The Dems' Mad Pursuit Of Stink

I just have to wonder ... is there a relationship between these two stories? First:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Subpoenas are being issued to two former White House officials, the first to be subpoenaed in the fired U.S. attorneys investigation.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday issued a subpoena to Sara Taylor, former White House political director. About the same time, it was announced that the House Judiciary Committee will issue a subpoena in the same case to former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Both committees say they will also subpoena documents from the White House, also a first in the investigation.

The committees have issued subpoenas for officials and documents from the Justice Department. The committees are investigating whether the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year were politically motivated and whether the White House was involved.

And this one:

WASHINGTON (Wall Street Journal) -- An increasingly gloomy political environment has soured Americans on President Bush and Congress, scrambled the Republicans' 2008 field, and strengthened Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

As the Iraq war drags on and Washington is embroiled in inconclusive policy debates, just 19% of Americans now say the nation is head in the right direction. More than three times that proportion, 68%, say things in the U.S. are "off on the wrong track." That's approaching the most pessimistic mood in the history of the WSJ/NBC poll. ...

The fallout from that bleak mood affects the Democratic-controlled Congress as well as the Republican president. Just 23% of Americans approve the performance of Congress ....

Faced with fundamental issues about the direction of the country, the Dem Congress is pursuing meaningless witch hunts that will be no more successful than their defeatist (on so many levels!) pursuit of anti-war resolutions.

Ultimately, if they do succeed in finding a smoking gun at the White House on the U.S. attorneys non-scandal, they will find that it was licensed firearm used only under controlled conditions at a sanctioned range ... if you get my analogy. There will be no crime because U.S. attorneys serve at the whim of the White House.

No matter. The Dems are obsessed with the chance they'll catch a sniff of stink, like, perhaps, the passengers on the Titanic who may have smelled breached sewer lines as the ship sank. A lot of good it will do them.

The Democratic Congress could make use of its majority and start navigating around icebergs, but for them, this is so much more rewarding ... at least for now.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Dems Grub For Bad In Goodling

Not too much came out of the Monica Goodling testimony yesterday except for photos like these, which are priceless, and writing like this, from Dana Milbank at WaPo, that is similarly priceless:

"Was that legal?" demanded Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.). Under the witness table, Goodling wrung her hands and rubbed her bracelet. She drew a deep breath. "I know I crossed the line," she admitted.

Gooding was a witness in well out of her league; a young Republican suddenly jerked from her cushy glitz job and thrown under the bus by mission-driven Dems while the TV lights nicely highlighted her hair.

From what I've read, the only thing they got out of Gooding on the prosecutor firing is her allegation that Assistant AG Paul McNulty was "not fully candid" with Congress about his knowledge of White House involvement in the firings. Not exactly who knew what, when.

Dems also are making hay of her conversation with AG AG, which they say shows his previous statement that he did not try to influence witnesses was a lie.

Here's the exchange:

"Let me tell you what I can remember," [AG AG] said, according to her account.

"He laid out for me his general recollection . . . of some of the process" of the firings and then asked "if I had any reaction to his iteration," Goodling said.

She said the conversation made her "a little uncomfortable" because she knew that she, Gonzales and others would be asked to testify before Congress.

"Do you think, Ms. Goodling, the attorney general was trying to shape your recollection?" Davis asked.

Goodling paused, then said: "No . . . I just did not know if it was a conversation that we should be having, and so I just -- just didn't say anything."

She added that she thought Gonzales was only "being kind."

"Another nail in the Gonzales coffin!" screamed one leftyblog. I'm not so sure; it seems more like a brad, a mere staple, to me. If it's a nail, it's typical Dem witch-hunting, a la Scooter Libby and the Plame Game. Here, they're going after AG AG for politicizing the office (as if they didn't) and firing people who don't play the game (as if they don't), but if that won't stick, it'll do to catch him in a minor, off-topic perjury. Go for a grand slam, hoof out an infield single.

The most interesting passage of the day had more to do with Dem bigotry than AG AG and the prosecutors. Again, Milbank:

The only break Republicans got all day came from a neophyte Democrat on the committee, Steve Cohen (Tenn.) [and not exactly a Goodling-quality looker], who decided to poke fun at the educational pedigree of Goodling, Regent University law school Class of '99 ("top 10.5 percent of class," reported her résumé).

