contempt in congress

Congress has been holding possible contempt citations over some current and ex-White House officials, and a of people have been wondering if the House is going to let executive staff refuse to respond to subpoena issued by oversight committees

Such contempt is usually referred to the local US Attorney, who then refers it to a court and the process goes from there.
But through some extraordinarily creative lawyering, the Department of Justice has indicated they will refuse to enforce contempt citations, on the grounds that a DoJ official wrote an opinion for the White House that executive privilege applied.

There are several issue here: starting with the problem that some of the subpoenas are to investigate alleged politicization of the DoJ and the appointment and firing of US Attorneys, including obstruction of justice concerns; secondly, some of those subpoenad did not even show to claim privilege, which seems prima facie contempt; finally, the DoJ ought not rule on this, it is a matter for the courts, since lawyers may on occasion err, and the DoJ might have a wee bit of a conflict of interest.

Tricky.
The relevant DC attorney was appointed directly without Senate confirmation through a stealth provision of the Patriot Act, snuck in by a staffer for Pennsylvania Senator Specter. This provision was deleted as soon as it was noticed (!?!) but the appointment was grandfathered in for 120 days.
Which expired, and no replacement was nominated, in which case a District Court judge steps in to appoint an Attorney replacement.
The judge, Judge Hogan, promptly made US Attorney Jeff Taylor permanent.
Taylor can of course be fired by the President (except if in doing so the President were to obstruct justice... if that could be proved).

Congress can still try inherent contempt on the floor of the House and have the Sargeant at Arms arrest those summoned, but doing so shuts down all business in the House for the duration, which is awkward, and has not been done since before World War II. Current lot might not feel like making a fuss.

In the meantime I am pondering the news reports that Bush intends to govern through Administrative Order to bypass Congress, which sounds "interesting".
But makes me wonder, given what I heard down in DC that government agencies have been directed to move forward with the assumption that they have funding, even in the absence of an appropriations bill (or a vetoed one).
If the Presidency usurps the power of the purse from Congress through "Administrative Orders" then the American experiment is over.

Oh, a kos diarist was wondering what happened with the contempt thing