Ex-Bush aides to testify on US attorney firings

Armed with an agreement by top Bush administration aides to testify under oath, congressional Democrats may finally learn the answer to a 2-year-old question: What role did George W. Bush's White House play in politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys?

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Bush aide's House testimony temporarily halted

A federal appeals court has blocked former White House counsel Harriet Miers from testifying about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys until judges decide whether they have authority to wade into a battle that pits Congress against the Bush administration.

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Bolten, Miers ask judge to delay subpoena

Planning appeals, White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers asked a judge on Thursday to delay enforcement of his ruling that they must testify before Congress.

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Mukasey Refuses Probe of Bush Aides

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

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Pelosi Wants Bush Aides Investigated

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Justice Department on Thursday to open a grand jury investigation into whether President Bush's chief of staff and former counsel should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

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House Democrats Pass Contempt Citations

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.

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House Panel Rejects Bush Privilege Claim

House Democrats on Thursday took the first step toward holding former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress after she defied a subpoena — at President Bush's order — and skipped a hearing on the firing of U.S. attorneys.

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House Panel: Miers Wrong to Miss Hearing

A House panel cleared the way Thursday for contempt proceedings against former White House counsel Harriet Miers after she obeyed President Bush and skipped a hearing on the firings of federal prosecutors.

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Showdown Looms Over Fired Prosecutors

The Bush administration says the president's immediate advisers are absolutely immune from having to appear before Congress, but legal scholars say the issue isn't that clear cut.

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Bush Denies Congress Access to Aides

President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.

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Bush Warns Dems to Take Offer in Firings

A defiant President Bush warned Democrats Tuesday to accept his offer to have top aides testify about the firings of federal prosecutors only privately and not under oath or risk a constitutional showdown from which he would not back down.

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Miers Leaves White House With No Regrets

Conservatives and liberals alike battered White House counsel Harriet Miers during her 24-day rise and fall as a Supreme Court nominee.

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Bush Legal Counsel Harriet Miers Resigns

White House legal counsel Harriet Miers has submitted her resignation.

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Correctly Political: The "Real" Reason Carol Lam was Pushed Out as U.S. Attorney

Actually, I don't know the real reason. But Kyle Sampson, formerly of the Department of Justice does, according to this e-mail he sent [emphasis added]:

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Thousands of pages of internal e-mails and once-secret congressional testimony showed yesterday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of US attorneys.Aides to  …

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excerpt: ""....A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state party officials and GOP members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that would help then. ""

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Excerpt: "" deal brokered by the Obama White House to obtain Karl Rove's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee contains a number of unusual provisions, prominent legal scholars say.

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Weeks ago, Jeffrey Rosen wrote a scurrilous article for The New Republic in which he asserted, on the basis of anonymous gossip, that Sonia Sotomayor, summa cum laude of Princeton, recipient of the prestigious Pyne Prize, and editor of the Yale Law Journal, was "not that smart."  …

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excerpt: ""Yesterday on The O'Reilly Factor, Karl Rove gave his "insights" into the Supreme Court nomination process.

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WASHINGTON — Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers, top former aides to President George W. Bush, will testify under oath to a House committee investigating the firings of nine United States attorneys in 2007, under an agreement announced Wednesday by the panel.

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Karl Rove did it again. Or rather, he didn't do it again.

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A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House  …

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When the new Congress returns to Washington next month, one of the first items of business for Democrats on the House judiciary committee may be to subpoena Karl Rove.

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Judge Henry H. Kennedy, a Clinton appointee, rejected the Bush administration's claim that federal courts lacked the authority to require the White House to recover the e-mails.

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I have been thinking a lot about Palin Derangement Syndrome myself. My own hypothesis is that any woman who has struggled to balance a family, a home, and a stressful career owes it to other women to admit it's hard.

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That these individuals -- at the top of the legislative and executive branches of government -- would refuse to cooperate with the department tasked with enforcing the laws should alarm and offend Americans of any party.

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Last August, a group of Congressman Henry Waxman's constituents met with him and urged him to make use of inherent contempt. They were then obliged to explain to him what inherent contempt is.

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Congress can force White House aides to testify under subpoena, a U.S. District Court ruled Thursday, rejecting Bush administration claims of immunity.

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By DAVID STOUT Published: August 1, 2008 WASHINGTON — President Bush's top advisers cannot ignore subpoenas issued by Congress, a federal judge ruled on Thursday in a case that involves the firings of several United States attorneys but has much wider constitutional impli …

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The House Judiciary Committee has won the first round of its lawsuit against the White House over contempt of Congress in House Judiciary Committee v. Harriet Miers et al.

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The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit yesterday to enforce subpoenas against President Bush's chief of staff and his former counsel in a probe of suspected White House involvement in the 2006 firings of nine federal prosecutors.

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When Mukasey blocked the contempt cases, many legal experts were filled with rage. But I came to see his rationales as objects of beauty rather than scorn. When one combines the two decisions, they fit neatly into Mukasey's Paradox.

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The House voted Thursday to issue contempt citations against the White House chief of staff and a former White House counsel for refusing to cooperate in an investigation into the mass firings of federal prosecutors.

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The House voted Thursday to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a panel investigating the firing of several United States attorneys.

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New Rule: For the next 18 months, let Bush be Reagan. A completely dissociative personality who lets the real work of the nation go on elsewhere, while he sits behind his desk and hums. I don't think the problem is that Bush lives in a bubble. I say make the bubble thicker.

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"The sergeant at arms could stick [former White House counsel] Harriet Miers in the basement, lock her up and wait until she's ready to talk," said University of Missouri—Columbia law professor Frank Bowman, describing the little-known legislative power called "inherent c …

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They were fiercely loyal, unfailingly disciplined and, as a unit, offered the president a comforting touchstone from his home state.

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At his emotional goodbye with George W. Bush on the South lawn of the White House Monday, Karl Rove painted a portrait of a presidency made of strong vision and epochal goals.

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