The AP wrote:
Rove ignores subpoena, refuses to testify
By BEN EVANS – 3 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena and refused to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he influenced the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama.
Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of a House subcommittee, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove was breaking the law by refusing to cooperate — perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt of Congress.
Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he played a role in prosecutors' decisions to pursue cases against Democrats, such as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, or in firing federal prosecutors considered disloyal to the Bush administration.
Rove had been scheduled to appear at the House Judiciary subcommittee hearing Thursday morning. A placard with his name sat in front of an empty chair at the witness table, with a handful of protesters behind it calling for Rove to be arrested.
A decision on whether to pursue contempt charges now goes to the full Judiciary Committee and ultimately to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
House Republicans called Thursday's proceedings a political stunt and said if Democrats truly wanted information they would take Rove up on an offer he made to discuss the matter informally.
The House already has voted to hold two of President Bush's confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with its inquiry into whether the administration fired nine federal prosecutors in 2006 for political reasons.
The case, involving White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, is in federal court and may not be resolved before Bush's term ends in January.
The White House has cited executive privilege, arguing that internal administration communications are confidential and that Congress cannot compel officials to testify.
Rove says he is bound to follow the White House's guidance, although he has offered to answer questions specifically on the Siegelman case — but only with no transcript taken and not under oath.
Democrats have rejected the offer because the testimony would not be sworn and, they say, could create a confusing record.
Rove has insisted publicly that he never tried to influence Justice Department decisions and was not even aware of the Siegelman prosecution until it landed in the news.
Siegelman — an unusually successful Democrat in a heavily Republican state — was charged with accepting and concealing a contribution to his campaign to start a state education lottery, in exchange for appointing a hospital executive to a regulatory board.
He was sentenced last year to more than seven years in prison but was released in March when a federal appeals court ruled Siegelman had raised "substantial questions of fact and law" in his appeal.
Siegelman and others have alleged the prosecution was pushed by GOP operatives — including Rove, a longtime Texas strategist who was heavily involved in Alabama politics before working at the White House. A former Republican campaign volunteer from Alabama told congressional attorneys last year that she overheard conversations suggesting that Rove pressed Justice officials in Washington to prosecute Siegelman.
The career prosecutors who handled Siegelman's case have insisted that Rove had nothing to do with it, emphasizing that the former governor was convicted by a jury.
The really depressing thing is, even if the political will to actually bring Rove up on charges manifests itself, Bush can still -as I understand it- pardon him before he leaves office.
I dunno about that, you can't pardon someone until they're convicted, and trials these days can take so very long...
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What the House should do is send the Sergeant-At-Arms out to arrest Rove and drag him to the Capitol in irons and then seat him in front of the Judiciary Committee.
With all the shit that they get away with I am sure that they are certain that they can do whatever they want and not be held accountable for it.
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White Haven wrote:I dunno about that, you can't pardon someone until they're convicted, and trials these days can take so very long...
What on earth gave you the idea that the person has to be convicted? Ford pardoned Nixon before he had even been charged with anything! In fact the president can go so far as to simply grant a blanket pardon of any and all illegal activities between two specified dates without even having to spell them all out. I fully expect that Bush will do this for several of his subordinates just before he leaves office.
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Illuminatus Primus wrote:The pardon power is way too powerful.
Agreed, but absent a total sun-crusher scandal, neither party will work to limit it because they want to have that power.
IMHO, one really needed reform would be that the 'pardonee' confess to any crimes he or she is being pardoned for if the pardon is to be legally valid and they haven't yet been charged or convicted of any crime.
This'd preserve the power of the President to set right wrongful convictions while working to prevent him from abusing the power in order to hide his own misdeeds.
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Elfdart wrote:What the House should do is send the Sergeant-At-Arms out to arrest Rove and drag him to the Capitol in irons and then seat him in front of the Judiciary Committee.
Elfdart wrote:What the House should do is send the Sergeant-At-Arms out to arrest Rove and drag him to the Capitol in irons and then seat him in front of the Judiciary Committee.
What would the Secret Service do in that event?
Not much, the man is in his late sixties. I doubt he can walk from congress to the White House without getting winded.
