

The House Judiciary Committee last week issued new subpoenas targeting e-mails from Republican National Committee accounts that discuss the firings of at least eight U.S. Attorneys, a political brannigan that has bloomed into a legal showdown between Congress and the White House over executive branch secrecy.

The Bush administration last week asserted executive privilege in rejecting a separate set of Congressional subpoenas that sought information related to the attorney firings. Sara Taylor, a former Bush aide, refused to answer questions about the matter during a recent Senate hearing. And former White House counsel Harriet Miers didn't even show up for her scheduled hearing on Thursday.

So Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) decided to take another tack and subpoena the RNC, which provided outside e-mail accounts where Bush administration employees could discuss political maneuvering free from the oversight required of White House servers.

"The White House has been stonewalling this investigation at every turn," Conyers said. "We attempted to negotiate terms with the RNC as well as the White House to secure these documents. Yet again, the White House has stepped in to prevent the RNC

from turning them over. So, we hope that the RNC - unlike Ms. Miers [last week] - will choose to comply with the legal obligation set out in this subpoena, as opposed to the opinion of the White House."

The subpoena, which Conyers sent to RNC chairman Robert Duncan, seeks "complete and unredacted versions of any and all documents consisting of any e-mail communication or related meta-data stored on Republican National Committee servers or otherwise in your possession, custody, or control" that relate to the attorney firings. The deadline to comply is tomorrow.