Rove subpoenaed

AP reports:

Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.                                                 

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a letter to Solicitor General Paul Clement.

They dispatched the letter shortly before Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced the subpoena of Rove, the president's top political strategist, in remarks on the Senate floor. The White House has claimed executive privilege to block Congress from receiving documents or testimony by current and former presidential aides.

"We have now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States attorneys last year," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

J. Scott Jennings has been subpoenaed, as well. Their deadline is August 2. It seems almost certain to me that we're about to reach a point where each of the houses of Congress are holding are holding at least a couple White House officials in contempt. I'm not sure that's ever happened before. It's difficult to imagine that those contempt proceedings will pan out all that well for Democrats after they've been approved on the floors of their respective chambers. More on what I think they should do after that course of action has run its course.  But the perjury investigation... I'm not sure where Gonzales can hide any more.