Dubya's consigliere knows his job....

Attorney General Mukasey does his master's bidding and stiff-arms Congress:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused Friday to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime.

[...]

Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

"The department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers," Mukasey wrote Pelosi.

Good going, Chuck and Dianne. You put him in there. We can take heart in the fact that you're "disappointed", Chuck.

The crime is "contempt of Congress", Mukasey. Look it up.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi fires back:

“By ordering the U.S. Attorney to take no action in response to congressional subpoenas, the Bush Administration is continuing to politicize law enforcement, which undermines public confidence in our criminal justice system.

“Anticipating this response from the Administration, the House has already provided authority for the Judiciary Committee to file a civil enforcement action in federal district court and the House shall do so promptly. The American people demand that we uphold the law. As public officials, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect our system of checks and balances and our civil lawsuit seeks to do just that.”

Another approach would be to just send the Sergeant at Arms out to arrest the two and lock them up....


Update

Prof. Marty Lederman has a link to Mukasey's letter, and some more commentary over at the Balkinization blog...