Argue With My Dad

According to a story in Raw Story,(http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Secret_Service_en_route_to_Bidens_0822.html) the Secret Service was heading to Biden’s house to begin their protection of the probable Democratic VP choice. Of the people being mentioned as candidates being considered for the VP spot, Biden is the most qualified and the most Progressive.  If this story is true, I commend Obama for his choice.  Biden will be a good choice for the campaign to fight back against the lies and distortions being spewed by the McCain slime machine. 

It will be interesting to see if Obama takes advantage of a week’s worth of intense media coverage of the Democratic Convention.  I am also very interested in seeing if Hillary Clinton really does do the right thing by exhorting her supporters to get behind Obama without any hesitation.  I have my doubts, but we will know shortly. 

I am constantly amazed that this Bush regime continues to stick its foot into its mouth.  Have they been sleeping for the last 5 plus years?  I ask this question because of the remarks that Bush has made subsequent to the Russian/Georgia skirmishes and now Condoleeza Rice has shown the world just how stupid the George W. Bush administration is.   After invading Iraq in 2003 and bombing sites in Pakistan and several other 3rd world sites, our esteemed Secretary of State chastises the Russians by saying, “ But I just want to emphasize again, Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used, that will make it – that – when it wishes to deliver a message, and that’s its military power. That’s not the way to deal in the 21^st century. And if Russia wishes to make a different strategic choice, as President Medvedev said, this is a bad way to start. And so Russia has already done significant damage to its own image, its own reputation, and its own suitability for any – for full integration into the international community. ” http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/08/108552.htm. 

According to Secretary Rice, Russia is a rogue nation because it used its military power to deliver a message to another country.  Has she forgotten about our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq?  Was Bush over medicated during the time the decision was made to invade Iraq?  How could Russia dare to take a page out of the George W. Bush/ Dick Cheney foreign policy book by attacking Georgia?

Of course, John McCain also displayed his foreign policy genius by calling out Russia and stating “My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression. ” http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/15/mccain-russia/  It is obvious that McCain has been asleep for decades because he can’t think of another serious international crisis since the end of the Cold War!  Someone better whisper in McCain’s ear that maybe our invasion of Iraq might be considered a serious crisis.  Then you can also add in the war in Afghanistan, the first Persian Gulf war, just to name a couple.  I am sure that the arguewithmydad.com readers can add a few more to the list.  I guess when you are up all night waiting for that “3AM call” your mind gets a little cloudy. Especially if you are a recovering alcoholic and Father Time himself. But what’s Condi’s excuse??     

Recently, Attorney General Michael Mukasey told the American Bar Association that the Justice Department officials who politicized the Department will not be prosecuted because “The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity.”http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2008/ag-speech-0808121.html.   Can you imagine that?  The chief Law Enforcement official in the country won’t prosecute these people because they have suffered enough! Check out this linked Think Progress article that discusses Mukasey’s latest abuse of the rule of law.  http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/12/mukasey-prosecute/ .

What is striking to me is that we all heard before and during Mukasey’s confirmation hearings that he was more principled and more intelligent and less partisan than his predecessor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.  He was more principled and less partisan, but he wouldn’t even admit that waterboarding constituted torture.  This even though U.S. and International law already labeled waterboarding as torture.  And Mukasey even ignored U.S. precedent of prosecuting Americans and foreigners for waterboarding detainees or American service personnel.  How anyone who was allegedly very intelligent and non-partisan could react in this arrogant and bold fashion is one of the most amazing aspects of the felonious George W. Bush regime.

In a recent Raw Story article that discussed George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley’s comments on Keith Olbermann’s program, Turley said, “In response to a question from Olbermann about whether Mukasey is “just another Bush hack,” Turley replied, “It’s not fair to call him a sycophant like Alberto Gonzales, but he is a remarkable cynic.” http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Attorney_General_Mukasey_acting_without_0813.html.  What Prof. Turley seems to be saying is that Mukasey is worse than his Bush groupie predecessor Gonzales because of the attitude that he has taken since becoming Attorney General.  Mukasey has turned out to not only be just as partisan as Gonzales, he has even gone a step further.  As Prof. Turley states about Mukasey, “He seems to believe that he has the discretion not just to prosecute but to define what crimes are,” Turley explained. “He is treating himself as the sole decision-maker. … In so doing, he’s making a wonderful argument for re-instating the independent counsel act.”  According to Turley, Mukasey has become even more deliberate in his refusal to respect the rule of law and in his refusal to prosecute anyone associated with the Bush regime. 

