Congress can trim Bush's wings without impeachment

Mark Kleiman makes a good case that impeaching Bush and Cheney is an impossibility - and is not particularly useful anyway. As Mark says, just because Broder opposes an idea does not necessarily make it a good one. So he suggests an interesting Plan B.

Congressional Democrats create a crisis around the executive privilege/contempt citation issue by issuing a subpoena to Libby (with a grant of immunity), voting a contempt citatation when he doesn't show up on Bush's orders, making a referral to the U.S. Attorney that Bush blocks, and then voting a Congressional arrest warrant.

If Bush moves to block Libby's arrest, I doubt the courts would back him; the precedents for Congressional arrest are old (none since 1934) but still valid. It's hard for Bush to claim that Libby's arrest would impinge on Presidential power, since Libby doesn't work for him anymore.

So either Libby turns himself in and either testifies or sits in the DC jail, or he stays out, a fugitive from justice. Since LIbby doesn't have Secret Service protection, the arrest warrant could be served without an armed confrontation. Either way, he's not a sympathetic character.

In the meantime, one of the two Appropriations Committees zeroes out Cheneys White House office (leaving him his Senate office) and takes 95% cuts in the White House press office, political affairs office, personnel office, and whatever unit holds the agency liaisons, and forbidding details to any of the units getting a cut. That actually works, meaning that Bush and Cheney have much less actual capacity to do harm. Constitutionally, no one doubts Congress has the power to refuse to appropriate money. Substantively, the cuts are fully justified by the fact that the units being cut are units over which Bush says Congress can't exercise oversight, because of his claims of executive privilege.

This would seem to make Bush's recent claim that the Department of Justice not be allowed to prosecute individuals who are in contempt of Congress for ignoring the subpoena if the President claims Executive Privilege.