"The mission of the law school you attended, Regent, is to bring to bear upon legal education and the legal profession the will of almighty God," he said. "What is the will of almighty God, our creator, on the legal profession?"

"I'm not sure that I could define that question for you," Goodling answered.

Cohen continued: "Are you aware of the fact that in your graduating class, 50 to 60 percent of the students failed the bar the first time?"

"I know it wasn't good," she conceded.

Republicans erupted in groans and cries of "bigotry." "Regent University students won the American Bar Association's Negotiation Competition February 11," protested Randy Forbes (R-Va.).

Hmmm. I thought this investigation was supposed to be rooting out politicization in Justice, not poking Christianity in the ribs. Cohen's got a point (He went to Vanderbilt, where the pass rate is in the mid-80s to low-90s), but really, what an idiot.

The Dems have an immunity-protected witness who cuts a bit of a sympathetic jib with most of us and he mocks Christians? Do you suppose this useful idiot, whose resume brags ...

Steve Cohen has never faltered in his fight for those who do not have the power bestowed by wealth and advantage, realizing that the American dream cannot flourish without constant rededication to its principle.

... did not apply the will of almighty liberal dogma to the studying he pursued at Vanderbilt? That's Vanderbilt, the university founded by a $1 million (in 1873 dollars!) gift from "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, of whom Wikipedia says:

Ruthless in business, Cornelius Vanderbilt was said by some to have made few friends in his lifetime but many enemies. In his will, he disowned all his sons except for William, who was as ruthless in business as his father and the one Cornelius believed capable of maintaining the business empire. ...

Vanderbilt gave little of his vast fortune to charitable works, leaving the US$1 million he had promised for Vanderbilt University and $50,000 to the Church of the Strangers in New York City.

Yeah, Steve. Keep fighting for those poor, oppressed folk who can't afford the Commodore's law school. Fight loud and obnoxiously. Beat up on young blondes. You're doing your party proud.

Fired Prosecutors Case Gets Even More Ridiculous

We thought it wasn't possible. How could the Dems' Quixotic quest to find something impeachable in the firing of a measly eight prosecutors sink any lower into political slime? How could a party whose leader fired all the federal prosecutors possibly look any more opportunistic or vicious?

Turns out it is possible.

It happened at Congressional hearings yesterday (My! If there's one thing the Dems are good at, it's holding hearings. I guess they are called "hearings" because the Dems love hearing themselves speak; they're sure not about listening.). Dem Mel Watt of North Carolina was questioning former Deputy Attorney General James Comey about the firing of former fed. atty. John McCay.

We all know why McCay was fired. Washington's 2004 governor's election was by Dem Chris Gregoire in a hail of voter fraud so thick it broke windshields and dinged paint jobs. One of McCay's primary jobs was to prosecute voter fraud, but he had other things to do, so the Dems got away with it.

A few months after the election, 18 months before McCay was finally fired, his name was mentioned as someone to be fired, but he hung on for a while longer.

Watt would have none of this talk of Dem voter fraud and a prosecutor not inclined to prosecute, so he decided to dance instead on the grave of a murdered assistant U.S. attorney instead.

Former U.S. Attorney John McKay's name was on a list of federal prosecutors to be fired in March 2005, 18 months earlier than previously reported, according to a document released by the House Judiciary Committee today.

And during a hearing in the nation's capital, a committee member suggested McKay might have made the list, drawn up by the attorney general's then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, for requesting "some action" by the Justice Department with regard to the unsolved 2001 killing of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales.

In questioning former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., said: "It was suggested that Mr. Sampson had concerns or that concerns had been raised ... relating to the murder of an assistant U.S. attorney named Thomas Wales, in which Mr. McKay had requested some action by the department." ...

Comey responded: "I don't remember discussing that tragedy with anyone other than Mr. McKay, and it was simply briefly to talk to him about how awful it was. He cared very passionately about finding the person who killed his assistant U.S. attorney." (Seattle Times)

The suppositions behind Watt's assertion are dripping with Bush-hatred: For his theory to work, Bush and his deputies would have to be much worse than merely unconcerned about the death of a federal court official. There would have to be Administration involvement and cover-up well-smeared with their fingerprints, or there would be no reason for a federal prosecutor to be fired for merely suggesting a speed-up of the investigation.

