John Conyers, (D-Mi.) and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed Karl Rove yesterday to testify before his committee. Conyers particularly wants Rove to speak under oath about selective prosecution of Democratic officials, including former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson reports ...

The House Judiciary Committee should immediately subpoena David Addington, John Ashcroft, and John Yoo.  These citizens recently advised the Congress through legal counsel that they will not respond to Congress's invitation to testify about secrecy and torture in the Bush administration.  Thus the Vice President, through his intellectual Cerburus (Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Addington) is thumbing his nose at the Constitution, the separation of powers, and basic democratic values.  As long as he is allowed to do this, former officials such as Ashcroft, Yoo, Harriet Miers and others will avoid their own civic and constitutional responsibilities.  If the House does not act decisively, the repercussions for Congress's investigative powers may be fundamental and long-lasting.

The U.S. Senate is taking steps to prevent recess appointments by President Bush by using a little known procedure that keeps the Senate in "pro forma" session, according to a story by Carl Hulse in the New York Times.   Senators are opening and closing the Senate each day ...

Evan Perez of the Wall Street Journal reports that new Attorney General Michael Mukasey is reopening a Dept. of Justice inquiry about the disputed warrantless surveillance program supported by the White House in the years immediately after September 11th.  The inquiry, which will examine the department's own lawyers as well as their interaction with the White House, was originally halted during Alberto Gonzales's tenure at DOJ.

Vice President Cheney has tried to have it both ways -- to claim executive privilege and then to claim "outsider status" in investigations of his office because he serves as president of the Senate.  In Jim Rutenburg's New York Times piece on the subject, we are reassured -- in the ...

Here is a specific example of how presidential signing statements -- a way for U.S. presidents to avoid the responsibility of meeting the stated aims of laws passed by Congress -- work in real life.  Following the passage of a Senate amendment restricting torture sponsored by John McCain and Lindsay ...