While the specifics are of interest and the level of intrigue is apparent, how can we really say that we're surprised at anything this administration does?

We're talking about an administration that was installed in a manner that historians will almost certainly consider a "bloodless coup" back in 2000. An administration headed by a man who believes that he is God's appointee and staffed to the gills with people willing to do his bidding regardless of the consequences. Literally anything is acceptable to these people and they have proven that they have not the slightest sense of shame about it.

The only responsible thing to do is impeach the whole lot of them, but it is so late in the game that the unintended consequence of this act - which could include a bitter, vengeful President Cheney and the possibility that Republicans would vierw their man as a martyr and take actions appropriate to this status - make it almost unthinkable that there will be any real justice here.

Those of us who value the rule of law simply have to console ourselves with the fact that a Democratic Congress will, little by little, bring the relevent facts to light. And the cumulative impact of what they will uncover combined with the do-nothing attitude of the republican party while it was happening will almost certainly spell the end for the conservative movement in this country.

End of rant...

"...to protect Ashcroft from having a conniving Card and Gonzales manipulate his severe illness and confusion by coercing his signature on a document -- behavior that is seen only in the worst cases of deceitful, conniving relatives coercing a sick and confused person to sign a new will -- but the administration's own FBI Director thought it was necessary to instruct his FBI agents not to allow Comey to be removed from the room."

This plot twist was initially rejected by "The Days Of Our Lives" for its excrutiatingly deceitful tone. It was too much betrayal for one episode to handle...

"How is this not a major scandal on the level of the greatest presidential corruption and lawbreaking scandals in our country's history?"

I agree---I can already see a Hollywood movie in the making.

As a commenter on TPM Muckraker yesterday speculated about Nancy Pelosi's strange passiveness on this subject, perhaps the NSA illegal spying itself is the best explanation for Congress' failure to investigate it.

The most logical, albeit terrifying, reason for Congress' failure to jump on the NSA spying crimes and impeach this entire administration is that the original NSA spying since October 2001 has accomplished its goal.

It has gathered enough material on congressional leaders - Democratic AND republican - to blackmail them into silence, or at least ineffectualness, on this subject.

That's also another explanation for Gonzo's idiotic giggling before congressional committees: they can snap all they want about fired US Attys - he knows they'll never risk themselves by attacking him and Smirky on their real crimes.

Crimes that would obviate the necessity of impeachment, because those crimes would send them directly to prison.

Private (is there such an entity any more?) citizens must, at this juncture, assume the default position that their mail is read, their telephone calls monitored, their electronic communications monitored, their reading selections known and monitored, their purchases and purchase history/preferences/modes of transactions are known and monitored, and that their voting is contaminated.

Moreover, corporations and their attendant lobbyists determine policy and write legislation; Congress reports to these entities.

Citizens are simply used as voting cover to demonstrate a scrim of "citizen representation."

How is this not a major scandal on the level of the greatest presidential corruption and lawbreaking scandals in our country's history? -- GG

It is exactly what you describe, one of the greatest examples of presidential corruption and lawbreaking in our country's history. And it is part of a pattern that that began with the election of this president and that has influenced this administration's every decision.

To this point, the executive branch has not been held accountable for its multiple criminal offenses. A partisan congress and supreme court have aided and abetted this criminality by failing to exercise their own powers under the Constitution. And the main stream media has done almost nothing to inform the public of this and other crimes committed by the executive branch. If not for the oversight of the present congress, none of this would have reached the light of day.

Many questions remain unanswered.

How do you remove a criminal executive branch officer from office without impeachment? How do you hold accountable those persons in government who refuse to meet their responsibilities to hold such criminal behavior accountable? How do you convince the media to meet its responsibility to make this behavior known to the general public? These are the types of questions America's citizens are asking.

Ultimately, it is the public who has the power to hold all of these people accountable and to punish them for any crimes. But America's citizens cannot do their jobs if they not informed.

... but I'm almost convinced that nothing will come of this. After hearing Comey's testimony yesterday, I was so furious I was near tears. I thought maybe, finally, people will understand that a bunch of thugs are running our government. But my own city's newspaper (150,000 pop.) didn't even carry a story about it in today's edition. Fox News yesterday evening focused on Snarlin' Arlen's hyping Comey's unwillingness to state definitively that the program was illegal. Tony Snow's feigned dismissiveness ("disgusting" is the right word for his attitude) and Gonzo's refusal to allow Ashcroft and Comey to testify in 2006 make me think that they're worried. If the Senate Judiciary Committee keeps chewing on this, maybe it will have an impact. I'm not optimistic.

I could hardly imagine that such a dramatic confrontation at the hospital had occurred merely over which excuse should be used to justify warrentless wiretapping.

If you go back to your first point (this program had been authorized every 45 days since October 2001 before the DOJ switched gears) something should jump out here; 2004 was an election year. Dick Cheney had more to worry about in this election year than Dick Nixon ever had to worry about in 1972.

Here was an administration with the power to listen to anyone's conversations without anyone else finding out. Would they have taken advantage of this power to listen in on political enemies? Hmmm.... recently the Administration was given the power to replace any USA for any reason and without any oversight or need for approval. Would they exploit this power to install appointees to pursue political aims? Why yes! Yes they would!

Thanks to modern surveillence technology, Bush and Co didn't have to worry about some modern day bumbling "plumbers" getting caught tapping the phones of the DNC. They could do that with supercomputers installed at AT&T, or satellites.

Someone somewhere down the line involved in the spying must have gotten troubled by certain information requests from the WhiteHouse. He or she says something to their boss at DOJ and Comey, Ashcroft and other top lawyers have a sit down. They, as you speculate, must have worried that the program had creeped outside its intended purpose and was now threatening to create a political scandal.

My guess is the DOJ's refusal to recertify came at a critical point in whatever spying was going on. Yet, as Comey acknowledges, his and Ashcrofts concern over the program was SO GREAT THAT EVEN THE MADRID BOMBINGS DID NOT INFLUENCE THEIR DECISION. When that is the case they must have worried about something other than spying on terrorists.

There needs to be a special prosecutor to answer these questions, as this is beginning to look a lot like Watergate, but without the hotel.