Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Boehner to proceed with vote.

 So...What do you think will be the end result of all of this?

House will go ahead with contempt vote

Speaker John Boehner (BAY'-nur) says the House will move forward with a contempt of Congress vote against Attorney General Eric Holder over the botched gun-tracking operation known as Fast and Furious.
The Ohio Republican told reporters Wednesday that last-minute talks with the White House about releasing documents had failed to avert the vote. President Barack Obama has asserted executive privilege to keep the documents secret, but Republicans say there's no basis for that.
The issue has political implications this election year. The National Rifle Association is keeping score, prompting some Democrats to join Republicans in voting for contempt. Such a citation would not cause the release of more documents on the operation, in which guns were allowed to "walk" from Arizona to Mexico in hopes they could be tracked.
And according to Wikipedia reference on contempt of congress, this is what could (should) be done to Eric Holder: but don't hold your breath waiting on the sergeant at arms to arrest him. If i know holder and this rogue administration, Holder will surround himself with federal agents and deny access to anyone attempting to arrest him and Barack Obama will support the action.

Meanwhile, the American press (media) will support the action as a novel undertaking in America's three tiered system of government.


Inherent contempt

Under this process, the procedure for holding a person in contempt involves only the chamber concerned. Following a contempt citation, the person cited is arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House or Senate, brought to the floor of the chamber, held to answer charges by the presiding officer, and then subjected to punishment as the chamber may dictate (usually imprisonment for punishment reasons, imprisonment for coercive effect, or release from the contempt citation).
Concerned with the time-consuming nature of a contempt proceeding and the inability to extend punishment further than the session of the Congress concerned (under Supreme Court rulings), Congress created a statutory process in 1857. While Congress retains its "inherent contempt" authority and may exercise it at any time, this inherent contempt process was last used by the Senate in 1934, in a Senate investigation of airlines and the U.S. Postmaster. After a one-week trial on the Senate floor (presided over by the Vice-President of the United States, acting as Senate President), William P. MacCracken, Jr., a lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics who had allowed clients to rip up subpoenaed documents, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment.[5]
MacCracken filed a petition of habeas corpus in federal courts to overturn his arrest, but after litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had acted constitutionally, and denied the petition in the case Jurney v. MacCracken.[6][7]
Presidential pardons appear not to apply to a civil contempt procedure such as the above, since it is not an "offense against the United States" or against "the dignity of public authority."[8]

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