Spectator Sport

Leahy fumbles the ball:

"The time is up. The time is up," Leahy announced yesterday. "We've waited long enough."

But what would Leahy do about it? The first questioner riddled Batman with this.

"The full Judiciary Committee will have to sit down and determine whether to seek contempt from the full Senate," said the noncommittal action hero.

Does that mean he would seek a contempt-of-Congress citation? "What I want to do is get the response to these things," Leahy demurred.

Rebecca Carr of Cox News tried again to pin him down, but Leahy continued to escape. "What we have to find out is what happened here," he answered.

How about withholding money from the administration? "Let's take it step by step," he proposed.

Holy incrementalism, Batman!

He had a chance to back up his words with action and demonstrate that Congress still has relevance, but he blew it. I think many of our well-meaning Washington actors do not understand how this sport is played. They think they can say anything or do anything and get away with it. Unfortunately for them, unlike a real sport, there is no coach who decides who to bench and who to field, and there are no last minute comebacks. In this sport, if your fans decide that you are not playing up to snuff they can vote you off the team. Furthermore, politicians words and actions shape their fans' opinions of them. It seems to me that the Beltway crowd views the media and punditry as their coach, which could not be further from reality.

Maybe politics really is a spectator sport after all - but one in which the spectators actually count for something.

Frogmarch

Leahy:

“Earlier this month, Karl Rove failed to comply with the Judiciary Committee's subpoena to testify about the mass firings of United States Attorneys. Despite evidence that he played a central role in these firings, just as he did in the Libby case involving the outing of an undercover CIA agent and improper political briefings at over 20 government agencies, Mr. Rove acted as if he was above the law. That is wrong. Now that he is leaving the White House while under subpoena, I continue to ask what Mr. Rove and others at the White House are so desperate to hide. Mr. Rove’s apparent attempts to manipulate elections and push out prosecutors citing bogus claims of voter fraud shows corruption of federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes, and the Senate Judiciary Committee will continue its investigation into this serious issue.

“The list of senior White House and Justice Department officials who have resigned during the course of these congressional investigations continues to grow, and today, Mr. Rove added his name to that list. There is a cloud over this White House, and a gathering storm. A similar cloud envelops Mr. Rove, even as he leaves the White House.”

Bring it.