Kagro X (here) and BarbinMD (here) of The Daily Kos are all over Bushco's middle-digit-raised-on-high at Congress's subpoena for documents related to the firings in the U.S. Attorneys scandal.To me (and I'm hardly a lawyer or a constitutional scholar), this sounds like contempt of Congress.
As noted here in this Wikipedia article, this represents a slippery legal slope upon which courts have generally been reluctant to rule. All the same, this is the procedure (as noted in the article)...
Following a contempt citation, the presiding officer of the chamber is instructed to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia[1]; according to the law it is the "duty" of the U.S. Attorney to refer the matter to a grand jury for action.Also noted in the article is the fact that, of those cited, many have managed to settle in advance of the filing of a contempt charge (though with Bushco, I'll admit that anything is possible).
The criminal offense of "contempt of Congress" sets the penalty at not less than one month nor more than twelve months in jail and a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $1,000. Those penalties are enforced upon conviction, even if the Congress which initiated the contempt citation has expired.
The statutory procedure has generally been used by Congress since 1935. While the law pronounces the "duty" of the U.S. Attorney is to impanel a grand jury for its action on the matter, dispute exists over whether the Congress can properly compel the U.S. Attorney to take this action, as the U.S. Attorney is a member of the Executive Branch who ultimately reports to the President. (The Courts have been reluctant to decide this question, claiming it is a "political question" for resolution by the elected branches of government.)
And the perfect time to strike on this is now, especially with President Nutball all wobbly over his loss (h/t Atrios) on the immigration bill; amazingly to me, I thought he showed some halfway decent judgment on it, but the wingnut "base" sunk it and handed a nice political weapon to the Dems - thanks ever so much.
2 comments:
Too little too late... how does impeaching Bush and/or Cheney bring back the dead, the economy, the whole human tragedy of suffering the world has endured these last 7 years? Even the far right Republicans are abaondoning them(or they won't get reelected.) Let him finish so we can pass/reinforce laws to protect seperation of power, seperation of church and state -- basically all the parts of the constituion that suddenly don't apply to this government. Maybe it's time to amend the constitution to prevent a modern version of the dictatorship or monarchy or whatever distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government we now have in Washington from doing this to us and the rest of the world again.
I meant to say something earlier - sorry I wasn't more prompt about this.
Yes, the bastards responsible for our corpo-cratic form of government now should have been either voted out of office or removed by legitimate means long ago (discounting The Supremes, of course - we can't do anything about the "gang of five" now; nothing in good conscience anyway), but we just can't sit back and "let him finish." That may happen, but not without all the resistance we can muster.
We are in this mess partly because of the precedents set by the congressional Repugs in the '90s when Clinton was president, and we have to adapt their tactics as best we can while trying to persuade and keep our arguments grounded in reality as much as possible. They were relentless in fighting Clinton, and we owe Dubya nothing less than the same treatment (worse, actually).
And I don't think we need to do anything to the Constitution. The framers gave us the means to rule ourselves if more of us would only wake up and follow their lead. We are also in this mess because of voters afflicted in years past with invincible, pig-headed ignorance, though Dems running campaigns that misunderstood the core issues didn't help either (see Kerry, John - every time he ran on homeland security he did well, but then he'd revert to '90s campaign themes and go in the tank).
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