No one in the media is calling Watt a loon, an opportunist or a filthy piece of moral flotsam this morning. No one in the media is asking why McCay himself didn't create "some action in the Justice Department" regarding the murder. He was, after all, the Justice Dept's top dog in the jurisdiction where the murder occurred.

Maybe his own inaction on the Wales case is another reason why McCay was fired -- but it certainly wasn't for asking.

Only the worst sort of human being could be demented enough to draw the conclusion Watt espoused. For 15 years, the people of the 12th District in NC (Charlotte) have been electing and re-electing this worst sort of human being to represent them. Shameful.

hat-tip: memeorandum

A Hat-Tip To Jimmy's AG

There's not much I like about Jimmy Carter and his administration, now long-gone but continuing to cause problems. I found one today in, of all places, the LATimes.

There, an op/ed by Pepperdine constitutional law prof Douglas W. Kmiek describes how Carter's AG Griffen Bell stood up to Carter, and in doing so protected the separation of powers guaranteed by the Constitution.

In the aftermath of Watergate, President Carter directed Atty. Gen. Griffin Bell to prepare legislation that would make the attorney general an appointed post for a definite term, subject to removal only for cause. Carter's idea was to keep the attorney general independent of presidential direction to ensure that the Justice Department's authority would never again be abused for political purposes, as it had been during the ethically troubled Nixon presidency.

Despite Carter's noble intent, Bell refused. In a little-known memorandum to the president dated April 11, 1977, he explained why. Any law that restricted the president's power to remove the attorney general — and, by inference, to fire any U.S. attorney — would likely be found unconstitutional. The president, Bell reasoned, is held accountable for the actions of the executive branch in its entirety, including the Justice Department; he must be free to establish policy and define priorities, even in the legal arena. "Because laws are not self-executing, their enforcement obviously cannot be separated from policy considerations," Bell wrote.

Carter argued that the attorney general is different from other Cabinet officers. The job entails dual responsibilities: carrying forward White House policies like any other Cabinet official, and representing the law of the United States, whether it coincides with the president's policies or not. Bell agreed, but he found that insufficient to justify separating the attorney general and subordinate U.S. attorneys from presidential direction.

Chief Justice William Howard Taft's opinion in Myers vs. United States (1926) was the foundation of Bell's position, Kmiek writes.

Congress enacts different types of laws, the chief justice opined. Some laws require close supervision by the president, while others draw upon the expertise found within the specific agencies of government. Much law, however, generally empowers the executive, and when subordinates perform these functions, "they are exercising not their own but [the president's] discretion," the court said. "Each head of a department is and must be the president's alter ego in the matters of that department where the president is required by law to exercise authority."

The court's analysis did not deny the unique nature of the Justice Department. Indeed, Taft acknowledged that there may be duties that require evenhandedness from executive officers, "the discharge of which the president cannot in a particular case properly influence or control."

Kmiek notes that the Senate has every right to inquire whether the White House or AG AG's minions sought to improperly influence a particular case, but "has no legitimate basis to object if it turns out the U.S. attorneys were removed because they failed to bring the cases the president or his attorney general sought to give emphasis."

So it's up to AG AG: Can Gonzales convince the Senate that the eight went because they didn't follow directives, or were they fired because they refused to be political hacks pursuing cases wrought from politics, not law?

Talk about a grey area! It's just the sort of greyness in which the Dem leadership thrives -- and, I'm afraid, it's also the murky place that is beyond Gonzales' capabilities to clearly and forcefully illuminate. It's not that the facts aren't there for him to use; it's that the Bush Administration has a long record of being unable to forcefully defend itself.

This is as much a non-scandal as the Plame Game, which the administration was incapable of stopping, and it's looking like only the Dems took lessons from Plame. They've become as capable as making something out of nothing as the GOP has become incapable of stopping them.

hat-tip: Real Clear Politics

Bummer For NYT: They Miss Rove Again

"Can we get Karl Rove? Can we really get him?"

