is required. And more than Miers and Bolten must be held to account for the high crimes and misdemeanors of an administration that has treated the Constitution and the Congress as afterthoughts.

“Members of the Bush administration have spent the last seven years pretending that the law doesn’t apply to them,” says House, who musters proper passion to add, “Congress has a responsibility to enforce its congressional powers, and moving forward with contempt citations is the appropriate response to this administration’s stonewalling and arrogance.” ++

And Then, John Boehner Said…
Christy Hardin Smith, FireDogLake
Thursday February 14, 2008

Enough with the fearmongering and the malarky, GOP. You walked out on your job because you lost a vote? My four year old knows how to throw a more effective tantrum…pathetic.

Nancy Pelosi was absolutely right today (YouTube): “President Bush tells the American people he has nothing to offer but fear.”

Sign the petition to tell the House to uphold the rule of law and vote against telecom immunity.

Oh, and GOP? More spine, less whine.

PS — What a crasshole showing of disrespect for former Rep. Tom Lantos today. Truly shameful behavior today all around, House Republicans. For shame. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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