Yes, but the role of a political hack is completely different. We'll have to see which Mr. Mukasey is.

Then he notes that the Justice Department didn't seem to have any trouble giving Congress FBI reports on interviews of White House officials when Bill Clinton was president.

Zing! Of course such a reminder might have no effect on anyone in the Bush administration because, as we all know, they have no shame.

Given the crystal clarity of the law and precedent, and the decisiveness of Congressional resolve in this circumstance, I'm absolutely positive we can look forward to full and immediate compliance on the part of the White House, and an opportunity for a comprehensive review of the reuqested materials. After all, we've all seen the dramatic legal repurcussions of simply ignoring the will of Congress and telling the Democratic leadership to go fuck themselves, and God knows the White House wouldn't casually assume the risks of having another U.S. Attorneys scandal on their hands.

I mean, look at the enormous poltiical capital that bit of defiance has cost them!

The Administration has spent almost seven years taking back powers it believes belong to it and not Congress. Waxman knows this. So is this request merely an attempt to emphasize this? If it's an offer to Mukasey to demonstrate that he intends to lead the Justice Dept. independent of the White House, we should consider Mukasey's words regarding executive disregard of the law in wartime (inclusive of FISA, for example): "The president is not putting somebody above the law; the president is putting somebody within the law."

With someone who uses language this opaque while affirming expansive executive authority, he'll probably decline the offer and cite White House internal deliberations in a wartime environment. Still, it'd be something to see were he to defer to the law and not the president.

I believe it's high time for this administration's claims of "executive privilege" to be tested in the highest court, SCOTUS.

Allowing, of course, the sycophants would even agree to hear it. Does anyone believe we could get a majority vote for the people, instead of the cop-out, milquetoast "We decline to hear the case?"

The institutions which have been put into place to protect us have continually been circumvented by this gang of thugs and it would be extremely refreshing to peel away some of the layers of secrecy which were never meant to hide those "high crimes and misdemeanors", the knowledge of which we need to keelhaul these scoundrels.