You couldn't have missed the top recommended diary by Rep. Robert Wexler's (D-FL) campaign on the suggestion that the House hold Karl Rove in inherent contempt for his refusal to testify under oath and in open session in the Don Siegelman matter.
But if you did, I'll just tell you that Wexler's quite right when he says:
[T]he reality is that Congress has few options left against an Administration that totally refuses to submit to any type of reasonable Congressional oversight. Congress has both the right and obligation to investigate these matters. Never before has an Executive so upset the checks and balances inherent in our Constitution. If we back off or delay, we effectively forfeit the power of Congress to investigate the Executive branch.
In fact, the only other option -- minus doing nothing and hoping no one notices or draws any historical lessons from it -- is impeachment. And we know where that's at.
That's not just flaming liberal rhetoric, either. It is what it is. The way Congress normally compels testimony is through the subpoena power. When someone refuses to comply with a subpoena, they're prosecuted for contempt of Congress. But the mechanics of the prosecution fall to the U.S. Attorney's office. So what do you do if you're subpoenaing people in an investigation of how the White House gave direct political marching orders for selective prosecutions to the U.S. Attorneys, and your witnesses from the White House aren't showing up, and they're not being prosecuted either, because the U.S. Attorneys are being ordered -- essentially by the witesses themselves -- not to press the cases?
The issue crystallizes itself perfectly in this case. But it's not limited to this case by any means. The Bush "administration" knows very well what tools are available to Congress, and how willing or unwilling it is to use them, and it plots its strategy for dealing with oversight accordingly. The "administration" clearly signaled its understanding of these dynamics as early as January 2006, when its mine safety officials walked out of a hearing on the Sago disaster when they felt the questioning became inconvenient.
By June of 2007, "administration" officials had figured out that even if they couldn't walk out, they could effectively skip the hearings by just claiming not to recall anything they were asked about.
And by July of that year, the "administration" had progressed to simply refusing to show up to respond to subpoenas at all.
So it should come as no surprise, then, that "administration" officials from other departments have taken advantage of the "I don't recall" loophole, and/or the "I don't give a shit because I know you're too afraid to do anything about it" loophole, as Karl Rove has done.
Nor should it surprise you that "you're still, still, still not getting your oversight," nor that having a Member of Congress come to Daily Kos to tell you that the bottom line is just what Daily Kos readers have known it is for over two years is still, still, still like getting the paper early.
Too bad being right isn't, by itself, worth squat.
But at least we know there's someone in Congress who knows the score, and isn't afraid to say it. Kudos to Rep. Wexler for that.