Mukasey Lets Bolten and Miers Off the Hook

Posted by GottaLaff , Cliff Schecter's Blog at 7:09 AM on March 1, 2008.

We expected nothing less from the guy who can't figure out if waterboarding is torture or just a minor annoyance... unless it's done to him:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

So can I refuse subpoenas too? Not that I've ever been subpoenaed, or would be, should be, could be, shall be, or expect to be subpoenaed...

As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court.

"The House shall do so promptly," she said in a statement. [...] "The American people demand that we uphold the law," Pelosi said. "As public officials, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect our system of checks and balances and our civil lawsuit seeks to do just that."

I didn't realize we still had a system of checks and balances. On the other hand, I know we have a system of checks... and they all go out to Big Oil and Enormous Pharma. And last time I looked, I noticed that we do have a system of imbalances. And a White House full of the unbalanced.

Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

And then there's the political angle, and what an angle it is!

The suit had a political purpose too. Democrats have urged that the filing occur swiftly so that a judge might rule before the November elections, when all 435 House seats and a third of the Senate are up for grabs. Criticism of Bush's use of executive power is a key tenet of the Democrats' platform, from the presidential race on down. [...]

Can you figure out who's on the right side of this one? And by "right", I mean logical, correct, ethically/morally/legally sound, not "right" as in Republican:

Democrats say Bush's instructions to Miers and Bolten to ignore the House Judiciary Committee's subpoenas was an abuse of power and an effort to block an effort to find out whether the White House directed the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 for political reasons.

Republicans call the whole affair a political game and walked out of the House vote on the contempt citations in protest.

Oh yeah? Well, I protest the Right's contempt for contempt citations. And I'm right... as in Democrat.

Tagged as: pelosi, miers, bolten, bush administration, mukasey

GottaLaff is a regular blogger for Cliff Schecter's Blog