Bush Won’t Enforce Contempt of Congress
The Bush Administration announced yesterday it will ignore demands from Congress to issue contempt indictments for officials the president has ordered not to testify. Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein report on the front page of today's WaPo: Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 20, 2007 11:41
Sandra Day O’Connor’s Legacy Quickly Undone
Dahlia Lithwick laments the speed at which Sandra Day O'Connor's legacy on the Supreme Court has been undone. During the final weeks of the Supreme Court term, it was hard not to be struck by one recurring theme: Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor—a few short years ago the "most powerful woman in America," a "majority of one," the "most powerful person ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on July 10, 2007 08:04
Bush Snubs Congressional Subpoenae
President Bush is refusing to honor a congressional subpoena of documents for former White House staffers. President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors. Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on June 28, 2007 11:26
Monica Goodling, Politics, and Adult Supervision
Steven Taylor has two posts (here and here) on the revelations from yesterday's testimony by former DoJ official Monica Goodling. Aside from the obvious points about how it would be nice to have the people in charge of enforcing federal laws actually obey those laws, he makes a point many seem to miss: I remember during the Clinton administration an ongoing ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on May 24, 2007 13:22
McNulty Ignored White House Guidance
ABC News: The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The official, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, ignored White House Counsel Harriet Miers and senior lawyers in the Justice Department when he ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 27, 2007 07:34
Rove to Talk to Congress, But Not Testify Under Oath
The White House has offered a compromise in the ongoing U.S. Attorney firing brouhaha, agreeing to let Congress interview Karl Rove and Harriet Miers without any formal testimony. The White House move was announced after the Senate voted overwhelmingly to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies. That had come as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 20, 2007 15:43
U.S. Attorney Firings: The Plot Thickens
WaPo's Dan Eggen reports suspicious circumstances in the firing of former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam: The U.S. attorney in San Diego notified the Justice Department of search warrants in a Republican bribery scandal last May 10, one day before the attorney general's chief of staff warned the White House of a "real problem" with her, a Democratic senator said yesterday. The ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 19, 2007 08:19
U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal
For whatever reason, I've had trouble mustering an interest in the brouhaha over Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez' firing of some U.S. attorneys for "political reasons." It's been the topic of much discussion in the blogosphere and the halls of Congress but just hasn't inspired me to write anything. Front page stories in today's NYT and WaPo, which have inspired another ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on March 13, 2007 09:14
Harriet Miers Resigns As White House Counsel
Harriet Miers has submitted her resignation as White House counsel, effective the 31st. This is noteworthy only because she was inexplicably nominated for the Supreme Court a while back, but noteworthy nonetheless. UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham notes that the inevitably silliness of speculation about what this signals has commenced. She observes, "I have a friend who went to work ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on January 4, 2007 14:13
Words Mean Things . . . Or Do They?
Andrew Olmsted has an interesting discussion about blogospheric debates wherein both sides talk past one another because they use key terms differently. He is not at all optimistic about this problem: Even if we were to agree to settle definitions prior to moving on to the question at hand, I doubt we could agree on our definitions any more than ...Posted in Outside The Beltway | OTB on January 3, 2007 15:21