We have seen that Mukasey is taking actions that “belie” his position as the chief Law Enforcement officer of the country.  We have seen that he is more arrogant in his dealings with Congress.  As evidenced in the aforementioned speech to the ABA, he is not shy in claiming the following statement which may become one of the most amazing official policies ever promulgated by a U.S. Attorney General when he says, ”But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws”.  http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2008/ag-speech-0808121.html  Only from the Bush regime can the chief Law Enforcement Officer state that a violation of the law is not a crime!  I am beginning to dream of the good old stupid Gonzales days.

We have all heard the stories that uncovered the facts of the U.S. Torture program under the George W. Bush regime.  In Jane Mayer’s latest book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals”, we now learn just how deeply involved our infamous Vice President, Dick Cheney and his Assistant and later Counsel, David Addington were in this illegal program.  In this recent Think Progress story examining a New York Times Book Review of Mayer’s book, we learn that our fearless VP was against releasing even innocent detainees because he was afraid they would get attorneys and start telling everyone what was going on at the so-called black sites. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/04/cheneys-argument-for-not-releasing-innocent-detainees-they%e2%80%99ll-all-get-lawyers/

In this New York Times article, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Brinkley-t.html?pagewanted=2&ref=review, we get the “Full Monty” on just how devious and disgusting our Vice President is.  In 2005 when the Torture people were trying to keep the torture program going, even though there was “…considerable evidence of the failure of SERE and other programs, because they feared being prosecuted should the program be halted and exposed. ” These brave souls who ordered others to do the dirty work of torturing people, were afraid that they may be held criminally prosecuted for their illegal activities.  If they were following the law as argued by Yoo and others, why were they worried about being prosecuted?  The Mayer book, as detailed in the New York Times, even quotes our favorite Vice President as follows: “People will ask where they’ve been and ‘What have you been doing with them?’” Cheney said in a White House meeting. “They’ll all get lawyers.”   Cheney was not concerned that released detainees might try to kill Americans.  He was shaking in his boots that he would be found out for the criminal torturer that he is.  The man who has no problem ordering men and women in our military into battle, does not have the intestinal fortitude to go to the mat and defend his allegedly legal program.

Cheney and the rest of his Torture Team are criminals that need to be brought to justice.  Justice will only be served when the full details of the Torture program are sanitized by the sunlight of open disclosure and these felons are brought in front of a judge to enter their plea.  Jane Mayer’s book is the beginning of that process.  Justice may be slow, but Cheney and his cabal will be looking for their own attorneys in the near future.   

It has been a busy month here at arguewithmydad.com and even “Dad” has to take some time off.  To that end, “Mom” and I and the whole family will be attending a family wedding in the Red state of West Virginia.  My Niece is getting married and it is an event that we can’t miss.  It should be a great time and we are looking forward to it.  Feel free to leave your comments in my absence.  I will do my best, when I return on Monday to respond to your thoughts.  Thanks to all of our regulars and the newcomers for making July a busy month on arguewithmydad.com.  Have a great weekend and we will see you next week.  Check out The Jonathan Turley Blog and the other blogs that we have set up links to on arguewithmydad.com.  I believe that you will enjoy them as much as I do.  See you soon.

It is not news that we didn’t expect, but the sheer quantity of lawbreaking by Monica Goodling and other assistants to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in the Bush Justice Department,  is breathtaking.  In a report issued today by the Office of Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, both departments of the Department of Justice, we learn that Monica Goodling was more involved in the hiring of “good Republicans” to U.S. Attorney jobs and Immigration Judges positions than originally known.  In the 146 page report which we have linked here, http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0807/final.pdf, it also discloses the role the White House played in this illegal politicization process.

In a Think Progress article that quotes an AP story about the report, http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/doj-report-on-hiring/ , we learn that  ” In March 2006, Gonzales signed a highly confidential order delegating to his then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, and Goodling “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.” The most interesting part of that quote is the fact that this authorization from the U.S. Attorney General was “highly confidential”.  Once you see that line, you know we are talking about illegal activity.

Of course, once you see how Monica Goodling decided who should be hired into these non-political jobs, your head might start spinning.  In another Think Progress article, we learn that Goodling decided to not allow an experienced, Republican, counter-terrorism prosecutor to join the Counter Terrorism Detail because his wife was a Democrat.  http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/goodling-passed-over-experienced-counterterrorism-prosecutor-because-wife-was-a-democrat/  I want to make sure that we all understand what happened here.  The experienced prosecutor’s wife was a member and officer of the local Democratic party and Goodling did not approve of that arrangement.  What happened to the open position in the Counter Terrorism detail?  Another attorney was hired who was much less experienced than this award winning attorney who had the bad luck of falling in love with a Democrat.  Our Homeland Security was possibly weakened by Goodling’s political and illegal hiring decision, with the authorization of her immediate supervisor, and the Attorney General of the United State, Alberto Gonzalez.