You can just hear the urgency, the fervid anticipation in the voices around the editorial board room of the NYTimes. They missed him with the Plame Game, but maybe now, with AG AG and the federal prosecutors ...

So, with sweaty palms and furtive eyes, they launched today's salvo: "E-Mail Shows Rove's Role in Fate of Prosecutors."

Except the emails don't do anything of the sort.

Refresher course: When President Bush took office, something he accomplished with Karl Rove's help, he set three goals for anyone who wanted to serve as a U.S. attorney: Prosecute voter fraud, prosecute immigration offenses, particularly by business, and pursue federal death penalty cases. Anyone who accepted a position as a U.S. Attorney knew what was expected of them.

Presumably, someone in DC would be tasked with monitoring how those goals are being achieved, both in the consideration of fed prosecutors and evaluation of their performance. And guess what? It was so, says the NYT:

Almost every Wednesday afternoon, advisers to President Bush gather to strategize about putting his stamp on the federal courts and the United States attorney's offices.

The group meets in the Roosevelt Room and includes aides to the White House counsel, the chief of staff, the attorney general and Karl Rove, who also sometimes attends himself. Each of them signs off on every nomination.

Mr. Rove, a top adviser to the president, takes charge of the politics. As caretaker to the administration’s conservative allies, Mr. Rove relays their concerns, according to several participants in the Wednesday meetings. And especially for appointments of United States attorneys, he manages the horse trading.

The article then goes on to describe some of the horse trading. Perhaps a Senator who Bush had to burn a bit has a candidate for U.S. Attorney. Rove would then say, "If the candidate checks out, let's throw the Senator a bone." Or, as the article goes into in great detail regarding the Illinois investigation of former Republican governor, Rove enforced the political rule that U.S. Attorneys should be from the states in which they'll serve.

As the president's chief political advisor, that's exactly Rove's role: playing politics, rewarding allies, isolating opponents. You may want to check this out for yourself, but rumor has it such political play also was at work by Harold Ickes in Clinton's White House, and by senior political aides of Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman and FDR. So it is and was and will be.

Yet to the NYT, it's Rove, so it's different. There's just one problem with their analysis. They know they've got nothing on Rove in this messy heap of "journalism," yet they labored hard to bury that fact. But in the end, all they can say is that Rove was involved in the hiring of federal prosecutors; nothing in the story mentions his meddling in their firing -- not that such meddling would be wrong in any way, since U.S. attorneys serve at the president's will.

The story mentions problems with investigations of political corruption in Washington and New Mexico, and tries to make Rove the man behind the curtain that we're not supposed to pay attention to:

In the months before the United States attorneys in New Mexico and Washington State were ousted, Mr. Rove joined a chorus of complaints from state Republicans that the federal prosecutors had failed to press charges in Democratic voter fraud cases. While planning a June 21, 2006, White House session to discuss the prosecutors, for example, a Rove deputy arranged for top Justice Department officials to meet with an important Bush supporter who was critical of New Mexico’s federal prosecutor about voter fraud.

Wait. There was a "chorus of complaints?" It wasn't just Rove? You mean, perhaps a lot of people were aware that something was going wrong in the federal atty offices of New Mex and Washington, where directive #1, prosecution of voter fraud, was just not happening the way it should?

And Rove's reaction to this chorus? Was it something particularly devious? Was it "Off with their heads?" No, he worked to placate an important contributor, which is what he is supposed to do. Protect the base, protect the fundraising, represent the president well.

Of course, sometimes Rove's role was to push a new candidate that could help achieve the President's objectives and score some political points in the process. Securing a position for such a person would require the removal of the attorney currently serving, so this is the door the NYT wants to drive a big truck through: Karl Rove axed so-and-so so a Bush Buddy could get the job. Again, they fail to come up with anything; this is as close as they got:

In Arkansas, Representative John Boozman, the state’s highest ranking Republican in Congress, said he recommended Mr. Rove’s protégé, Mr. Griffin, for a United States attorney vacancy in 2004, in part because of his ties to Mr. Rove.

