Let’s cut to the chase: the president and his team are arguing that once the White House claims executive privilege, there is no recourse. The president is accountable to literally no one — not the Congress, whose subpoenas can be ignored, or the federal judiciary, which can’t hear a case that cannot be filed. We’re talking about what is, in effect, a rogue presidency.

Under the inherent contempt power, the individual is brought before the House or Senate by the Sergeant-at-Arms, tried at the bar of the body, and can be imprisoned. The purpose of the imprisonment or other sanction may be either punitive or coercive. Thus, the witness can be imprisoned for a specified period of time as punishment, or for an indefinite period (but not, at least in the case of the House, beyond the adjournment of a session of the Congress) until he agrees to comply. The inherent contempt power has been recognized by the Supreme Court as inextricably related to Congress’s constitutionally-based power to investigate.

Between 1795 and 1934 the House and Senate utilized the inherent contempt power over 85 times, in most instances to obtain (successfully) testimony and/or documents. The inherent contempt power has not been exercised by either House in over 70 years.

Why Inherent Contempt
By Big Tent Democrat

Like most recent converts, I now have a certain zeal. My zeal is now for the use of inherent contempt power by the Congress in the face of the Bush view that a President's assertion of executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena is beyond the purview of the courts. Before, I was very reticent about inherent contempt, for precisely the same reason I have reacted negatively to this unbound assertion by the Bush Administration that it is the President who decides whether a claim of executive privilege is valid -- it undermines our system of checks and balances. The Founders were primarily concerned with making sure the each branch was checked by the others. Inherent contempt is, in a way, the flip side assertion of unbound power in the Executive. But it becomes necessary here because the Bush Administration has chosen to argue against checks and balances. As Steven Benen writes:

In the face of this assertion, I believe the Congress has no choice now but to commence inherent contempt proceedings against those witnesses who refuse to testify based on the Bush claim of executive privilege. The claims, according to Bush, can not be tested in court. More.

What is inherent contempt?
It has not been used in 70 years because the Congress has wisely looked to the courts to resolve such disputes. But faced with an Administration that rejects court adjudication of such claims, the Congress, it seems to me, has been compelled now to revive this undesirable tool, because there are no other options.

Of course, this all must take place in the House because Republicans in the Senate would block any such attempt through filibuster.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3411816

House Democrats Pass Contempt Citations
House Democrats Approve Contempt of Congress Citations Wednesday Against 2 Presidential Aides
By LAURIE KELLMAN
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON


The House Judiciary Committee voted contempt of Congress citations Wednesday against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and President Bush's former legal counselor, Harriet Miers.

The 22-17 vote which would sanction for pair for failure to comply with subpoenas on the firings of several federal prosecutors advanced the citation to the full House.

A senior Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the House itself likely would take up the citations after Congress' August recess. The official declined to speak on the record because no date had been set for the House vote.

Committee Chairman John Conyers said the panel had nothing to lose by advancing the citations because it could not allow presidential aides to flout Congress' authority. Republicans warned that a contempt citation would lose in federal court even if it got that far.

The drive to pass the citations on to a federal prosecutor comes after nearly seven months of a Democratic-driven investigation into whether the U.S. attorney firings were directed by the White House to influence corruption cases in favor of Republican candidates. The administration has denied that, but also has invoked executive privilege on internal White House deliberations on the matter.

White House counsel Fred Fielding had said previously that Miers and Bolten were both absolutely immune from congressional subpoenas a position that infuriated lawmakers.

"If we countenance a process where our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn't even have to bother to show up, where privilege can be asserted on the thinnest basis and in the broadest possible manner, then we have already lost," Conyers, D-Mich., said before the vote. "We won't be able to get anybody in front of this committee or any other."

Conyers' predecessor, former Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., argued that Democrats can't win that fight.

A civil lawsuit in federal court would be less perilous for the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, he said, than a constitutional battle over contempt.

"I think that the White House is going to win an argument in court" over the contempt matter, Sensenbrenner told the panel.

"The proper thing to do is to determine the executive privilege claim aside from who said what, who refused to submit to what, who didn't show up to subpoena," the Wisconsin Republican said. Instead, Congress should "direct the general counsel to the clerk of the House of Representatives to file a civil suit," Sensenbrenner added.

Added Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah: "The real argument here is not over the audacity of the White House, but over the strength of our legal argument."

