Good Day In The House

What a day on the floor of the House today.

It was a day that the Democrats found their balls and pissed off the Republicunts SO BAD that they got up and all left.

It starts with an email from Rep. Wexler’s office:

Today, in hearings on Capitol Hill, I confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her role in the lies, exaggerations, and misdirection that led us into the Iraq war.

During my questioning, Secretary Rice falsely stated that she never saw intelligence casting doubt on the Bush Administration claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This unbelievable statement is flatly contradicted by numerous government reports and CIA testimonials.

Secretary Rice’s responses demonstrate once and for all that we need aggressive oversight over this out of control Administration. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has ignored the constitutional right of Congress to provide such oversight.

It is time Congress took aggressive action to assert our rights on behalf of the American people.

The House of Representatives must immediately hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for their failure to respond to congressional subpoenas.

I have been aggressively lobbying Members of Congress to support a vote on contempt, and I am thrilled to report that Speaker Pelosi told me directly that she agrees it is well past time to vote on contempt. I am anticipating that the House will shortly vote on resolutions of both civil and criminal contempt for both Miers and Bolten.

No one should be immune from accountability and the rule of law.

I think it’s wonderful that Wexler is showing more testicular fortitude than almost all of his House colleagues. The one thing that bothers me in this exchange was Rice’s continued defense that “other countries believed it” and that the intelligence on Iraq was the consensus of various intelligence agencies when we know that isn’t the truth and was cherry picked and weighted from questionable sources like Ahmad Chalabi and “Curveball”.

I don’t know if there’s an enterprising Fed Up American out there that would like to put together for Wexler’s benefit a fact sheet that can cite sources that show Rice’s continued lying on this.



Today, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers testified before the Committee on Rules in support of statutory contempt and civil litigating authority resolutions against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Text of Resolution as Introduced (pdf)

Recommending that the House cite someone for contempt of Congress is a step that the Committee, and I as Chairman, take with great reluctance. Unfortunately, it is a step that is clearly necessary to preserve the role and constitutional prerogatives of Congress as an institution, in addition to getting to the bottom of the U.S. Attorney controversy.

If the executive branch can disregard Congressional subpoenas in this way, we no longer have a system of checks and balances. That is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is our bipartisan responsibility to protect it. As our former colleague, Republican Mickey Edwards, has explained, taking action is crucial in order to defend Congress “as a separate, independent, and completely equal branch of government.”

Because the White House has refused to reconsider its confrontational position, I believe we have no choice but to bring this contempt resolution to the floor promptly and to ask that this Committee adopt a rule to facilitate doing so.

The wheels of justice are grinding, ever so slowly, but grinding nonetheless.

Minority leader, John (crybaby) Boehner and the House Republicans walked out of Congress today because the Democratic Party wanted to enforce the rule of law and go after Harriet Miers and Josh Bolton, while the Republicans want to force the FISA bill down their throats.



They threw their hissy fit (I’m surprised Boehner didn’t break out into tears again) and as usual tried to change the subject from the lawbreaking Bush administration to the jingoistic—save America from terrorists-rhetoric that they are famous for. This is their play. Make the House and Senate into a do nothing Congress—grand stand on every issue so they can try to dupe the media…