A prosecutor in the Army Reserves, Mr. Griffin worked for Mr. Rove as an opposition researcher attacking Democratic presidential candidates in 2000. In between, for six months, the Justice Department had dispatched him to Arkansas to get experience as a prosecutor.

“I have been in situations through the years where Tim and Karl were at,” Mr. Boozman recalled. “I could tell that Karl thought highly of him.” -

Mr. Griffin dropped out of the running in 2004 when he accepted a campaign job for Mr. Rove, then became his deputy in the White House. But last summer, the department asked United States Attorney H. E. Cummins III to resign to make room and Mr. Rove’s staff began talking with department officials about how to install Mr. Griffin despite Senate opposition, internal e-mail shows.

No Rovian fingerprints are announced; a routine dismissal through routine channels followed by designing a confirmation campaign is the best the journalistic stars at the NYT can come up with -- and if they bothered to look at Dem administrations half as scrupulously as they pore over every Bush/Rove move, they would find this is BAU -- business as usual -- in politics.

Bottom line: Having nothing didn't keep the NYT from slapping a headline and a photo on this mess and waving it before the world so those who don't take the time to read the two-clicker will come away with the impression that Rove fired federal attorneys.

It was just another big "expose" that exposes nothing more than the MSM's relentless pursuit of their prey. This time, the fox again outran the hounds.

Hat-tip: memeorandum

Half-Truth Hillary And The Lazy Media

Hillary logged in today on the federal attorney filing, saying we must not draw parallels between her hubby's federal attorney firing spree and the Bush Admin's firing of eight attorneys:

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday dismissed any comparison between the firing last fall of eight U.S. attorneys with the replacement of 93 U.S. attorneys when her husband became president in 1993.

"That's a traditional prerogative of an incoming president," Clinton said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Once U.S. attorneys are confirmed, they should be given broad latitude to enforce the law as they see fit, she said.

"I think one of the hallmarks of our democracy is we have a devotion to the rule of law," Clinton said.

ASK THE FOLLOW-UP QUESTION YOU BOZO! What about the 30 federal attorneys your hubby fired during the course of his administration, after the traditional preprogative, Hil?

Here's a sound clip of Laura Ingraham and Sen. Specter from this morning when Laura raises the "other 30," and here's a link to a discussion of the same on Sweetness and Light.

This is second-grade math, not rocket science. Clinton fired 93, and over the course of his term hired 123. Subtract the little number from the big number and you see that Clinton & Reno had 30 additional vacancies to fill as his term progressed -- vacancies made as almost a third of his original 93 were shown the door.

Why were they shown the door? We don't know. No one in the media or Congress made a big deal of it when it happened under Bill's watch.

Note to the politically naive: This is not Bill's watch.

1% Prosecution Rate, And We Should Keep Him?

Fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias answers the question I raised yesterday in his NYT op/ed today. Here's what I wrote:

Atty Gen Alberto Gonzales is enforcing three Bush directives through his federal attorneys:

• Prosecuting voter fraud
• Prosecuting illegal aliens and those that knowingly employ them
• Pushing hard for death penalties in federal caes.

Should a federal prosecutor fail to aggressively pursue these cases, the Bush administration has every justification should they choose to show that prosecutor the door.

And what kind of prosecutor would have a problem with those directions? A dem perhaps?

His direct answer is no, a Republican, recommended by Senator Pete Domenici. But dig a little deeper. Here's how Iglesias described his actions on voter fraud -- the only one of the three priorities he wrote about.

What’s more, their narrative has largely ignored that I was one of just two United States attorneys in the country to create a voter-fraud task force in 2004. Mine was bipartisan, and it included state and local law enforcement and election officials.

After reviewing more than 100 complaints of voter fraud, I felt there was one possible case that should be prosecuted federally.

I know nothing about these 100 cases, but on the surface, it looks like rejecting 99 cases, then slowly prosecuting one just might brush up against underperforming.

As Dick Morris says today in Real Clear Politics, this "is the most fabricated and phony of scandals."

Why The Dems Don't Like AG AG

Atty Gen Alberto Gonzales is enforcing three Bush directives through his federal attorneys:

• Prosecuting voter fraud
• Prosecuting illegal aliens and those that knowingly employ them
• Pushing hard for death penalties in federal caes.

