In line with this. Frank Askin explains:

[U]nder historic and undisturbed law, Congress can enforce its own orders against recalcitrant witnesses without involving the executive branch and without leaving open the possibility of presidential pardon. And a Supreme Court majority would find it hard to object in the face of . . . entrenched legal principles.

More.

Via Sargent:

I have long been a staunch advocate of Congressional oversight, first at the CIA and now at the Defense Department. I have said on several occasions in recent months that I believe that congressional debate on Iraq has been constructive and appropriate. I had not seen Senator Clinton’s reply to Ambassador Edelman’s letter until today. I am looking into the issues she raised and will respond to them early next week.”

Not exactly a full throated defense of Cheney-ratchik Edelman.

Via Sargent, the most interesting parts of Hillary's letter to Gates:

Rather than offer to brief the congressional oversight committees on this critical issue, Under Secretary Edelman – writing on your behalf – instead claims that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies. . . .

. . . I request that you describe whether Under Secretary Edelman's letter accurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense.

I would appreciate the courtesy of a prompt response directly from you. Thank you for your consideration.

Full letter below.

If Republican Senators approve of the Bush Administration Iraq policy, then their continuing filibuster of all attempts by the Democrats in the Senate to change course in Iraq is legititmate.

Legitimate does not mean right. Indeed, it is spectacularly wrong. And Republicans need to defend their support of Bush's Iraq Debacle.

What is NOT legitimate is to talk as if you do not approve of Bush's Iraq policy and then block all attempts to actually change that policy. Harold Meyerson calls out the Republican "eminences" and hacks who are doing precisely that:

Anyone searching for the highest forms of invertebrate life need look no further than the floor of the U.S. Senate last week and this. These spineless specimens go by various names -- Republican moderates; respected senior Republicans; Dick Lugar, John Warner, Pete Domenici, George Voinovich. [I would add Susan Collins, Norm Coleman and a score of others.] They have seen the folly of our course in Iraq. The mission, they understand, cannot be accomplished. The Iraqi government, they discern, is hopelessly sectarian. In wisdom, they are paragons. In action, they are nullities.

They are worse than nullities. They are frauds. Say what you will about Joe Lieberman, he is defending his votes with his words. More.

Another life lesson from the GOP:

[Rep. Richard] Baker took aim at critics who labeled [Sen. David] Vitter a hypocrite for promoting conservative views, talking about family values and advocating sexual abstinence at a time when he was in a touch with an alleged call girl service.

"If a man has values and standards, but does not live up to them, it does nothing to discredit the validity or those values and standards, and he is far preferable to those timid souls who, without values and standards, cannot fall short of them nor ever run the risk of being charged with hypocrisy," Baker said.

So it's more important to trumpet values that one's actions dishonor than it is to lead an honest life that doesn't hinge on "family values" rhetoric? Thanks for setting us straight, Rep. Baker.

You got to give Senator Russ Feingold credit -- not a panderer (unless he is pandering to one person, me):

It is clear that there are many people in this country, including myself, who demand accountability from this Administration for the terrible mess it made in Iraq and its egregious and even illegal power grabs throughout its six-plus years in power. I believe that the President and Vice President may well have committed impeachable offenses. But with so many important issues facing this country and so much work to be done, I am concerned about the great deal of time multiple impeachment trials would take away from the Congress working on the problems of the country. The time it would take for the House to consider articles of impeachment, and for the Senate to conduct multiple trials, would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to do what it was elected to do – end the war and address some of the other terrible mistakes this Administration has made over the past six and a half years.

The impeachniks are in high dudgeon. It turns out Russ Feingold is a coward, sellout, Vichy, DLC, corporatist Dem too. That leaves the Senate with . . . exactly ZERO potential adherents to the impeachment movement.

Is it time to stick the fork in yet? Looks like it's getting closer, according to ABC News.

On Monday, five McCain press aides -- including his three top communications officials -- quit en masse, just days after the campaign lost its chief strategist and campaign manager among dozens of aides being shed as part of aggressive cost-cutting measures.

The aides to resign -- communications director Brian Jones, deputy communications directors Danny Diaz and Matt David, and press aides Adam Temple and Amanda Hennenberg -- all agreed to stay on a few extra days out of loyalty to McCain, and helped him set up his weekend trip to New Hampshire.

Reasons given by the aides were loyalty to the campaign manager McCain replaced last week. But, there was also grumbling about why he bothered to have a national communications staff when he only appears to be running in three states -- New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina.