In a LA Times story we also find out that the White House and even Karl Rove were involved in recommending the hiring of good Republicans to Immigration Judge positions. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-justice-politics,1,414400.story?page=2.  Can you imagine my surprise when I learned that Karl Rove was involved in illegally politicizing the U.S. Justice Department?  The LA Times story specifically tells us “Justice investigators concluded that the White House political affairs office recommended a majority of the immigration judge candidates that Sampson and Goodling considered hiring, including one name forwarded by then-top Bush adviser Karl Rove. Sampson has said he initially believed politics could be considered for filling those jobs, and the report shows Goodling researched applicants’ GOP bona fides, including campaign contributions and voter registration records.”  So once Goodling got the applicant from the White House or other Republican sponsors, she made sure that they were Good Republicans who were in awe of George W. Bush, as she was.

In order to save space and to not put my readers to sleep, I can’t go into all of the examples of the extreme positions that Goodling took to either hire or not hire prospective U.S. Attorneys and Immigration Judges. I will provide you links to some of the more interesting examples of Goodling’s excesses. This story shows us that Goodling decided to terminate an Assistant U.S. attorney based on allegations of a homosexual orientation.http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/goodling-gay/.  Another story tells us that Goodling utilized a complex Lexis/Nexis string “to screen candidates for affiliations or statements related to conservative flash points. The search string included such affiliations as homosexuality, abortion, and the 2000 Florida recount.”http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/goodling-googler/

According to this Truth Progess story, the report does not tell us if Goodling or Sampson or Gonzalez or any other officials will be subject to criminal charges.  http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/28/goodling-googler/.  Of course, Gonzo’s successor, Michael Mukasey has not agreed, as of yet, to hold any Justice Department individuals accountable for their crimes.  Rep. John Conyers has been quoted in the Gavel that his House Judiciary Committee will consider if a criminal referral to the Justice Department is necessary. http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=1457 

Where will all of this evidence of criminal activity lead?  It should lead to indictments and further investigations.  It should lead all the way to the White House officials that authorized and assisted in this lawbreaking.  But we have to remember that it is only July, 2008 and George W. Bush is still in the White House and his current Attorney General is on a very short leash.   

Now that the dust has settled on the comments by Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, that backed or supported the U.S. troop withdrawal plan that has been proposed by Barack Obama, we have a further update on this important slap in the face of the Bush administration and the John McCain campaign. In our last arguewithmydad.com posting(http://www.arguewithmydad.com/?p=164) we provided evidence that the original statement, that was later adjusted through the U.S. military Central Command’s office, was the accurate assessment of the Iraqi government.  We also provided evidence that the Bush Administration had pressured Mailiki to change his original statement.

Now we have further evidence that Maliki was not misquoted or a victim of a mistranslation.  First of all, it was reported that the translator used in the Der Spiegel article was from Maliki’s office. ”The interpreter for the interview worked for Maliki’s office, not Der Spiegel. The Times also double-checked the translation by obtaining an audio recording of Maliki’s interview, which was conducted in Arabic. Directly translated, it reads:

Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq. … Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/21/maliki-bush-call/)

 Secondly, Truth Progress links(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/22/der-spiegel-malikis-office-approved-withdrawal-quote-before-article-was-published/) to an article in The New Republic that states that Maliki’s office approved of the Der Spiegel article before it went to print. http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/22/maliki-s-endorsement-not-lost-in-translation.aspx  The McCain campaign and the Republican talking heads will ignore the truth, but you count on getting the straight news here at arguewithmydad.com.  

Even as word hit the media(http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/19/maliki-endorses-16-month-us-withdrawal-from-iraq/) that the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had agreed to the troop withdrawal policy put forth by Senator Barack Obama, the McCain camp and the Bush regime were running scared. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/19/mccain-camp-reacts-to-malikis-call-for-withdrawal-voters-dont-care-about-iraqi-leaders/  A McCain advisor reacted to the news in true McCain like fashion, ..”(a)prominent Republican strategist” who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said more candidly, “We’re f*cked.” 

