“In my 15 years on this subcommittee, we have forged a strong bipartisan tradition of thorough and meaningful investigations. That could have been the case with the Solyndra investigation,” DeGette said today at a subcommittee meeting on oversight and investigations. “We have here a $525 million loan guarantee made with taxpayer funds that went bad. We need to learn the circumstances of the original deal as the restructuring. We need all the facts, all the witnesses, all the documents. Sadly, after seeing the Majority’s conduct of this investigation, I do not believe they share this goal.”

The subpoena authorization is an unprecedented move for the committee, DeGette noted, stressing that the Obama administration has already turned over 85,000 pages of documents related to Solyndra.

“I believe the majority’s action in moving forward with a subpoena resolution today is an act of irresponsible partisanship,” she said. “The Committee has every right to seek and obtain relevant information from the White House to advance its legitimate oversight needs. But a subpoena to the White House is a serious step in a congressional investigation. And it is a step that should be taken only after alternative avenues have been exhausted. We clearly do not face those circumstances today.”

Colorado’s congresswoman was among the first to seek an investigation into the Solyndra loan guarantee after the solar company in Fremont, Calif., flamed out in August. A grim macroeconomic climate, excess capacity, European subsidy cuts and competition from China all factored in its demise.

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity — an anti-tax group partly founded and funded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch — is spending $2.4 million on television commercials in Florida, Michigan, New Mexico and Virginia attacking Obama over Solyndra and his ties to clean energy.

“Wealthy donors with ties to Solyndra give Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the one-minute ads say. “What does the Obama give them in return? Half a billion in taxpayer money to help his friends at Solyndra — a business the White House knew was on the path to bankruptcy, but loaned them the money anyway. … Now Solyndra is bankrupt and taxpayers are stuck with the bill.”

The ads end with an allegation the president is using taxpayer money for “political favors.”

The link between money and politics is indeed hard to ignore, especially when examining the actions of the Republican congressmen on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Koch Industries and its employees — who help operate Americans for Prosperity — contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the majority of the committee’s Republicans. Koch Industries is grounded in the oil and gas business and is the largest energy donor to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R- Colo., is the biggest beneficiary of the Kochs’ campaign contributions in Colorado, raking in upwards of $315,000 from Koch-funded organizations in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, according to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other sources.

Gardner, who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, voted in favor of the White House subpoena. Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., who is leading the charge in the Solyndra investigation, received a maximum $5,000 contribution from Koch Industries in this election cycle.

DeGette said Upton’s rhetoric has become “inflammatory,” “brazenly inaccurate,” and proof that any objective review of the Solyndra situation has deteriorated into a conspicuous “political sideshow.”

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

In September, the EPA sent voluntary information requests to nine hydraulic fracturing service companies. The agency requested information on the chemicals injected into the ground to loosen natural gas buried deep under the earth’s surface, as well as information on the affects of the chemicals on human health and the environment.

Eight of the nine companies either complied with the request or made commitments to comply. Halliburton did not; as a result, the EPA has subpoenaed the company for the information.

The data is essential for completing a congressionally mandated study on fracking. The agency hopes to finish the study by 2012. The study is expected to be the basis for future regulation of the controversial practice.

Environmentalists have long criticized fracking, arguing that the chemicals used to extract the natural gas can find their way into drinking water. They have also raised questions about the lack of transparency about what kind and what amounts of chemicals are used in the practice. Many fracking companies refuse to reveal the specific mixture of chemicals they use, arguing that the information is proprietary.

In my mind, the story here is less that Goldman, the world’s most profitable bank, failed to comply. The story is that this is the third instance of a company or individual neglecting to provide or keeping information from the panel — and, in the minds of journalists, three makes a trend. Notably, a subpoena comes after the FCIC has made repeated requests for information. First comes a nice letter. Then comes a nastier letter. Sometimes, after that, a phone call or another document. The subpoena comes only when it is clear the company or individual is being recalcitrant.

Perhaps Moody’s, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, and Goldman Sachs — the three the FCIC has subpoenaed thus far — believe that by refusing to comply they are telegraphing their independent, anti-regulatory stance, or belief that the FCIC is too accusatory or not important enough. Perhaps they are just slow to respond. But perhaps they should consider that Congress created the FCIC for the good of the American citizens who lost trillions in the financial crisis and recession and were forced to bail out the financial sector.

