I am really amazed at how a story like this could be so invisible except here in the member-supported fringes of the media. It is an important accountability moment. It should be news. How can democracy claim to exist when only fringie newshounds ever get to find out about something so huge and so fundamental? I find it horrific.

So now I'm pushing the catch-phrase BLUE PILL MEDIA. People can expose themselves to a whole lotta news, and have no idea that this has happened. Free Pass. People are actively kept in a fantasy land where this is not what's happened, as a hopeful development in a whole series of crimes that, essentially, has not happened.

If the voters don't even know the world they live in, maybe it's easier for them not to be concerned about whether or not their vote is counted.

The blinding absence of this story in any "mainstream media" or "corporate media" has stunned me into wanting to introduce this phrase, BLUE PILL MEDIA, into the public lexicon. Orwellianism could go both ways, maybe?

(If it's not clear, it's a reference to the Blue Pill in the movie The Matrix, which sends the taker back into the blissful ignorant slumber, with a vague reference to those little pills who pay so much of the advertising bills)

How can they not report this??????????

The coincidence of this censure resolution and Obama's ascent is interesting, and I wonder if it is not accidental.

Maybe we are seeing the first sign of bleed-over from public acceptance of Obama's campaign to increased confidence in Congress to take a more aggressive stance against the grotesque excesses of the Executive Branch in the past 7 years.

So they voted these two "in contempt." Exactly what comes next? Are we reliant on Bush Administration law enforcement people to physically enforce the consequences of "contempt"? What does Congress have?
The capitol police? Still opportunities for political backfire? Supreme Court still the final arbiter? When?
Next year, after the election is over (while the conservatives parade these two as "patriots" THIS year)?

I had to read this a couple of times, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I totally agree with Big_Money, why has this not made the mainstream media. It certainly hasn't been on the BBC (whereas a lot of the election stuff has).
Surely this could be the start of something much bigger, if they can prosecute, or are they really immune from the law?
I wish you all good luck over there, because you need to get these stories more airtime, to really make them bite.

Daniel David,

How your question is answered, and more like it -- guaranteed to come in the years ahead -- may determine large-scale aspects of our nation's fabric. If laws and decorum are flagrantly disregarded at the top, the people below will catch on and do likewise.

A little war or corruption is "fine" due to its abstraction, a certain inevitability about it, depersonalized nature, etc. but here's a thought experiment:

Imagine if we had a leader in 5-10 years who raped, brutalized, etc. some hapless victim -- and the "opposition" party did nothing whatsoever. This is not at all unusual in other banana republics, fascisms, etc. Are we going this way? What happens then is the emergence of an armed resistance. Not protesters or terrorists -- armed resistance/revolutionaries. And then it gets impossible to sort out who are the "bad guys" and who are the "good guys". A good time to emigrate.

Daniel and Paul - Dudes, I don't know if it matters what happens next if only a few thousand people know about it. As Andy says, not even the BBC. I'll add to that, not even the CBC. Erasing this is part of erasing all that lead up to it, and all that may follow. The phrase "in broad daylight" comes to mind. Seriously, my perception of the media has just shifted from Orwellian to Kafkaesque.

In a real nation of laws, and in a real Congress, this action would be coupled with a beginning of impeachment investigations against Bush and Cheney. As Mr. Nichols correctly points out, these two aides didn't do this on their own. If you are sending something to the DA for prosecution, and you know the two people involved were only following orders, then proceedings against the people who gave those orders are a logical step to go along with this.

"Imagine if we had a leader in 5-10 years who raped, brutalized, etc. some hapless victim — and the "opposition" party did nothing whatsoever."

That's been going on as policy since the USA's inception.

It is certainly amazing how my local paper did the story - no story caption about the indictments which were hidden in a story titled "Pelosi resists Bush over wiretapping - Delays house vote on Senate approval for surveillance"

The story is hidden at bottom of p. 2. and is a chopped up version of Hulse's NYT article referred to earlier.

As a check, I went to my local paper's website (Denver Post). This article is there, http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_8266141, just a bit buried.

Its not on the front page of the website. You have to go to the "Nation/World" section and start looking down the list. Its there in small print if you are looking for it.

Pretty typical actually. A lot of this sort of stuff is in the media. Its just buried and with little or no follow up. But its there so if you ever catch say the editor of this paper in a public forum where you can challenge them, they can say without lying "yes, we did an article on it."

