I brought facts. I brought Supreme Court cases, the Congressional Record, and historic references.
You brought unsubstantiated assertions and pretensions.
Having been called out you now change your tune. Originally you claimed “Congress only has two tools available to it in the Constitution when it comes to oversight of the other two branches of government - the power of the purse and impeachment.” (post 25) You now add “the will to enforce its own contempt rulings.” (post 66) Will and ability are two entirely different things. Your original claim pertained to ability, not will.
Having been called out you claim I “misrepresented the points [you were] making” and that this is “brought on by [my] passion over this topic.” (post 55). Your sanctimony and pretensions of indignation are as worthless as your unsubstantiated assertions.
As JR said, “How’d they bust Nixon’s stonewall? Takes pressure from the congress and the media. And that will require extreme pressure from we the people as the other entities are extremely compromised.” YOU are an important part of exerting that pressure. There is no point in defeatism, particularly when it is founded on uninformed assertions. You’ve been informed, spread the word and not defeatism.
First off, my entire first post to Jim dealt with the tools available to Congress, and the fact that they are unwilling to use them. So your statement that I started by talking about the ability of Congress to deal with this and then changed to talking about will to do so is demonstrably false.
Second, I added the comment about the "will to enforce their contempt rulings" as a gracious nod to the validity of your basic point - that, even though I did not include that contempt power in the constitutional powers of Congress (since it is not mentioned in the Constitution), it is nonetheless a power they hold and could use if they choose. But that does not invalidate my point that the power is limited in use, because Congress does not have the political will to use it, and because Congress's ability to incarcerate people in the Capitol holding cells is limited as a practical matter.
You didn't "call" me out. You took a part of my statement and used it to claim I was wrong. I specifically identified the Constitutional tools (those specified in the Constitution) given to Congress to deal with situations such as the IRS scandal. Prosecution and incarceration of those responsible is not one. You chose to ignore that, and claim that Contempt of Congress is one of the Constitutional tools available. Yes, the courts held that the contempt power is an "implied" or "inherent" power, but that is something a little akin to the "penumbras and emanations" that we tend to ridicule in the Roe v. Wade decision, since neither can be found in the text of the Constitution. (Note that I have never said the contempt power is unconstitutional, just that is not one of the powers that the Constitution specifically gives the Congress. There is a big difference.)
This power is limited. If they choose, Congress can hold someone in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena, for refusing to testify, even for creating a disturbance in Congress - basically for any offense against Congress that interferes with their ability to function. But the incarceration for that offense is limited until the end of the current session of Congress. And it does not extend to punishment for the targeting of people for political purposes, etc. - which is what this scandal is all about.
And you still have not made any point to contradict my basic assertion, which is that nothing is going to come of this because Congress has voluntarily and preemptively surrendered any tools or weapons they could use to compel compliance. And I see nothing coming from Congress that gives any indication that this will change in the near future. There is not enough of an awareness in the public to put the kind of pressure on Congress that would be necessary for a change. And with a compliant MSM, I don't see that changing enough to force Congress to act. With Nixon, you had the press running with the story 24/7 for months on end. You can't even get a one-day front page story from them on this case.
Instead of either acknowledging the points where we are in agreement, or at least choosing to disagree in a civil manner, you seem to want to attack me for holding a different perspective (using words like "sanctimony", "pretensions", "defeatism"). That is behavior I would expect to see on DU more than I would here. You seem desperate to "win" the argument. The fact that I agreed that Congress could jail someone for contempt if they chose does not seem to be good enough for you. You seem to need that to be a sign that you were right and I was wrong, and for me to suddenly not only agree that Congress can but they WILL do that. Well, I'm sorry you are so insecure. You have a valid point about the power, but it is ultimately an irrelevant point, and as such, an irrelevant victory for you, because in this case and at this time, it does not look like Congress has any stomach to use that power, or any other, to rectify the situation.