Rove’s prior refusals to testify were based on claims of “absolute immunity” due to executive privilege — the idea that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress because of the confidentiality of their conversations with the president. But the legality of that claim was rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates as part of the ongoing suit over executive privilege, House Judiciary Committee v. Harriet Miers.

Apparently, Rove has made it clear that despite the new administration, he still won’t be showing up to testify. In a letter to Rove’s attorney, Bob Luskin, Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said he won’t delay the hearing any further, just so Rove can continue to blow them off:

Thus, absent an actual commitment by Mr. Rove to comply with the subpoena, I am not in a position to agree to yet a further delay. In essence, given Mr. Rove’s public statements that he does not intend to comply with the subpoena, I am puzzled as to why Mr. Rove needs a mutually convenient date to fail to appear.

Around, and around we go.

The ACLU today sent a letter to David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, requesting the OLC release a host of legal memos that the Bush administration had withheld, justifying policies on interrogation, detention and rendition of detainees, as well as warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.

The ACLU has filed three separate lawsuits seeking release of the information, but “most of the key OLC memos are still being withheld in their entirety,” write Jameel Jaffer, Amrit Singh and Melissa Goodman of the ACLU.

Dawn Johnsen, Obama’s nominee to head the OLC, has written in favor of releasing the memos.

In a footnote to its letter, the ACLU notes that Obama has effectively rescinded all memos issued by the OLC between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan. 20, 2009 insofar as they relate to interrogation.  But while those memos are no longer effective, they are key to finding out who may have authorized illegal techniques under the Bush administration — and to potential future prosecutions.

Although, as Spencer just wrote, Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder appears to have promised Republicans he will not prosecute former Bush officials, the more evidence of illegal conduct that gets aired in the public — and these FOIA cases are key to that — the more difficult that position might be to maintain.

The ACLU letter comes after several other actions this week that put a spotlight on Obama’s early commitments.

As I wrote today, Rep. John Conyers’ (D-Mich.) decision to re-issue a subpoena to former Bush aide and adviser Karl Rove has landed that ball in Obama’s court:  Will Obama support the Bush administration’s claim that former executive advisers have “absolute immunity” from testifying before Congress? That would certainly seem to contradict Obama’s stance last week, not to mention the law, as laid out eloquently in an opinion by Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. (See my earlier post.)

ACLU lawyers are hopeful, and with good reason; they’ve gotten much of what they’ve asked for from the new administration.

“We had three Day One requests – on Guantanamo, rendition and torture,” Jameel Jaffer told me today. “So far, we’re very pleased.”

Does Rove’s past claim of executive privilege, which Bush backed, still exist under the new administration?

Good question.  In the past, Rove, with Bush’s support, has claimed an “absolute immunity” as a former presidential adviser and refused to appear before Congress. President Obama, in the past, has criticized that stance. But will he continue to do so, now that he’s the president?  After all, the executive privilege would now protect him and his cabinet, too.  So is it a closed legal question?

For the answer, I think it’s worth look back at what U.S. District Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, had to say about it when he ruled on the same “absolute immunity” claim asserted by former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

“The Executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisers in this or any other context,” he wrote. Then, just in case you weren’t paying attention:  “That simple yet critical fact bears repeating: the asserted absolute immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by existing case law.”

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel had issued a memorandum concluding exactly the opposite.

Judge Bates continued:

Executive privilege is not absolute even when Congress — rather than a grand jury — is the party requesting the information. . . . Presidential autonomy, such as it is, cannot mean that the Executive’s actions are totally insulated from scrutiny by Congress.  That would eviscerate Congress’s historical oversight function.

Quoting the Supreme Court in a case called US v. Bryan on the matter, Judge Bates added, as if specifically anticipating the congressional stand-off with Rove:

A subpoena has never been treated as an invitation to a game of hare and hounds, in which the witness must testify only if cornered at the end of the chase. If that were the case, then, indeed the great power of testimonial compulsion, so necessary to the effective functioning of courts and legislatures, would be a nullity. We have often iterated the importance of this public duty, which every person within the jurisdiction of the Government is bound to perform when properly summoned.

That emphasis was added by Judge Bates, by the way, which makes very clear where he, a conservative Republican federal judge, stands on the matter.

We’ll find out soon enough what Obama’s views are. Given the statement from Rove’s lawyer, it looks like it’s all in the president’s hands now.