House Democrats Pass Contempt Citations

Photo from HuffingtonPost.com

I'll be the first to admit that none of this is going fast enough for me. I have the sickening feeling that the Bush Administration will be able to run out the clock, retire from office, and then be quietly forgotten. Democrats, and increasingly the rest of America are suffering from "Bush Fatigue," a phrase that I've even seen pop up on Free Republic.

To my way of thinking, the transgressions made by this administration are so grave, they should not be ignored. When I think of the nonsense levelled at Bill Clinton for eight years (and remember, I've never been much of a Clinton cheerleader), I grow more and more incensed that actual wrongdoing is not receiving adequate attention. And people that picked at every little thing Clinton allegedly did wrong, are now more than happy to use his actions as a defense for anything Bush does.

So, I am heartened by the following story, but hurry the hell up, already! And when, oh when, are you going after Karl Rove?

[Excerpt]

(07-25) 14:17 PDT WASHINGTON (AP)

The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 party-line vote — which would sanction the pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors — advanced the citation to the full House.

A senior Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the House itself likely would take up the citations after Congress' August recess. The official declined to speak on the record because no date had been set for the House vote.

Committee Chairman John Conyers said the panel had nothing to lose by advancing the citations because it could not allow presidential aides to flout Congress' authority. Republicans warned that a contempt citation would lose in federal court even if it got that far.

And the White House accused the Democrats of engaging in political theater.

"Now we have a situation where there is an attempt to do something that's never been done in American history, which is to assail the concept of executive privilege which hails back to the administration of George Washington and in particular to use criminal contempt charges against the White House chief of staff and the White House legal counsel," said White House Spokesman Tony Snow.

There's more at: SFGate.com.