Of course, the difference in emphasis is striking sometimes. Picture for example if this was 10 years ago and two Clinton aides just had contempt charges placed against them. The cable news networks would be all over it with continuous coverage. It would probably have its own theme music and logo and the rightwing pundits would be constantly going on about how horrible an abuse of power this was by the White House.

Made page 7a here in Vegas. The baby party ranted and raved about having to fess up to just one of the myriad no-no's it collectively approved. Our rep, Dean Heller, walked out with all of the other diaper-clad babies, led by baby Boehner, and told a newspaper reporter "blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahwaawaawaaah!" I found it to be most illuminating. Republicans don't pay for their sins. We do. Everybody needs, yo, to remember dat shit (so they can get back to their $200 power lunches).

I think it is safe to say this story was not top ten news yesterday, maybe not even top twenty.

Higher in terms of coverage were: ongoing saga of Britney meltdown, Lantos funeral - Bono singing, Bush says Congress endangering country, Recession looming, Buffet buys, Romney endorses McCain, Bush 41 endorses McCain, Hezbollah leader killed in Syria, etc.

Certainly, the contempt resolution did not receive near the attention it deserved. A pretty clear-cut case of bias in MSM. Just more evidence to add to the pile.

Bush making a comment about Democrats not continuing the illegal surveillance blank check is still evidently a much bigger news story than the very first action by Congress to restore our system of government after nearly a decade of gross abuse.

How can you expect this story to make the Front Page when there are so many more Important things on Congress's calendar?

Like making sure that baseball players don't cheat.
My Ghod! A thing like that could affect Ticket Prices!

People might stop watching the games.
Worse Yet, they might stop Betting on the games.
What would the Bookies Do then?

We could very well have a first in our Nations history: A president (just in case) granting amnesty for all in his administration for any and all past/present acts so charges could never be brought and truth never be found out. And the elected majority (rich) Dimms will just go along.

You need to call your local talk shows. You need to call the national progressive talk shows. You need to post this story (or the link) on as many blogs as possible (start with your hometown newspaper).

I'm listening to the Ed Schultz radio show right now. All three hours have been calls from people screaming "Obama this" or "Clinton that". Yesterday ONE LONE CALLER asked Ed a question about the FISA legislation. He said he didn't know much about it.

AND ED IS THE TALKER WITH THE LARGEST PROGRESSIVE RADIO AUDIENCE IN THE COUNTRY.

Here's Ed's email. Bombard him. Demand he talk about FISA. Demand he talk about torture.

http://www.wegoted.com/emailEd/index.asp

It's up to us to get the word out.

Whatever. All members of the bushcult know they have a free pass for life - the rest is news filler meant to distract from the real traitors, like, you know, Bush, Cheney, Rove, Fleicher, Powell, Rumsfeld, Tenent, Bremer, Rice, Hughes, Addington, Abrams, Negroponte...

Accountability nano-moment, at best, and surely a one-off...

It seems to be part of our primate nature to worship and revere our Constitution because our founding fathers designed it, but also because it's old and has worked pretty well for the most part. However, it's obviously not infallible. If it were, we wouldn't be in one war after another throughout our brief history; have nearly daily shooting rampages in our public schools and universities, and primarily, we wouldn't have facists running our government. I believe our sacred Constitution is due for a little fine tuning.

Grouse,

Our culture is probably not capable of a second look at a constitution. Most people probably don't care, some consider it a sacred and perfect codex (nothing should be changed), others treat it like garbage (especially the amendments), etc.

I could probably write a new one single-handedly, which would serve to balance liberty vs. security, democracy vs. meritocracy, top-down regulations vs. bottom-up populism, and other natural tugs that exist in the fabric of societies. Give me a month or two of no interruptions, a nice view, and some warm weather. :-)

But if it becomes a group effort of powermongers, billionaires and bureaucrats -- it'll probably be worse than the one we've currently got. Killed by committee, in a sense. They're really incapable of anything except increasing their own power.

Congress is...is...unspeakably useless and phony.

Big_Money - I think Blue Pill Media is a great idea. From now on I have added BPM to my lexicon, to replace MSM in most applications.

Big_Money - I think Blue Pill Media is a great idea. From now on I have added BPM to my lexicon, to replace MSM in most applications.

From the Nichols piece, this quote: "Members of the Bush administration have spent the last seven years pretending that the law doesn't apply to them," says House, who musters proper passion to add, "Congress has a responsibility to enforce its congressional powers, and moving forward with contempt citations is the appropriate response to this administration's stonewalling and arrogance."

to repeat:
"moving forward with contempt citations is the appropriate response"

THIS IS BULLSHIT FROM A DIMMO AIDER AND ABETTOR: THE O-N-L-Y REMEDY IS IMPEACHMENT! Nichols and Common Dreams are not part of the scam here, I sincerely hope. John Nichols, you should have made the case here that contempt is NOT a remedy (it's not even in the Constitution!). But it certainly is a diversion from IMPEACHING CHENEY for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY for promoting an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation.

