occupied
Diamond Member
- Nov 8, 2011
- 36,705
- 17,198
- 1,590
No it's not Holder, not even close. Let's cast our minds back to ancient times (2007-2008) when Democrats badly wanted to talk to Harriet Meyers, Josh Bolton and others including Karl Rove about a little remembered incident involving the politically motivated firing of several US attorneys, allegedly for refusing to conduct witch hunt investigations of various state democratic parties.
Practically every point in the current scandal match except the parties were on opposite sides of the same issues and, of course, the republicans refused to cooperate with the investigations AT ALL. Zero, zilch, nothing, republicans felt totally at ease ignoring a congressional investigation that has since been mostly proven to be correct.
Fast forward to this year, suddenly republicans find a lack of timely and total obedience to congressional subpoenas an abhorrent act, suddenly they are attacking executive privilege, all of the sudden there is no level of compliance that is sufficient.
When the vote was held to hold Meyers and Bolton in contempt for never showing up, the republicans got up and walked out exactly as the democrats did today, in fact the stories are almost identical except, of course, the actual contempt involved in the actions of the administration officials called before congress.
Compared to Holder releasing reams of documents and showing up when ordered, the actions of Meyers, Bolton, Rove, Gonzales, Bush and others dripped with open contempt for the right of congress to subpoena anyone in the executive branch for any reason whatsoever.
The stark difference in attitude between these two incidents is all the proof anyone needs that today's action by congress is an entirely partisan stunt that has no honorable reason that anyone would believe at this point.
I will conclude with a quote attributed to then minority leader John Boehner as he stalked out of the House in protest to the contempt vote:
"We will not stand here and watch this floor be abused for pure political grandstanding at the expense of our national security,"
How soon he changes where he stands.
Practically every point in the current scandal match except the parties were on opposite sides of the same issues and, of course, the republicans refused to cooperate with the investigations AT ALL. Zero, zilch, nothing, republicans felt totally at ease ignoring a congressional investigation that has since been mostly proven to be correct.
Fast forward to this year, suddenly republicans find a lack of timely and total obedience to congressional subpoenas an abhorrent act, suddenly they are attacking executive privilege, all of the sudden there is no level of compliance that is sufficient.
When the vote was held to hold Meyers and Bolton in contempt for never showing up, the republicans got up and walked out exactly as the democrats did today, in fact the stories are almost identical except, of course, the actual contempt involved in the actions of the administration officials called before congress.
Compared to Holder releasing reams of documents and showing up when ordered, the actions of Meyers, Bolton, Rove, Gonzales, Bush and others dripped with open contempt for the right of congress to subpoena anyone in the executive branch for any reason whatsoever.
The stark difference in attitude between these two incidents is all the proof anyone needs that today's action by congress is an entirely partisan stunt that has no honorable reason that anyone would believe at this point.
I will conclude with a quote attributed to then minority leader John Boehner as he stalked out of the House in protest to the contempt vote:
"We will not stand here and watch this floor be abused for pure political grandstanding at the expense of our national security,"
How soon he changes where he stands.