In 1934, Postmaster General MacCracken was held in contempt of the Senate and served a 10-day jail sentence. He proceeded to file a habeas corpus petition, asking to be released on the grounds that Congress didn't have the authority to imprison someone for contempt outside of a normal criminal proceeding. In a landmark decision that has all kinds of applications to today's political environment, the Supreme Court disagreed, setting the stage for today's House of Representatives to imprison people like Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten for contempt of Congress with or without the cooperation of President Bush and the Department of Justice.
The Supreme Court decision, JURNEY v. MACCRACKEN, 294 U.S. 125 (1935), in painful legalese, explains in no uncertain terms that not only does Congress have the authority to imprison someone to persuade them to comply, but they can also imprison someone for failing to comply after the fact when compliance is now impossible:
Here, we are concerned, not with an extension of congressional privilege, but with vindication of the established and essential privilege of requiring the production of evidence. For this purpose, the power to punish for a past contempt is an appropriate means.
Fast forward to the current political landscape, and we see a number of Congressional subpoenas being issued and ignored by appointees of the Bush administration. Take Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, as an example. The House has already found them in Contempt of Congress for failing to appear. The Justice Department has declined to enforce the citation. The House Judiciary Committee has filed suit to try and get backup from the courts.
What a very few people seem to be asking is why the House doesn't enforce the contempt citation themselves. Of course, doing so would drop the case right before the courts yet again, but with an entirely different frame. Right now, Congress is going with hat in hand asking a judge to please enforce the law for them. What they could be doing is putting the guilty parties in jail, then let the Administration approach the courts with a writ of habeas corpus asking to have them released. Most importantly, in this new possible scenario, Congress has a very strong case law precedent on their side. And maybe, just maybe, putting someone in jail would make it clear to Karl Rove that he can't just delete all of his email and ignore Congress without consequence.
Or I suppose the House could just go through the motions and hope that the next President will fix everything for them. It's certainly easier that way than taking the risk of real leadership.