Looks like Harriet Miers won't get her hearing tomorrow after all. George Bush told her not to show up at the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow. Yeah, not to even show up:
President Bush has told his former White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers, not to even appear on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firings of United States attorneys, the committee chairman said today.Can't Conyers send the Capitol Hill police to get her?
Representative John D. Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who heads the panel, said he was told in a letter dated Tuesday from Ms. Miers’s lawyer that she would not appear. Mr. Conyers said the lawyer was reacting to a letter from Fred F. Fielding, the current White House counsel, asserting that “Ms. Miers has absolute immunity from compelled Congressional testimony as to matters occurring while she was a senior adviser to the president.”
Mr. Conyers said he was “extremely disappointed” at the White House’s stance, and he hoped that Ms. Miers might appear despite Mr. Bush’s assertion of executive privilege to keep her away from the hearing. It had been expected that Ms. Miers would appear and would decline to answer certain questions.
The White House’s defiance of a subpoena from Mr. Conyers’s panel intensified a showdown between the executive and legislative branches and could portend a court battle, unless a political compromise can be reached.
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