Lois Lerner Held in Contempt

by JASmius

They did it.  They really, finally did it.

Won't matter a hill of beans in the Crimea, but at least they did it:

A U.S. House committee voted to hold former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about her role in scrutinizing Tea Party groups seeking tax exemptions.

The vote today by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was 21-12, along party lines.

“We represent the people and they deserve an answer,” said Representative Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican.

We're never going to get one, and neither will Congressman Walberg, but I sympathize with the unrequited sentiment.

The action follows yesterday’s vote by the House Ways and Means Committee to ask the Justice Department to consider criminal charges against Lerner. Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has said the full House would hold Lerner in contempt if she refused to testify.

That won't accomplish anything, either.  But the rancorous floor debate should be worthy of pay-per-view.

“The American people deserve the truth about what happened,” Boehner said today.

We're never going to get one, and....oh, yeah, already covered that.

Republicans on the Oversight committee, including panel Chairman Darrell Issa of California, say Lerner waived her constitutional rights against self-incrimination last year by stating that she had done nothing wrong before refusing to answer questions. Democrats disagreed. 

“Trying to rip up the Constitution and run roughshod over the Bill of Rights is not a path to truth,” said Representative Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat. “It is merely political theater.”

Savor the cynical irony, gentles.  And this after today's Elijah Cummings bombshell.  It could eat its way through industrial-grade lead.

If the full House finds Lerner in contempt, the matter would be referred to federal prosecutors.

Who work for....Eric "The Red" Holder, whose panties are still in a wad over being challenged by his "inferiors" over his own stymied contempt of Congress conviction yesterday.  Not that he would have been any likelier to have cooperated with a Lerner contempt prosecution before that.

Which is not to say that Darrell Issa's committee, and the House majority, aren't doing everything they can and should to try to bring this woman and, eventually, her masters to justice.  If we were not in a permanent constitutional crisis, facing an administration instead of a Regime, led by a president instead of a dictator, to whom the Constitution and the rule of law mattered a hill of beans in the Crimea, the House GOP's actions would be momentous and devastating.  But then, if that were the case, there'd have been no IRS-gate to investigate in the first place.

But apart from that, I'm afraid it is, in a big picture sense, missing the point.  There's an old saying amongst military historians about generals "always fighting the last war" instead of anticipating the next one.  Of course, those the latter are always denounced by non-military historians as "warmongers," but I digress.  Chairman Issa's committee has been flailing for a year and a half trying to futiley find away around the Obama Regime's impregnable blockade of IRSgate while the latter has already formalized, institutionalized, and entrenched the partisan weaponization of the federal bureaucracy, the effects of which will make themselves agonizingly felt this fall.  And then....what?  Assuming Republicans still hold the House, will another wheel-spinning expedition of IRSgate II commence, while the Regime is off to the races already with IRSgate III?

Again, this isn't a knock on Issa or any other GOPer; it simply illustrates that constitutional processes are inadequate to cope with the assaults of extra-constitutional actors.  There's a reason why John Adams once declared that the form and system of government bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers could only function with a moral and just populace.  That's because everybody has to voluntarily submit to the same set of rules and laws in order for it to work.  But if an amoral and corrupt electorate elects as its president a radical, authoritarian extremist who refuses to even acknowledge the existence of any limitations on his power, then there is no constitutional means of bringing such a tyrannical creature to heel.

This is why the Founders were not bashful about uttering the "r" word, and in fact fully expected that periodic public uprisings against tyrannical detours would prove necessary.  That there hasn't been one in over two centuries would likely have astonished them - just as the need for one in the very near future, and our likely incapacity to mount one, would have appalled them.

Surprised?  Probably not.  But appalled?  Absolutely.