According to Fox, the Dem Representatives are planning to walk out during the debate on AG Holder’s contempt debate/vote. This won’t stop anything since there will still be a quorum left so my questions for y’all.
2a) Will a walkout help or hurt Holder?
2b) And by extension, help or hurt Obama?
The vote and walkout won’t help or hurt anybody because there is precisely zero room for any other political story right now. If anything the timing is great for Holder, Obama, and the Democrats.
As to (3) the GOP will be forced to do something (even if it’s just another contempt vote) if they want to keep the story going. The AG will not resign. And the public only barely seems to care (and certainly not today).
Yea, from the GOP’s point of view, this is kind of dumb timing. I guess they must’ve figured the SCOTUS would reach a decision earlier in the month when they came up with the original schedule.
In anycase, I doubt they’ll get much mileage out of this. Holder isn’t going to resign and the House isn’t going to impeach him. A few NRA voters who need a reason to get worked up against a President that hasn’t actually done anything to restrict their gun rights will get worked up, so Issa will get what he’s really looking for and that’ll be the end of it.
I don’t think they scheduled the contempt vote all that long ago, though.
Maybe they thought that if SCOTUS shot down Obamacare (like pretty much everyone was predicting) this would be a double hit on the administration in the same day?
If “contempt of Congress” meant what its plain language seems to mean, there would be 300 million cases to be brought. And this Holder thing will only add to that number.
Breaking news: In a 255-67 vote, the House finds Holder in Contempt.
Glad they are still focused laser-like on jobs and the economy. 
Coming when it did, it couldn’t look any more petty and political.
The Republicans really should be ashamed of themselves, but they just don’t care anymore.
There is almost no practical value to it. The contempt vote means that congress will pass this to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia who is unlikely to try to prosecute his boss. The civil contempt motion will have the republicans going to court to get the court to order Holder to hand over documents but the courts are traditionally reluctant to override a claim of executive privilege.
So much theatrics and hand waving but that is about all it is. The reps are playing to their base but then their base is, well their base so not like they are garnering new votes with this.
Well Holder made a killing with all the gun sales. He should at least get the credit he for it.
I’m assuming the story as it has been presented so far by the media is well-known. In this recent article from Fortune, however, another account is given, which contends "that the public case alleging that [Lead ATF Agent] Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies.
How the evidence presented in the article, which contradicts accounts up to now, was unearthed by Fortune but not examined by the House, is not clear to me. It does suggest a certain ineptitude by the House committee, and that’s putting it lightly.
Great Debates thread here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=656680&highlight=furious
Don’t care that that might turn out to be inaccurate. That’s a good joke, and deserves recognition.
And 108 Dems did walk out in protest.
And now, the DOJ refuses to prosecute Holder.
I guess it would take a special counsel to do anything with this citation, and, in fact, Senate Pubs have called for one – that is, for Holder to appoint one.
BTW, this is often referred to in public discourse as a “special prosecutor.” But, the term “special prosecutor” is twice-obsolete, it was replaced by “independent counsel,” and the U.S. Office of the Independent Counsel was abolished in 1999 and replaced by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel. The current Special Counsel is Patrick Fitzgerald. He would have to handle this, I guess, unless Congress passes a new law.
Bet they wish now they’d done that – that is, revived the office of a Special Prosecutor independent of the DOJ – before Obama took office.
The Republicans control the House. Is that clear?
Crystal. I was merely refraining from making any accusations without actual evidence to back them up.
Well, don’t let the House hear you.
I don’t see anything at all coming from this.
So the DoJ won’t prosecute Holder? Sounds like a conflict of interest and protectiong your own. Given that development, why wouldn’t the House impeach Holder?
Because it would be a monumental waste of time and energy? And bad politics to boot?
Do you really think the GOP and Mitt Romney want the House holding impeachment hearings over something that nobody cares about in the middle of a campaign? Madness.
This seems like a despicable sequence of events on the part of the executive branch and I personally want it investigated. It’s not even close to the same scope as the whole Iran-Contra affair but it feels more than superficially in the same class and the truth should be dug out. The whole executive privilege thing seems like political maneuvering but I want the truth out.
Contempt of Congress probably doesn’t qualify as a “high crime or misdemeanor”. It was one of the three charges against Nixon, but none of the other 17 prior impeachment involved contempt of Congress.