Should a federal prosecutor fail to aggressively pursue these cases, the Bush administration has every justification should they choose to show that prosecutor the door.

And what kind of prosecutor would have a problem with those directions? A dem perhaps?

Someone who doesn't want voter fraud cases aggressively investigated? Why wouldn't they want voter fraud investigated? ... unless maybe it's the Dems who play the fraud game.

Someone who thinks illegals should have the same civil rights as us? Someone who's against the death penalty?

No wonder the dems are mad "underperforming" were fired! And no wonder they're pursuing this non-crisis. They don't like AG AG, they know decisions like this always involve Karl Rove, and it's another opportunity to bash Bush. They're so crazy, in fact, that they seem to have lost sight of the fact that just maybe they may have a Dem in the White House again some day:

The Senate, meanwhile, voted to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend the Justice Department and White House purged eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a change in the Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority. (source)

Of course the bill will go nowhere -- it's just another whacko Dem initiative doomed to failure because they don't seem to realize they have a slim majority. But if you want to have some fun (sickening fun, I admit) imagine the law in effect, Hillary in the White House, and the power to exert her power stripped by the doofus 07 Dems.

Tee-hee. (Except for the Hillary as president part.)

Dem Scandal-Making Machine Sputters On

Who would want to be a politician if Patrick Leahy stood as role model?

If he's the model, here's the lesson: To be a senator, lie about other people lying. Leahy is particulary adept at being a lying sack, which is one reason (other than pretty much never having pancakes any more) I no longer use maple syrup.

Here's his lie about lying today, speaking about the federal prosecutor non-scandal:

"I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this. I do not believe in this, we'll have a private briefing for you where we'll tell you everything, and they don't."

Yeah, yeah the Dems are so open. Like their fully transparent approach to Clinton's firing of every single federal prosecutor -- a firing that almost certainly saved the seat (figuratively and literally) of the amazingly corrupt Dem chair of Ways & Means, Dan Rostenkowski.

Attorney General Janet Reno today [March 24, 1993] demanded the prompt resignation of all United States Attorneys, leading the Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia to suggest that the order could be tied to his long-running investigation of Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a crucial ally of President Clinton.

Jay B. Stephens, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is a Bush Administration holdover, said he had advised the Justice Department that he was within 30 days of making a "critical decision" in the Rostenkowski case when Ms. Reno directed him and other United States Attorneys to submit their resignations, effective in a matter of days....

At a news conference today only hours after one by Ms. Reno, Mr. Stephens said he would not resist the Attorney General's move to force him from office, and he held back from directly accusing her of interfering with the Rostenkowski inquiry.

But Mr. Stephens left the strong impression that Ms. Reno's actions might disrupt the investigation as he moved toward a decision on whether to seek charges against the Illinois Democrat, who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

"This case has been conducted with integrity," Mr. Stephens said, "and I trust the decisions in this case will not be made based on political considerations.".....

Rostenkowski, of course, ultimately was indicted, forced to resign and convicted -- a loss for the Dem party that many think cost Hillary her health care program, which the bulldog Rostenkowski might have forced through.

I don't think Leahy will ask Hillary or Reno testify in his quest for no lies.

As for the current sabre-rattling by the Dems, Mark at RedState sums it up well:

It seems a little too precious to me that United States Attorneys can be appointed based in part upon the recommendation of politicians and politically connected people in the district, but they cannot be removed for the same reason. Either insulate all Federal prosecutors from the political process, or accept that they hold political positions and will sometimes become the victim of political winds.

As for Miers and Rove, They are (were) the two closest advisors to the president on matters legal and political respectively. Of course they were involved in this. Of course they had recommendations, that's in their job descriptions.

I ask again, where is the scandal here? Are we as Republicans and conservatives going to submit to the fact that there was wrongdoing just because the Democrats and the media say so? Rather, I suspect that this whole push by the Democrats is to make Federal prosecutors gun shy about investigating Democrats.

What a pathetic waste the Dems are making of their Congressional leadership. They might have used their power to show their positive side, but lacking a positive sign, they are left to model behavior that would scare any decent person far, far away from politics.