What was the official response of the McCain campaign to this news?  Senior McCain advisor, Marc Armbinder, provided the following response,  “[V]oters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.” http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/19/mccain-camp-reacts-to-malikis-call-for-withdrawal-voters-dont-care-about-iraqi-leaders/.  That is exactly how you would expect the McCain camp to respond.  Mr. Foreign Policy doesn’t care what the Iraq government thinks about removing our troops from their own country.  In his arrogance he even goes further to state that American voters don’t care what the Iraqi Prime Minister says about Iraq.  I read that as McCain telling the American public, I don’t care what you think because Great-Grandpa knows best.  McCain even has the gall to claim that the voters are not going to care if the Iraq government doesn’t want our military there much longer.  This just begs the question, just who should decide what happens in Iraq?  

The McCain camp is saying two things in their official response.  First, they are saying that our military can’t be safe if we leave earlier than later.  So it is safer for our troops to stay in a hostile, occupied country than to bring them home.  That is McCain logic at its best.  Secondly, McCain is saying that the freely elected Iraqi government cannot make their own decisions on when a foreign occupier must leave Iraq.   I believe that in an earlier posting I stated that the Bush administration was dealing with Iraq oil in a manner that suggested that they don’t even own their own oil.  I believe I asked this question:  How did our oil get under the Iraqi sand? This Bush Administration arrogance seems to have a new contender in the arrogance competition: the John McCain campaign.

I guess John McCain has forgotten what he said in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations in April of 2004.  In that interview, the following question was asked and McCain’s answer is very enlightening:

“PETERSON: We’re now ready for questions. Please wait for the microphone, identify yourself, keep your questions to the point, if you would, and try to remember we have only one speaker here, speaker McCain. Our distinguished new head of the Washington office asked me to kick off one or two, senator, and let me try.

Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there? I understand it’s a hypothetical, but it’s at least possible.

McCAIN: Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because— if it was an elected government of Iraq— and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi  people.” (http://www.cfr.org/publication/6973/. (Emphasis added)

If only John McCain and his campaign staff had listened to John McCain in 2004, they may have gotten this issue correct. Now, arguewithmydad.com is all about giving its readers the latest information and to that end it has been reported today by Bloomberg(and Qman) that an Iraqi spokesman has stated that the Prime Minister was misquoted and mistranslated.  Very interesting timing for this story.  The German magazine that did the interview, Der Spiegel, stands by it story. Other media outlets like this Washington Monthly report state the following about the attempted withdrawal of Maliki’s statements:

“There’s just no way that all three of these passages were mistranslated. Maliki, for whatever reason (Mark Kleiman runs down the possibilities here), wants American troops out, and he wants them out sooner rather than later. There’s really no way to spin that away.

This is, obviously, bad news for John McCain. As Joe Klein says, McCain’s original support of the surge, which is his main talking point on Iraq policy, “is a small, tactical truth too complicated to be understood by most Americans. Maliki Endorses Obama Withdrawal Plan is a headline everyone can understand.”(http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_07/014129.php)   

Everyone can understand that, except maybe the John McCain campaign.  I think a law professor of mine said it best when discussing what happens after a jury hears bad information for one’s case and even though the judge instructs the jury to disregard this evidence, how do you “unring the bell”?  How does John McCain “unring the Maliki bell”?

We now know why the Bush regime was so anxious to get the Office of Legal Counsel(OLC) to issue a legal opinion that authorized torture of detainees.  Earlier today, former Attorney General John Ashcroft admitted under questioning in front of a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, that the CIA started torturing a detainee prior to receiving the infamous torture memos. As you will see in this Salon article,(http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/07/17/ashcroft/index.html) Ashcroft stated that the torturing of detainee Abu Zubaydah by the CIA “”was done without the opinion that was issued on the first of August.”  This same Salon article suggests that this new fact may make it easier to prosecute the parties involved in the illegal torture program.   It looks like the Bush regime may have started their illegal torture program a little too early. 

We also learn in this article that the Zubaydah torture began soon after March 28, 2002 and the OLC torture memo was not issued until August 1, 2002.  This is an important point that I am sure won’t be stressed enough in the Mainstream media. The reason why this may be a very important issue is that the Red Cross has warned the Bush regime that their torture activities could be considered as War Crimes.  We learned of this first in this Jonathan Turley article,http://jonathanturley.org/2008/07/11/book-red-cross-informed-administration-that-officials-could-be-tried-for-war-crimes/, wherein Professor Turley discussed the Red Cross report that was first reported in Jane Mayer’s new book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.”    Professor Turley’s article also linked to this New York Times article that discussed the new book and its revelations in more detail.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/washington/11detain.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