Matt Yglesias points to a great article by Louis Uchitelle in the NYTimes about our new Gilded Age tycoons and how they "earned it." I agree with Matt on the key quotes:

The Question of Talent

Other very wealthy men in the new Gilded Age talk of themselves as having a flair for business not unlike Derek Jeter’s “unique talent” for baseball, as Leo J. Hindery Jr. put it. “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career,” Mr. Hindery said, “who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”

He counts himself as a talented entrepreneur, having assembled from scratch a cable television sports network, the YES Network, that he sold in 1999 for $200 million. “Jeter makes an unbelievable amount of money,” said Mr. Hindery, who now manages a private equity fund, “but you look at him and you say, ‘Wow, I cannot find another ballplayer with that same set of skills.’ ”

A handful of critics among the new elite, or close to it, are scornful of such self-appraisal. “I don’t see a relationship between the extremes of income now and the performance of the economy,” Paul A. Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman, said in an interview, challenging the contentions of the very rich that they are, more than others, the driving force of a robust economy.

(Emphasis supplied.) Hindery seems to believe he benefitted not at all from anything the government and society provided him, from infrastructure, to legal recourse, to customers who could afford what he was selling. All hail the great Hindery! Let the rest eat cake. More.

Bill Moyers' interview of Bruce Fein and impeachment proponent John Nichols is illustrative of how the impeachment movement gives short shrift to the most effective tool for checking an out of control President - the Spending Power. Nichols in particular is so hot for saying the word impeachment that he utterly ignores the most effective check on Executive Power the Founders intended and provided. Look at this exchange:

BRUCE FEIN: . . . [W]e do find this peculiarity that Congress is giving up powers voluntarily. Because there's nothing right now, Bill, that would prevent Congress from the immediate shutting down all of George Bush's and Dick Cheney's illegal programs. Simply saying there's no money to collect foreign intelligence-

BILL MOYERS: The power of the purse-

BRUCE FEIN: --the power of the purse. That is an absolute power. And yet Congress shies from it. It was utilized during the Vietnam War, you may recall, in 1973. Congress said there's no money to go and extend the war into Laos and Cambodia. And even President Nixon said okay. This was a president who at one time said, "If I do it, it's legal." So that it we do find Congress yielding the power to the executive branch. It's the very puzzle that the founding fathers would have been stunned at. They worried most over the legislative branch in, you know, usurping powers of the other branches. And--

BILL MOYERS: Well, what you just said indicts the Congress more than you're indicting George Bush and Dick Cheney.

BRUCE FEIN: In some sense, yes, because the founding fathers expected an executive to try to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch. And you're right. They have basically renounced-- walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check. It's not an option. It's an obligation when they take that oath to faithfully uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. . . .

Absolutely correct. And guess what. This is the most serious threat to the checks and balances of the Constitution. This is what we should be screaming about. This is what we should be demanding from the Congress. And guess what, if exercised by a Democratic Congress, without the support of Republicans, it will be effective. It will stop the excesses. Stop the Iraq Debacle.

But what do impeachment proponents care more about? This:

From those of us who live near Lake Michigan: thanks a heap, Indiana.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery—already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes—can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

This is not a comforting admission:

[Paul Higginbotham, chief of the water permits section at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management] said regulators still are unsure about the ecological effects of the relatively new refining process BP plans to use.

During the Connecticut Senate Democratic primary, Joe Lieberman said:

Ned Lamont seems just to be running against me, based on my stand on one issue, Iraq. . . . I'm a Democrat with a 35-year record of fighting for progressive causes, for the middle class, for civil rights, for women's rights, for human rights and a lot more. I voted with my Senate Democratic colleagues 90 percent of the time. . . .

Joe Lieberman, with Hugh Hewitt yesterday:

[JL:] . . . I’ve declared myself for now an independent. . . . So I’m just watching, and I’m not going to endorse anybody until after the two parties have their nominees, and I’m going to support whoever I think is best for the country, regardless of party. . . .

HH: Oh, that’s fascinating. Last question, how do you think history’s going to evaluate George W. Bush?

JL: . . . I think overall, over time, his ratings among the historians will be greater than his ratings in the polls today. . . .

Thank you Joe for demonstrating how right we were to oppose you for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Connecticut.

This clip

is, of course, political theater. But it is also the heart of the matter. I repeat again, Ms. Taylor's refusal to discuss certain matters at the behest of the President is flouting a legal subpoena which has been unchallenged LEGALLY by the President.

While the President can, in my view, direct subordinates to not answer a Congressional subpoena on the grounds of executive privilege, he can not do so to persons who do not work for him, as neither Ms. Taylor or Ms. Miers do. The President has no legal power over them. The Congressional subpoena power does bind them until set aside by a court of law. What Ms. Taylor did do in fact was honor her political oath to the President will ignoring her legal duty to comply with a Congressional subpoena. Ms. Miers apparently will do the same today.

My bottom line remains the same, it is incumbent on the President to seek to quash these subpoenas, by making such a motion before a court of law.