What accountability? Due to the two-party duolopy there is no accountability in the US.

Dems = Bush-enabler

"There have been far too few accountability moments since Democrats retook control of the U.S. House and Senate in January, 2007."

Wow.......that's an understatement!

Accountability doesn't and never has fit-in with the agendas of Constitutional distortionists.

Blue Dog Democrats must be the first to go!

UPDATE!

David Walker, Head of the General Accounting Office (GAO), and one the best this country has ever had, is leaving his Post To Lead a New Public Policy Foundation.
Check it out……
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=2&docID=news-000002672472

We the people need to be heard! Everyone vote for the "National Initiative". We need to share law-making power with Congress. We need to ratify our constitution to the point where we can veto laws over the President and make him accountable. Like James Madison said "The people were in fact, the fountain of all power, and by resorting to them, all difficulties were got over." And George Washington said "The basis of our political systems is a right of the people to make 'AND TO ALTER' their constitutions of government." This might be too little too late, but who knows what another president down the road might try to do.

The next step Mr.David___ is up to the Justice Department which has said it will not prosecute. Now they have to be convinced I suppose.

The progress of the rivers to the sea is not as rapid as men to error.

"But nothing that is wrong with the Bush-Cheney administration or the federal government began with Miers and Bolten. And no fix will be complete if it stops with them."

i hope this apparent move towards accountability doesn't prove to be merely a distraction from the action Congress must do with impeachment hearings. And so on.

The fix is so far from complete, it hurts.

May this be the beginning of a clean sweep against the Bush administration. It is well overdue and this process should work itself right up to the head honchos who are the ring leaders of lawlessness that has been and still is out-of-control.

Thee reason the public is not informed: The Corporate Media are controlled by seven major corporations whose CEOs and Boards are conservatives and decide what news to report and what not to report. For the past eight years, they have reported only the Bush administration spin. Nowhere has one seen in the Corporate Media (and hundreds of examples abound!) except on page 22, that the Iraqi invasion and occupation is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, the principles of the United Nations, and Article VI of the US Constitution.

And that MILLIONS over the world protested even before the Iraqi invasion.

And no headlines for the Downing Street Memo.

And on and on and on.

And when some news is reported, crucial facts are omitted.

1984 is here and well!

The first act of the new Congress would be the repeal of the law that permits the owning of more than one media so that the present monopolies are disbanded.

i'll let him say it in his own words. and yes, i used his preelection 2006 email against him to persuade him to hold impeachment hearings.

A Good Day for the Constitution

Dear

New York Times - House Holds Bush Confidants in Contempt

Politico - White House Unloads on House Democrats over Contempt Vote

Yesterday the House of Representatives took several historic steps towards protecting our system of checks and balances. First, by a vote of 223 to 32, the House passed resolutions referring criminal contempt citations for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, as well as authorizing civil actions against them should the Justice Department refuse to prosecute. Second, we did not succumb to the White House political pressure concerning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Yesterday's contempt vote upheld the simple Constitutional principle that no one is above the law. If an ordinary citizen could not ignore a subpoena without facing severe consequences, the same must hold true for the White House.

As the morning's papers covered this story, many of them recount the Judiciary Committee investigation that began a year ago. They talk of the fired U.S. Attorneys who testified, the thousands of pages of documents produced by the Department of Justice, and of the subpoenas ignored by the White House.

I hope that as you read those stories, you will remember that the path to today's contempt vote did not begin with just a subpoena, or a hearing, or even the firings in December, 2006. Rather, it began with the Bush Administration's politicization of Justice and its refusal to submit to congressional oversight. I commend my 232 colleagues who joined me in voting to hold the Bush White house accountable and who stood up for the rule of law.

I also want to commend the Democratic Leadership for standing up to the White House yesterday and refusing to succumb to political pressure concerning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Last August we allowed ourselves to be jammed by the Senate and the White House. Yesterday, we stood up in the face of the pressure and let the President know that we intend to do our jobs as legislators and not hastily pass the flawed Senate bill with retroactive legal immunity for the telecommunications firms.

The White House, of course, has complained bitterly about the contempt vote as they have with many oversight actions Congress has taken. I have linked to some articles that show breadth of this bluster.

