White House consel Fred Fielding, having promised an answer by today to Congressional requests for documents and testimony, announced he needed more time to think about it. John Conyers and Linda Chavez, chairs respectively of the House Judiciary Committee and the relevant subcommittee, said that while he was thinking they'd be sending subpoenas.
I can think of only three interpretations:
1. Fielding and the rest of the Bushoids haven't yet adjusted to the fact that Capitol Hill is no longer a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bush & Co.
2. Incompetence is so deeply ingrained in the culture of Bush and the people around him that they can't do anything right, even when their political lives are on the line. (See also "Iraq, occupation of.")
3. There's something so poisonous in the documents or in whatever parts of people's memories haven't suddenly become "hazy" that it's worth a losing battle over subpoenas just to kick the can down the road for a few weeks. Note that this would have to be worse than the stuff that's already come out of DoJ. Best bet on this option: an email that specifically refers to Carol Lam's indictment of Dusty Foggo or to the broadening of that investigation to include House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis. That would bring the scandal clearly into "obstruction of justice" territory, with a possibility of seeing the long-awaited Karl Rove frog-march.
It's not true that the cover-up is always more damaging than the crime. Sometimes the crime is so bad that it's better to take the heat for the cover-up.
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