[THEHILL] The House Oversight Committee is unlikely to consider potential contempt charges against former IRS official Lois Lerner this week, a GOP aide said Monday.Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) had said that he could move on holding Lerner in contempt this week, after the former head of an IRS tax-exempt division invoked her Fifth Amendment rights for a second time on Wednesday. But Issa likely won't meet that timeline, after a dust-up between the Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, Republican and the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings
...Representative-for-life from Maryland, representing half of Baltimore City, which makes his district ultra-safe, and most of Howard County, which is out-populated by the city. Cummings' politix are so liberal they're tedious...
(Md.), dominated headlines late last week.
Frederick Hill, a front man for Issa, said separately Monday that: "As required by the rules, a business meeting announcement and contempt report will give members at least three business days notice."
The House is scheduled to be out of Washington next week, meaning the Oversight panel would probably be unable to consider contempt charges before late March.
Congressional Republicans have intensified their interest in the IRS in recent months, with GOP politicians insisting that all roads in their investigation lead back to Lerner.
But the confrontation between Issa and Cummings on Wednesday -- the Oversight chairman used a throat-slashing gesture to cut the Democrat's microphone -- overshadowed Lerner's return to the Oversight hearing room. Issa apologized to Cummings on Thursday after Democrats called for stripping him of the Oversight gavel.