Much more remains to be done, but this week, we made real progress. With your help, we all made a difference, and the nation and our constitution are stronger for it. Thank you.

Thank you again for your continued support for a better democracy.

Your Friend,
John Conyers, Jr.

Was it on the front page of the NY Times? If you're looking for the Disney, General Electric, or Murdoch owned fascist shifted media to pick it up, you'll probably grow impatient. Listen to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now. It'll ease the strain. Maybe Pelosi is beginning to realize that accountability (not to mention peace and justice) is part of her job. These guys have a system of torture camps, they spy on the citizens, they have invaded a sovereign nation without even a rationale, they operate in abject secrecy whenever possible, they fire the judges they don't like, they rig press conferences, they rig elections and bully to get the results they want. They seem to think it's allright to hold anyone they choose for as long as they choose without charges. In my universe, this is called fascism, and it's going to take more than a contempt citation to stem the tide. You know Conyers is chomping at the bit. He's a good man. Pelosi is a stupid sell out, a walking, talking example of power corrupting. Like Feinstein, a little too comfortable with big money.

This is not exactly invisible. Here's a story from NY Times. House Cites 2 Bush Aides for Contempt
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By PHILIP SHENON
Published: February 14, 2008
WASHINGTON — The House voted Thursday to issue contempt citations against the White House chief of staff and a former White House counsel for refusing to cooperate in an investigation into the mass firings of federal prosecutors.

The vote to hold Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, the former counsel, in contempt of Congress followed bitter partisan wrangling on the House floor, including a Republican walkout from the chamber, and moved House Democrats closer to a constitutional showdown with President Bush.

The 223-to-32 vote to issue the contempt citations, the first approved by Congress against the executive branch since the Reagan administration, is likely to move the dispute to a federal courtroom, with House lawyers calling on a judge to enforce subpoenas against Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers. The Senate is weighing similar contempt charges against Karl Rove, President Bush's former political adviser.

Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers were subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee for information about their part in the dismissal of several United States attorneys last year for what appear to have been political reasons. The uproar over the firings led to bipartisan calls in Congress for the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who abruptly stepped down last summer.

As House Republicans protested the vote with an angry walkout from the House floor, the White House joined in expressions of outrage over the contempt citations.

Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said the White House had tried to compromise with House Democrats to help lawmakers obtain information from Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers short of public testimony. "Many of the things that they asked for, we were willing to give," she said. "But instead, they're going to waste time on this partisan, futile act."

Normally, a Congressional subpoena would be enforced by the Justice Department. But the White House and Mr. Gonzales's successor, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, have already said that they will not pursue contempt charges against current and former White House officials who, they believe, are shielded from testimony by executive privilege.

That appeared to leave only two options for the House — seek the help of the federal judiciary to try to enforce the contempt citations or, less likely, hold its own trial on Capitol Hill for Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers, similar to an impeachment trial. The House measure passed on Thursday gave explicit authority to House lawyers to "initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings" in federal court to enforce the subpoenas.

In a statement responding to the House vote, the Justice Department suggested that Mr. Mukasey had not made a final decision to rebuff the House request, but noted that "he did not expect that he would act in contravention of longstanding department precedent" against enforcing subpoenas against executive branch officials.

The chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat, said Thursday on the House floor that he had no choice but to pursue the contempt citations.

"The resolutions we are considering today are not steps that I as chairman take easily or lightly, but they are necessary to protect our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government," he said.

House Republican leaders described the contempt vote as a political ploy that drew time away from what they described as a much more important debate in Congress this week over extending a federal law to allow eavesdropping on domestic telephone calls and e-mails in pursuit of terrorists.

"We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition but not space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us," said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican House leader.

He then instructed other Republicans to exit the chamber in protest. "Let's just get up and leave," Mr. Boehner said before storming off the House floor along with scores of his party's members.

The Senate has not yet scheduled a vote on the floor on the contempt citation that was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last December against Mr. Bolten and Mr. Rove, also over demands for information about the firing of the United States attorneys.

Unfortunately ;Pelosi is big money.

Mr. Nichols, any thoughts on how to remove Pelosi and those who enable her from the Congress? Voting doesn't seem to work for the People.

Mr. Boehner and his sychophants have abandoned their assigned posts and should just go on home.

Voting may or may not work, the jury is out. The judge decided '00.

But it's clear that the corporate media doesn't work for people. The big question is how to instill and impart curiousity, assertiveness, razor sharp critical thinking skills, etc. to people who don't ordinarily go very far from the first explanation that comes their way.