Conyers, however, did not discount Sensenbrenner's suggestion.

The fight over the limits of executive privilege erupted after Miers and Bolten refused to comply with subpoenas compelling testimony and documents about the White House's role in the firings.

Democrats reject Fielding's claims that the White House aides were immune.

Contempt of Congress would be a federal misdemeanor punishable by up to a $100,000 fine and a one-year prison sentence. If the citations win support in the full House, they would be forwarded to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia a Bush appointee.

And that's as far as it's likely to go, the Justice Department said in a letter to the committee late Tuesday.

Brian A. Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, cited the department's "long-standing" position, "articulated during administrations of both parties, that the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to the president or presidential subordinates who assert executive privilege."

Benczkowski said it also was the department's view that the same position applies to Miers, who left the White House earlier this year.

Republicans said Democrats couldn't win this fight, noting the White House has offered to make top presidential aides available for private interviews about their roles in the firings. Republicans also suggested that the Democrats' rejection of the offer leaves only one reason for the dispute: politics.

"If the majority really wanted the facts, it could have had them," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

If history and self-interest are any guide, the two sides will resolve the dispute before it gets to federal court. Neither side wants a judge to settle the question about the limits of executive privilege, for fear of losing.

But no deal appeared imminent.

Contempt of Congress is a federal crime, but a sitting president has the authority to commute the sentence or pardon anyone convicted or accuses of any federal crime.

Congress can hold a person in contempt if that person obstructs proceedings or an inquiry by a congressional committee. Congress has used contempt citations for two main reasons: to punish someone for refusing to testify or refusing to provide documents or answers, and for bribing or libeling a member of Congress.

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.


On the Net:

House Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.house.gov/

Former legal counselor Harriet Miers is a mystery to me. I look at the photos online of her and I cannot get a true picture of the woman. It is like looking at someone wearing a mask.

In 1995, George W. Bush, then Texas governor, appointed Miers to chair the Texas Lottery Commission. Some have credited Miers with reforming the commission after a previous corruption scandal [11].

Her tenure has also been criticized, however. In 1997, the commission under Miers hired Lawrence Littwin as executive director, but then fired him five months later. At the time, the contract to operate the lottery was held by the politically connected GTech Corporation (see [2]), which had obtained the contract with the help of a former Lieutenant Governor of Texas (Democrat Ben Barnes) [12]. Littwin, as director, began an investigation into whether GTech had made illegal campaign contributions and whether GTech owed the commission millions of dollars for breaches of its contract. He stated that Miers ordered him to stop the investigation. He brought a lawsuit alleging that he was fired in retaliation for the investigation and to ensure that GTech would keep its contract (see [3]). According to Texans for Public Justice, GTech paid Littwin $300,000 to settle the suit (see [4]).

Miers resigned from the lottery commission in early 2000, a year before her term ended. She said her resignation had nothing to do with lagging sales in the system's biggest game, Lotto Texas, but rather that she wanted to allow her successor time to prepare for rebidding the lottery's primary operator contract.

There was some speculation during Bush's 2000 campaign that Bush would appoint Miers to the position of Attorney General. This was seen as possible with her trusted role as Bush's personal attorney, her many appointments during his tenure as govenor. This also recalled William French Smith who was Ronald Reagan's personal attorney before being named Attorney General. Miers was not chosen and John Ashcroft became Attorney General instead.

In January 2001, Miers did follow Bush to Washington, D.C., serving as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary during the first two years of his presidency. In that role, she opposed the administration's 2001 decision to stop cooperating with the ABA rating of judicial nominees. In 2003, she was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In November 2004, Bush named her to succeed Alberto Gonzales, his nominee for Attorney General, to the post of White House Counsel, the chief legal adviser for the Office of the President.

Miers is said to be one of Bush's closest personal friends, and appears given to effusive praise for the President. According to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, Miers has called Bush the most brilliant man she had ever met [13] [this most likely is the comment that knocked her out of the running for a Supreme Court position! ] and says he was the "best Governor ever" (see [5]). She also stated that "serving President Bush and Mrs. Bush is an impossible-to-describe privilege" and noted that Bush's personal qualities "make a brighter future for our nation and people all around the world possible."

From Wikipedia, but agrees with other accounts I've read:

It is true she is known to be a true follower of Bush and praises him enormously. Thank you for her past credits. Is she near as smart as he seems?