Will Rove's Contempt Citation Today Mean Anything?

What do you think would happen if you were served with a subpoena and not only didn't bother to show up, but actually hopped a plane and went abroad? My guess is that it wouldn't be pleasant; incarceration isn't unlikely. Unless you're Karl Rove, George Bush's, John McCain's and the Republican Party's very own Rasputin-like dark presence.

A couple weeks ago I was at a lunch meeting where Rep. Linda Sanchez spoke. Actually, a lot of people spoke but only one had everyone yelling and applauding, Congresswoman Sanchez. And what woke the audience up and caused the excitement and tumult? The chair of the House Judiciary Committee's Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, which has been dealing with the miscarriage of justice in the Don Siegelman case and the politicization of the Justice Department, announced that she intended to hold Rove in contempt and move towards putting him in prison. The audience went berserk with enthusiasm.

I talked with Rep. Sanchez before and after. She seemed quite sincere. I wish I could say the same for her colleagues, and I'm not even talking about Republican colleagues. This morning the full Judiciary Committee voted-- 20-14, strictly along party lines in the most partisan of all House committees-- to send a contempt recommendation to the full House. That means it's in Nancy Pelosi's hands, which equates to the Democrats' Orthus monster, Steny-and-Rahm making the decision. That makes me fear that an exercise in equal Justice is destined to quickly descend to the level of the kind of meaningless going-through-the-motions that the Hoyer, Emanuel and Pelosi triumvirate have come to represent. Disapproval half as bad as this Congress' would force Hoyer, Emanuel, Pelosi, Boehner, Blunt and Putnam to resign in most European countries. In Japan we'd have to deal with 6 hara karis.

Here's part of Governor Siegelman's statement after the Judiciary Committee acted:

"Today, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Karl Rove in contempt of Congress, moving us one step closer to the truth, one step closer to restoring justice, and one step closer to preserving our democracy. It's a huge step forward, and I'm so thankful that the
committee voted for contempt.

"Karl Rove and his right-wing political cronies targeted me through a malicious, unfounded, politically-motivated prosecution. I served 9 months in federal prison before the appeals court released me. And now, Karl Rove refuses to testify before Congress about his role in this whole nefarious scheme.

"It's time for Congress to act. The House Judiciary Committee is on the record, but now we need the full House of Representatives to vote to hold Karl Rove in contempt as well."

And the full House did vote last February to hold Joshua Bolten and Harriet Miers in contempt. Nothing happened, although theoretically each could go to prison for a year; fat chance. That kind of punishment is for regular folks, not for the ruling class. Through his assistant, Steve Schmidt, Rove is running the McCain campaign from behind the curtain and he is behind McCain's backfiring negative ads against Obama. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is the most senior Republican senator. Indictments and contempt citations just reinforce that Republicans, McCain included, can't be trusted to be involved with government.

The intensity of the recent drive-- which has included some assertions from the McCain campaign that have been widely dismissed as misleading-- has surprised even some allies of Mr. McCain, who has frequently spoken about the need for civility in politics. The sentiment seeped onto television on Wednesday with Andrea Tantaros, a Republican strategist, saying on MSNBC that the use of Ms. Hilton in Mr. McCain’s commercial was “absurd and juvenile,” and that he should spend more time promoting his own agenda.

McCain, Rove, Stevens, Monica Goodling, the hate-spewing media surrogates... Americans are sick of it and McCain will continue to lose support as we get closer to November. All these Rovian tactics and the resultant 7 years of Republican misrule are too recent even for notoriously short-attention span voters to forget so fast.