Rove's Role

Scott Horton on the House getting Rove to testify:

What emerges from McClellan’s portrait is a Karl Rove who plays fast and loose with the criminal justice system and who misleads the press regularly about his own dealings, usually picking surrogates as the vehicles for his more preposterous misstatements. And that, of course, is precisely the charge that former Governor Siegelman has very convincingly laid at Rove’s doorstep.

Today’s New York Times takes a look at the Rove-Siegelman business and comes to the obvious conclusion: Karl Rove needs to be sworn and subjected to rigorous interrogation before an appropriate Congressional oversight committee.

And in this case, that means the House Judiciary Committee, which is probing allegations of politically manipulated prosecution and has already found a mound of evidence...

The House has the inherent power to arrest and hold a person who flouts its subpoenas. It’s an authority that hasn’t been used for decades. But Karl Rove offers the best case in recent memory for dusting off this power and putting it to use. The issues at stake are enormous. They include the integrity of the criminal justice process and the notion that the Congress can use the powers the Constitution vests in it to examine serious misconduct in the Executive Branch. At present, the Justice Department has reached its modern reputational low point, and the Congress is widely perceived as a constitutional hood ornament. Resolve and action are long past due.