If the Mayer book is correct that the Red Cross determined the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were actually torture, then it is not a large leap of reasoning to state that the parties who authorized and engaged in that torture could be subject to charges of war crimes in an international tribunal. Not only is the timing of the authorization possibly important for domestic legal reasons, it could also add to the Bush Regime’s legal woes in the international community. If you look at this Harpers article by Scott Horton, http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/hbc-90003234, you will read Horton’s interview of Jane Mayer about her book mentioned earlier.  In the interview, Mayer tells us that her sources have suggested that the Bush regime has been very worried about the possibility of prosecution over the torture program. As Mayer puts it,  ”…. my reporting shows that inside the White House there has been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees. This nervousness resulted in the successful effort to add retroactive immunity to the Military Commission Act. Cheney personally spearheaded this effort. Fear of the consequences of exposure also weighed heavily in discussions about whether to shut the CIA program down. In White House meetings, Cheney warned that if they transferred the CIA’s prisoners to Guantanamo, “people will want to know where they have been—and what we’ve been doing with them.” Alberto Gonzales, a source said, “scared” everyone about the possibility of war crimes prosecutions. It was on their minds.”   This is an amazing revelation.  It actually suggests that Alberto Gonzalez may have actually admitted that the interrogation techniques might trigger “war crime prosecutions”.

This book and its revelations could break the torture debate wide open. Not even the Bush talking heads could successfully discredit the International Red Cross’ determination that Georgie was caught in a war crime. Stay tuned to this one.  It could get interesting. 

There is so much news going on lately that it was hard to decide on my next topic of discussion. Between all of the election stories, I noticed the news that our old buddy, Karl Rove, had skipped his subpoena and refused to show up at a Congressional hearing earlier this week. I first saw the story on the Jonathan Turley website(a favorite of mine) that is linked here: http://jonathanturley.org/2008/07/10/rove-again-refuses-to-testify-under-subpoena/ . Professor Turley links to a CNN story that describes the basics behind the subpoena and Rove’s refusal to appear.(http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/10/rove.subpoena/index.html) 

When I dug a little deeper I found a story about the Congressional Committee hearing that Karl blew off on Fire Dog Lake which I have linked here:(http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/10/rove.subpoena/index.html)  In this story a Republican Congressman named Cannon stated that Karl was out of the country on a trip that was allegedly arranged long before the subpoena was an issue.  Of course, the same story informs us that Rove’s attorney never mentioned the trip claims in his letter and never communicated that to the committee or its staff. It is amazing how Congressman Cannon can make the claim when Rove’s own Attorney is silent on the subject. It looks like Rove is getting a little nervous that Congress may actually try to arrest him under their Inherent Contempt powers and skipped the country.

That same FireDogLake article provides the reader a good primer on the alleged Executive Privilege claims that some news sources have misinformed on.  The facts, as laid out there, are simply that Rove and his attorney have not made a proper claim of Executive Privilege for this attempted hearing.  I have linked the full letter from Rove’s attorney here: http://judiciary.house.gov/Media/PDFs/Rove080709.pdf.  Where does all of this leave us?  It seems apparent that Rove will not go in front of the Judiciary Committee without being compelled to.(Duh) Of course, when I state “without being compelled to”, I am not referring to a subpoena.  We have already gone down that path. 

Professor Turley explains in his article that the Inherent Contempt procedure is only necessary because the Justice Department, under orders from Mukasey, has refused to honor subpoenas on Administration advisors.  Now that Rove has stuck his tongue out at Congress, they must be willing to protect their Constitutional right to investigate wrongdoing by arresting Rove using the Inherent Contempt power.

In order for all of you to have an understanding of Inherent Contempt, I have linked to an excellent treatise on Inherent Contempt (http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/crs.contempt.report.pdf found on the ScotusBlog site that is one of the regularly linked sites on my home page. I have also linked the following Wikipedia article which gives a more civilian description of the Inherent Contempt powers.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress) Be aware that Wikipedia can be amended by anyone, so compare the Wikipedia information to the Scotusblog link. These powers are there for Congress to use to finally get Mr. Rove under oath.  Of course, this recent twist that he is “out of the country” seems very suspicious to me.  Instead of “Where’s Waldo” we may be reading “Where’s Karl” in the next several days. 

I have opined on a few blogs earlier that I wouldn’t be surprised if Rove is actually holed up at the White House or at the Presidential ranch in Crawford, Texas.  It is not too hard to imagine a further constitutional crisis if the House of Representatives attempts to “arrest” Rove if he is at either location because of the possible conflict with the Secret Service.  Since Rove is a former advisor, I cannot see a legal argument that would allow the Secret Service to block the arrest.  Of course, this is all just conjecture at this point.  Karl may actually be out of the country and the House may have to wait for his return.  Or maybe the country will get lucky and Karl will actually show up in the next few days. I think Karl maybe AWOL for a while.  I hope I am wrong.