geauxtohell
Choose your weapon.
This article:
Why contempt case against Holder may be doomed - CNN.com
Does a good job of laying out the situation and what most is most likely to happen. I am sure this will devolve into a food fight, but it's hard to argue with the facts laid out in the above opinion piece:
Why contempt case against Holder may be doomed - CNN.com
Does a good job of laying out the situation and what most is most likely to happen. I am sure this will devolve into a food fight, but it's hard to argue with the facts laid out in the above opinion piece:
Unfortunately for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, its legal position is uncertain at best, and almost all political considerations would seem to favor the White House.
The form of executive privilege at stake in the current dispute is "deliberative privilege."
Deliberative privilege aims to protect documents generated anywhere in the executive branch that embody only the executive's internal deliberations, not final policy decisions.
A key problem now for the House Oversight Committee is thus far it has yet to state in a very concrete way why it needs the particular documents it is demanding.
In contrast, the executive branch has articulated a strong and highly specific reason for withholding the documents at issue: Forced disclosure to Congress of internal deliberations concerning how best to interact with Congress would undermine the executive's capacity to function as a co-equal branch. It would undermine the prospects for future candid deliberations about interactions with the other institutions of government.
The House could ask the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to prosecute Holder for contempt, but the Justice Department long ago took the position -- in a very careful opinion written by then Assistant Attorney General Theodore Olson -- that the department is not required by law to prosecute executive officials for contempt when the ground for subpoena noncompliance is a claim of executive privilege.
So that would leave the House with the one remaining legal option of launching an impeachment investigation, which brings us to the political side of things.
It also must be said that Issa's past attacks on the administration amply feed a narrative that his subpoena is about politics, not principle.
Having months ago called Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times" -- in the face of such modern historical escapades as Watergate, Iran-Contra or the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- the chairman is not well-situated to play a Sam Ervin-like role, policing the presidency more in sadness than in angry partisanship.