Give me a break
House panel defies Bush, votes for subpoenas - CNN.com
WASHINGTON (CNN) — House Democrats voted Wednesday to give their leaders the authority to force White House officials to testify on the firings of U.S. attorneys.The House Judiciary subcommittee vote was to authorize subpoenas. It does not mean that subpoenas will be issued; only that they could be if the four White House officials Democrats want to question do not voluntarily testify under oath.
But the act puts congressional Democrats on a collision course with President Bush. He said Tuesday that the four — top political adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and their two deputies — could be interviewed in the matter, but no oath could be administered and no transcript would be taken.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said later Wednesday that the administration’s “extraordinarily generous” offer for interviews would be pulled if subpoenas were issued.
Extraordinarily generous my butt. The White House is offering for Rove, Miers and two deputies to be interviewed but not under oath and no transcript can be made. How is that extraordinarily generous? Issue the subpoenas, put them under oath and then they get to choose if they lie or if they tell the truth. Tony Snow tried very hard to sound and look like he was making sense but you couldn’t help but tell he was walking a tightrope with no net and he knew he was just trying to keep those plates spinning in the air hoping no one would notice the words didn’t make any sense. Give me a break, this kind of spin isn’t even worthy of my 10 year old.
Let me just leave you with this lovely tidbit from the same story…
“The moment subpoenas are issued it means they have rejected the offer,” Snow said.Snow said there is no need for oaths or transcripts for the private congressional interviews with the White House aides.
“The president expects everybody who talks to Congress to tell the truth, and so does the law. And they know that it would be illegal not to tell them the truth,” he said.
If the president expects them to tell only the truth then why would being under oath matter? If the president expects them to tell only the truth why would a transcript matter? The only logical reason that the White House doesn’t want a transcript nor for them to be under oath is because they don’t want any record of them lying and of course no transcript, no way to prove perjury, no charges, everything quickly and quietly gets swept under the rug like always with this administration.
Sorry, guys, we really do try to stay local but sometimes you just can’t keep your mouth shut.
Technorati Tags: White House, Tony Snow, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Harriet Miers, spin, perjury
Filed under: George W. Bush, Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Tony Snow, White House, double-speak, perjury, spin
And for everyone out there who argues that the prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president, of course they do. And Clinton did ask for the resignation of all the prosecutors at the start of his first term as did Reagan.
The issue is whether or not the Bush administration was requiring the prosecutors to play politics with the law. The American people have the right to expect that prosecutors will go after fraud regardless if it was committed by a Republican or a Democrat. So is it okay for prosecutors to pursue cases only against big donors that fund the opposition? What’s the next step, it’s okay for the party in power to commit crime?