Arlen Specter, R-Pa., urged Democrats to "rethink" the subpoenas they have planned for Rove and Miers. Specter had to do a little dance that demonstrates the difficulty he and other Republican senators find themselves in. On the one hand, he wants Congress -- in particular judiciary committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. -- to make a deal with White House counsel Fred Fielding, who yesterday said Rove and Miers could testify, but only in private, not under oath, and without a transcript. On the other hand, Specter said that it would be "preferable to have the matter transcribed" and that his "own preference" is for a public hearing. He also said, "It's obviously indispensable to find the facts about whether the Department of Justice acted properly or improperly" in firing the eight U.S. attorneys who were forced to resign last year.There are, I think, a few different meanings one can attribute to the term "truly conflicted" in that passage -- I'd just suggest that any meaning implying the real existence of a sympathetic and earnest moral dilemma afflicting Specter here is a bit implausible. We ought to be waaay past the days when Specter might arguably be thought of as a seriously independent actor with a commitment to real oversight of this administration. The night-and-day difference between the Senate Judiciary Committee in Democratic hands and the committee in the hands of the putatively "fiercely independent" moderate from Pennsylvania has, I think, been made clear in the last few months. Today's performance is just further confirmation (even though he did end up agreeing to the subpoenas).Specter's best argument was the long delay he says will ensue if the Democrats reject Fielding's offer. If the clash over whether the Bush administration can assert executive privilege to defy congressional subpoenas goes to court -- where the president said yesterday he'd be happy to take it -- Rove and Miers won't be testifying about anything to anyone for quite a while. "We'll be looking at 2009, after the end of this president's term," Specter foretold, reminding his colleagues of the Clinton-era fight over executive privilege that began in 1995 and ended in a 1997 court ruling. Waiting two years would be bad because the way the Department of Justice dealt with the ousted prosecutors has been "a very very serious problem," causing "a morale problem" and raising questions about how the U.S. attorneys who have continued in office "are going to function," which is "of the utmost importance." Specter seems truly conflicted: He appears to agree with Democrats that the Justice Department and administration behaved outrageously, but in the end he'll bow to the White House and vote against the subpoenas. [emphasis added]
--Sam Rosenfeld
