Sipsey Street Irregulars: David Hardy: If the House REALLY wants to press the contempt issue...

Friday, June 29, 2012

David Hardy: If the House REALLY wants to press the contempt issue...

Of course the GOP lacks the stones, but . . .

There is the "inherent contempt" power, where the House orders the arrest of the defendant, and can try him then and there, and pass sentence. It hasn't been used since 1934, when the Senate sentenced a fellow who destroyed evidence to ten days in jail. It was upheld by the Supreme Court in Jurney v. MacCracken, 294 U.S. 125 (1935). ("Here, we are concerned, not with an extension of congressional privilege, but with vindication of the established and essential privilege of requiring the production of evidence. For this purpose, the power to punish for a past contempt is an appropriate means.") The House sends out its Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the defendant, he is tried on the spot, and the House decides whether to convict.

All the more ironic, in that not too many years ago the Demos were suggesting its use against a Republican administration. One pointed out that the the Capitol has an unused jail cell for just that occasion.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: Actually Pelosi VERY recently, and incorrectly, claimed she could have used this strategy to arrest Karl Rove. I say show her how it's done!; June 29, 2012 at 8:28 AM
CowboyDan said...: It could happen. I don't expect it WILL, but it could.

We're he to be confined in the Capitol, would the same rules of inmate conduct apply as if he we're in Lorton?

Those guys don't play, bu t I imagine having EH as your only prisoner would be no fun at all. No phone, no pool, no pets, powdered eggs for breakfast, baloney or peanut butter for lunch and dinner, an hour a dayvout of the cell, ..; June 29, 2012 at 9:53 AM
Anonymous said...: Saw a snippet a bit ago that some in CONgress are well aware that they can indeed jail (with)holder. Jason Chaffetz said that is the 3rd and last option that the Oversight committee has at its disposal. It would be the Sgt @ Arms of the house to make the physical arrest. NOW that would be a pay-per-view event worth watching!; June 29, 2012 at 12:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Caligula: Would that the Roman people had but one neck!

Similarly, if BHO the Brave, Eric (with)Holder, Nappy the Clown and the Lizard Queen occupied but one Capitol jail cell, it would make logistics much simpler. ;^)

MALTHUS; June 29, 2012 at 1:15 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Friday, June 29, 2012

David Hardy: If the House REALLY wants to press the contempt issue...

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