We note with pleasure the return of our royal friend and colleague Simbaud to the active throne. He points us to Scott Horton’s post at Harper’s, “Congress Cites Bolten and Miers for Contempt — But Is the Issue Really Impeachment?”. We certainly hope it is.

Horton’s point is that the House vote this week to hold in contempt the contemptible Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten seems gratuitous, in that there’s next to no chance of it being enforced. No Attorney General working for Dick Cheney will ever prosecute Republican lawbreakers, no matter what law they break; and a court case, which the House can mount even if main Justice opposes it, will show no results before the eagerly awaited January 20, 2009.

But past experience indicates that John Conyers does not act gratuitously, and Horton’s sources tell him that the DoJ investigation into the firings of US attorneys like New Mexico’s David Iglesias are likely to conclude that the firings were politically motivated.

Now the Justice Department’s investigation focuses only on Alberto Gonzales, Paul McNulty and a handful of other senior political appointees, almost all of whom have left. It does not have the jurisdiction to address staffers in the White House like Rove, Miers and Bolten, nor indeed, President Bush.

But they are clearly within the jurisdictional remit of the Judiciary Committee. Moreover, if the Justice Department’s report implicates not just Rove, Miers and Bolten, but also Bush in the decision to fire for improper reasons — a conclusion which is now looking extremely likely — then it will be up to Conyers’s committee to press the investigation forward. In so doing, he is entitled to conduct hearings on the footing of impeachment. If he does, the executive privilege objection interposed by the White House and backed in another Constitution-defying opinion of the Attorney General, would not apply.

It’s even possible that the obviousness of White House influence in the firings would overcome the well-known resistance of the Speaker to anything that might hurt the Republican administration. We can hope, at least.