One Small Step for Mankind

The beginnings have been small, but for those of us who were around during Watergate, the feeling of desperately needing movement which came agonizingly slowly, this is an encouragement. The Senate has demanded action that should already have taken, now is required, from our executive branch.

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

The House panel filed the suit in federal court in Washington against Joshua B. Bolten, who has been White House chief of staff since April 2006, and Harriet E. Miers, a close associate of Bush's from Texas who resigned as White House counsel in January 2007 after a little more than two years on the job.

The committee's action marked the first time in U.S. history that either chamber of Congress has sued the Executive Branch to enforce a subpoena, according to a spokesman for the Judiciary Committee.

The lawsuit charges that Bolten and Miers, who were cited by the House for contempt of Congress last month, violated their obligations under Judiciary Committee subpoenas by refusing to testify or to provide subpoenaed documents. The House passed the contempt citation by a vote of 223 to 32 after most Republicans boycotted the proceeding.

Slowly, but hopefully inexorably, justice will be sought. It may take the change in administrations, as the appointments in this administration are abysmal, and intractably politicized, but this will happen, I am sure.

I hear that first small reverberation, like the distant shock of the footsteps that betoken a tyranosaurus rex approaching, in Jurassic Park. A ripple now. [Got goat?]

316 days.