What a surprise?
Today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey "rejected referring the House’s contempt citations against two of President Bush’s top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime." Mukasey claimed that White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers "were right" to ignore Congress’s subpoenas in the U.S. attorney scandal.
Yet again, the nations top law enforcement official refuses to enforce the law. Rather than requiring that Bolten and Miers answer questions about how nearly a dozen U.S. Attorney's ended up in the unemployment line without a valid reason - while their positions were filled with political hacks like the one that prosecuted Don Sieglman - Mukasey has decided to pass.
But the story isn't over - not hardly.
Speaker Pelosi Responds.
"By ordering the U.S. Attorney to take no action in response to congressional subpoenas, the Bush Administration is continuing to politicize law enforcement, which undermines public confidence in our criminal justice system.
"Anticipating this response from the Administration, the House has already provided authority for the Judiciary Committee to file a civil enforcement action in federal district court and the House shall do so promptly. The American people demand that we uphold the law. As public officials, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect our system of checks and balances and our civil lawsuit seeks to do just that."
What does this mean? Many of us hope that it just might mean Inherent Contempt is on the way, and that could become a very serious situation - but I somehow doubt it.
Here's what Judiciary Chair John Conyers has to say.
"Our investigation into the firing of United States Attorneys revealed an Administration and a Justice Department that seemed to put politics first, and today’s decision to shelve the contempt process, in violation of a federal statute, shows that the White House will go to any lengths to keep its role in the US Attorney firings hidden. In the face of such extraordinary actions, we have no choice but to proceed with a lawsuit to enforce the Committee’s subpoenas."
A lawsuit?
Hmm... that's not zesty. How long could that take? The judiciary committee will now conduct a vote on referring this case directly to a judge in the district, and have the judge enforce rule on the enforcement of the subpoenas and overrule Mukasey? This naturally will be appealed. And then appealed again, eventually causing a Supreme Court decision on this issue. Meanwhile the Bush Administration slips closer and closer to the exit door.
Now although a Supreme Court ruling would be definitive on the use and application of Executive Immunity, and that would be a good thing - it wouldn't really be satisfying.
Not as much as making Bolten answer questions by Waterboarding Him would be.
The only real only silver lining to all this is the fact that this investigation doesn't have end when the Bush Administration does. It can go on... and on. If as many suspect these firings were all part of an attempt to protect corrupt Republicans in office and use our Justice Department as a partisan attack vehicle against Democrats in elections - like the Vote Caging, Phone Jamming and other schemes - the fact that Miers, Bolten, Gonzales, Goodling and Griffin may all be out of power is no protection - they still aren't beyond the power of the law.
Not yet.
Vyan