Conyers' year of tolerating contempt

In an article at the Huffington Post by John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pissing and moaning about how awful the George Bush’s people are for not following the law by responding to his subpoenas to appear before his committee, says that he is “considering all options.”

This lamenting of the irresponsibility of the people of George Bush’s executive branch is in response to a subpoena issued to Karl Rove to appear, which he never did. Conspicuously missing from the article is any mention of the fact that Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten were issued subpoenas to appear exactly a year ago, and they haven’t appeared, either.

They’re still out there somewhere, running around loose when they should have either been in jail all this time, or made to appear. There’s a reason why they can be put in jail or made to appear.

Subpoena literally means, “under penalty,” and the penalty is for failure to appear.

Conyers says he’s considering all options. There aren’t any options when it comes to enforcing the law. You either impose the penalty required by the violation of the subpoena or you don’t. Conyers hasn’t. Miers, Bolten and Rove are running around giving Conyers the finger, with no penalty at all.

When the cops come upon a guy beating the crap out of another guy, they can’t stand around considering their options. And, they don’t. They immediately enforce the law by arresting the person committing assault. They’re required by law to do that, just as Conyers is required by law to enforce the subpoenas. And, he hasn’t.

And what does Conyers have to say about this, and what does he propose to do about it? In the last sentence of his article he harrumphs and puffs and blusters with: “Regardless of the path we take, the end result must be the same, the full restoration of our Constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no one - not Karl Rove and not the President - is above the law.”

Well, John, looking at the actuality of the thing, it appears that Miers, Bolten and Rove ARE above the law, since they have been given complete exemption from violating it, proven by the fact that they haven’t been forced to appear before your committee and the fact that they have been allowed to suffer no penalty, as required by law, for it.

I write articles pissing and moaning about the way things are and how I would change them to my way of thinking. But, I don’t have the power of subpoena as Conyers does to actually make things happen. He can do it and I can’t. All I can do it is point out to him that he’s not doing any more about it by writing articles than I am by writing articles. And that makes me and everyone else who has an opinion and writes articles just as effective as John Conyers.

John, writing articles ain’t gonna get it done. It’s supposed to be us writing articles about how you got it done, not the other way around where you write articles about how you haven’t got it done. Hell, I can do that.

And, I’m not even a member of Congress.