Bring on the oversight

Oh, look - Democrats aren't going to let Dubya enjoy imperial power:

"I don’t accept his offer," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “It is not constructive, and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation or to prejudge its outcome.”

Responding defiantly on a day in which tension over the affair played out on multiple fronts, Mr. Bush said he would resist any effort to put his top aides under "the klieg lights" in "show trials" on Capitol Hill, and he reiterated his support for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose backing among Republicans on Capitol Hill ebbed further on Tuesday.

What nonsense. Listen up, George - this is America, the land of checks and balances, where all three branches of government are equal. For six years you've enjoyed the benefit of a rubber stamp Republican congress which would do your bidding - but those days are over:

Democrats threatened to subpoena Mr. Rove and the others unless they testified publicly and under oath, while the White House vowed to fight subpoenas in court.

The fallout from the dismissals continued to ripple across the capital.

In the Senate, lawmakers responded to the furor over the firings by voting overwhelmingly to revoke the authority they had granted the administration last year under the USA Patriot Act to install federal prosecutors indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Good. It's time for Democrats to play hardball and rein in this administration and curb the huge abuses of executive power. The American people expect congressional Democrats to unrelentingly fight this administration's attempt to hide behind the curtains of secrecy and deceit. If there have to be lawsuits to force the White House to comply, then so be it.