We all remember that the House just recently voted, at long last, to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for ignoring their subpoenas to appear before the House Judiciary Committee in the matter of the US Attorneys purge.
That was two weeks ago.
Now the countdown begins on how long the House waits to take action before it becomes convinced that the Bush "administration" really, really meant it when they said they weren't going to let the U.S. Attorney prosecute those charges.
What action is the House contemplating? Built into the self-executing rule by which the House adopted its contempt citations was an authorization for the House Judiciary Committee to file a civil suit in federal court to seek declaratory judgments affirming the duty of Miers and Bolten to comply with their subpoenas.
And when might we see it?
Conyers said that he will not immediately seek to begin civil contempt proceedings but will instead make one final offer to Fielding next month. If that offer is rebuffed, Conyers said he would then initiate legal actions.
Next month. Tomorrow's the last day of this month.
But what does that mean, exactly? The clock starts on a 31 day period during which Conyers will... make one final offer to the White House?
Hrmmm.
Well, we knew that was the situation. So now the question is, when (and how, exactly) will Conyers know his offer has been rebuffed? When Fielding sends a letter back rebuffing it? How long will Conyers wait for that letter? (Deadlines have been known to slide before, when the road ahead is uncertain.) What if Fielding simply never answers?
All of this and more is still up in the air. But even with the House taking steps forward in this process, there's more the Congress as a whole needs to do to stand up for its prerogatives.
The Senate is still sitting on its Judiciary Committee's recommendations that both Bolten and Karl Rove be held in contempt of Congress. That recommendation has been pending since December 14th, the subpoena having been issued (and ignored) in July of last year.
Earlier this week, of course, we learned from 60 Minutes that Rove sits squarely at the center of what appears to be a plot targeting Don Siegelman, a plot alleged to have been executed through the overly-politicized control by the White House of the Justice Department's network of U.S. Attorneys -- the very question over which Rove was subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. And though the House has taken some action in voting for contempt against Bolten and Harriet Miers in this same investigation, it will -- amazingly enough -- be up to the very same overly-politicized U.S. Attorneys to decide whether or not to prosecute the same White House that over-politicized them.
You couldn't ask for an issue to crystallize itself more clearly. You couldn't serve it up on a silver platter of conflict of interest any better.
And yet, the Congress waits. The House, to see for how long it can stand to wait for the White House's "answer" to its "last chance" offer (believe it or not). The Senate, to even vote on whether or not it has a real problem being ignored.
Will this all just go away one day soon, if we elect a Democratic president?
Possibly. Temporarily.
A Democratic administration intervened between Nixon-Ford and Reagan-Bush. And of course, another intervened between Reagan-Bush and Bush-Cheney.
But yet all three Republican administrations over the past 40 years -- Nixon/Ford, Reagan-Bush and Bush-Cheney -- have made it a practice to mount escalating frontal assaults on Congressional subpoena power.
Clearly, the problem hasn't gone away. And in fact, it's been the Democratic Congresses which have most often been in retreat. Nixon was hit with an article of impeachment for his defiance. The defiance of Reagan EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch (directed by Fred Fielding, today White House counsel again under George W. Bush) made it as far as federal district court. But the defiance Bush officials Rove, Bolten and Miers still has Congress sweating and grabbing at their collars.
The problem doesn't go away. It gets worse. And indeed, it seems the Congressional response is what diminishes with the passage of time, not the offense itself.
The White House has, at the moment, thrown itself wholly into its fight for telecom company immunity, even pulling out their favorite trump card -- the dual threats of terrorism and of blaming that terrorism on Democrats -- to try to leverage an advantage. To date, it has not worked. The PAA expired, the sky did not fall, and we may be seeing the first, long-awaited indications that the terrorizing effects of invoking the specter of terrorism are finally fading. To fail to test that advantage now would be a tragedy. But declining to pass legislation demanded by the president is not by itself an assertion of an affirmative Congressional power. It is a passive demonstration of resistance, even if a welcome one.
An affirmative push to regain their footing might well contribute to the wide-ranging fight Congress needs to have with the executive if it's to survive intact. A push on contempt -- that is, an affirmative effort to push the executive back onto its square -- serves the Congress well in its own right, but may also provide some flanking coverage in the FISA fight as an ancillary benefit.
Either way, the clock is ticking.