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The pardon power is supposed to be balanced by the fact that you can’t pardon impeachment, and Congress could impeach a president for making unjustified pardons. When you have a situation like we do now when the whole government is in cohorts in terms of illegal actions no change in law or reduction in power is going to provide any defence. Overall there have been plenty of questionable, politically motivated pardons but there have also been far more pardons for people who actually deserved them.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Sea Skimmer wrote:The pardon power is supposed to be balanced by the fact that you can’t pardon impeachment, and Congress could impeach a president for making unjustified pardons. When you have a situation like we do now when the whole government is in cohorts in terms of illegal actions no change in law or reduction in power is going to provide any defence. Overall there have been plenty of questionable, politically motivated pardons but there have also been far more pardons for people who actually deserved them.
Except a president has never been successfully impeached in your entire history, and if they thought that any impeachment would be successful, they could just resign and then get a pardon anyway.
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Bill Clinton was impeached. I think you mean actually removed from office.
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ArmorPierce wrote:Bill Clinton was impeached. I think you mean actually removed from office.
That, to me, would be what would make it "successful".
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Lusankya wrote:
Except a president has never been successfully impeached in your entire history, and if they thought that any impeachment would be successful, they could just resign and then get a pardon anyway.
Except? Why the fuck does that matter? Are you trying to say that it’s a flaw of the system that we haven’t yet had to throw a president out of office yet?
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Don't be ridiculous. You have had to throw presidents out of office, but you haven't been able to because it's a long and tedious process. Remember, just because something hasn't been done, doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done. In the case of Nixon, where you may have actually succeeded, he resigned before you could kick him out, and then he got pardoned anyway.
So the power of the pardon isn't balanced by impeachment, since impeachment is easy to avoid, unlike criminal charges.
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Yes, but successful impeachment and a guilty verdict in the Senate trial results in being removed from office; if you resign, you're removed from office anyway. Subsequent criminal charges can be pardoned whether the offender left office through impeachment or resignation; it makes no difference.
However they can avoid any kind of trial whatsoever by resigning prior to impeachment and then getting pardoned. In the scheme of things they basically get away scot-free. When the only bother that you have to go through is losing your job, that's seriously screwed up.
(Of course, then there are the matters of impeachment being a long enough process that it's impractical in most circumstances and the fact that you're replacing the President with the guy he chose as his running mate, but that's more related to issues with the system than issues with pardons per se.)
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Well, replacing the President with his chosen running mate is better than the original system, wherein the Vice President was the guy who came in second in the election. That was rapidly amended when it was discovered that having the President and Vice President hate each other was rather counterproductive.
Lusankya wrote:However they can avoid any kind of trial whatsoever by resigning prior to impeachment and then getting pardoned. In the scheme of things they basically get away scot-free. When the only bother that you have to go through is losing your job, that's seriously screwed up.
(Of course, then there are the matters of impeachment being a long enough process that it's impractical in most circumstances and the fact that you're replacing the President with the guy he chose as his running mate, but that's more related to issues with the system than issues with pardons per se.)
Part of that stems from the fact that originally, the Vice-President was not the President's running mate, he was the guy with the second-most votes to become President. So if we were still running under those rules today and Obama won the Presidency, McCain would become Vice-President. Operating under this model, resignation no longer affords an "out", as the incoming president would have political motivation to prosecute the departed president.
That said, I really like Elfdart's proposed solution of forbidding the President from pardoning any government employee.
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Rogue 9 wrote:Well, replacing the President with his chosen running mate is better than the original system, wherein the Vice President was the guy who came in second in the election. That was rapidly amended when it was discovered that having the President and Vice President hate each other was rather counterproductive.
How counterproductive could it be? It's not like the Vice-President does anything, except cast the rare tiebreaker in the Senate.
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What is Project Zohar? "On a serious note (well not really) I did sometimes jump in and rate nBSG episodes a '5' before the episode even aired or I saw it."- RogueIce explaining that episode ratings on SDN tv show threads are bunk
That was rapidly amended when it was discovered that having the President and Vice President hate each other was rather counterproductive.
