Faced with an unprecedented utterly lawless, truthless, shameless and corrupt president and administration, including the AG and DOJ, which are completely flaunting any attempt at congressional oversight and investigation, backed up by sycophantic congressional Republicans, the House Democrats are looking and sounding like a whining bunch of foster children who can’t get a decent meal from their abusive parents in the setting of a corrupt foster system. Unfortunately, like the parents in that kind of situation, it looks like the administration really has the upper hand, with a majority of the American public not supporting impeachment and with no obvious path to substantially change that in the face of such massive administration stonewalling and the lengthy time course of court appeals which will drag on for many months and prevent focusing public opinion on the issue. The problem is that the president and his lackeys as well as the congressional Republicans are obviously playing dirty political hardball while the Democrats are complaining but still meekly playing by the rules. While I don’t support the Democrats breaking the law or doing anything unethical in response, I think they need to be MUCH more aggressive and fight fire with fire if they expect to get anywhere in this ugly mess. That means wasting no time in slapping EVERY no-show House committee witness and those who show up but don’t cooperate like Cory Lewandowski with contempt of Congress citations. Unfortunately that is usually a hollow threat or a symbolic slap on the wrist, since if referred for criminal prosecution it could just be blocked by Trump’s DOJ and if referred for civil action it would be tied up and probably end up dying out in the court system. Still, it is certainly better than nothing, and at least the headlines produced and attention garnered would be helpful. However, there is another more unconventional and rarely used option which I think it is high time to pull out and dust off, namely Congress’s inherent power to enforce its own contempt resolutions with imprisonment and potentially fines. Congressional imprisonment has very rarely been used and probably not for almost a century, and fines have never been used, and would be difficult if not impossible to implement against a government official or anyone else with a completely uncooperative executive branch willing to flaunt the law. Although that would obviously hugely raise the temperature of the cold war between the administration and the House, I think that would rattle enough people that it would force some into cooperation, especially those no longer employed in the government. Certainly even a day of imprisonment of a current or former government official would send a huge shot across the bow, and would demonstrate to Trump et al that they can no longer stonewall Congress with impunity. I am sure Trump (as well as his DOJ and congressional lackeys) would absolutely explode if confronted by such a bold move from House Democrats, and it is interesting to speculate what if anything they could do about it. At least it would make the Democrats look less impotent (which they currently are), and probably earn them some respect from their base and probably even their political opponents. Of course, there are a lot of moderate House Democrats who would be fearful of any such move, which would require support of nearly all Democrats to pass the House (even if approval of the full House was not required, speaker Pelosi would likely be unwilling to proceed without that), making this option unlikely. Short of something dramatic like that, and unless the courts move with uncharacteristic speed and efficiency, which I wouldn’t bet money on, it is difficult to see how the Democrats can overcome Trump’s huge power advantage in their attempts at ANY significant investigation and oversight before the 2020 election which may lead to impeachment, which is getting more unlikely every day, no matter what revelations come out. Even a majority of House Dems are not yet on board with that, which will never happen without a majority of public opinion on their side. If the Mueller report was essentially greeted with a confused yawn from most of the public, it is also hard to imagine what more would significantly move the needle. Even impeachment without Senate conviction is of highly questionable political value. So Nancy Pelosi seems to be looking more correct about this with each passing day. It may take a miracle or political bombshell to make any dent in this catch-22 situation! Hopefully Trump will provide that in some way, but this is getting more and more depressing!!