I'm actually getting more than a little sick and tired of being right about this, not that it's at all difficult to predict. I guess what I'm really sick and tired of is people pretending it's a surprise when it happens:
Rove: Courts will have to decide his subpoena
By Hope Yen, Associated Press Writer | May 25, 2008
WASHINGTON --President Bush's former chief political adviser denied meddling in the Justice Department's prosecution of Alabama's ex-governor and said Sunday the courts will have to resolve a congressional subpoena for his testimony.
"Congress, the House Judiciary Committee, wants to be able to call presidential aides on its whim up to testify," Karl Rove said. "It's going to be tied up in court and settled in court."
What a shocker. The House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, and they don't show. Then they vote to hold the two of them in contempt of Congress, and the U.S. Attorney -- whose job it is to prosecute statutory contempt of Congress referrals -- refuses to prosecute. So the Congress is reduced to having to beg the federal courts to enforce their subpoenas. Starting with begging this from a former Whitewater prosecutor with, well, a rather startling record of sustaining Bush "administration" positions.
Yes, the same subpoenas that were touted as the most important reason for winning back the majority in Congress.
Gosh, I wish someone would have pointed out what the limitations of the subpoena power actually were, so that we could have seen the danger of overpromising on it.
Sigh.
Anyway, there's one more observation worth making here. I know the AP is just covering this for the sake of covering it, and we've all long since given up on beat reporters adding any analysis to the event coverage they're assigned, but this part jumped out at me as relatively wanting of background:
Rove also said his lawyers had offered alternative ways to provide the House committee information short of sworn testimony, but that lawmakers had refused. For example, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said Rove could discuss the case on the condition that his comments not be under oath and not be transcribed.
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and several other lawmakers, however, have said such an interview "will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record."
And so the value of the "subpoena power" is finally reduced by the vestigial media to just another "he said, she said" story.
An AP reporter is told that Rove insists that testifying on the record and under oath before a Congressional investigative committee is, well, you know, just really pretty much the same thing as, well, you know, just really pretty much its exact opposite.
And she has to go to the Judiciary committee for a reaction on that.
Hoo boy.
Worse, what's the reaction she gets? Well, that kind of testimony -- if it really can be considered testimony at all -- "will not permit us to obtain a straightforward and clear record."
Uh, yeah. We get that. I mean, the statement is true and correct, but it lacks a certain something.
Like maybe, "Duh. What Rove suggests is not testifying before Congress. It is its exact opposite. You don't need us to 'clarify' this for you, Hope. It's in the f*$#ing dictionary."