Subpoena time

Here they come. Via McClatchy:

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday authorized the use of subpoenas to compel five Justice Department officials to answer questions in a probe into firings and hirings of U.S. attorneys.

The subpoenas will be used only if those officials resist coming forward voluntarily.

Senators also moved to authorize subpoenas for White House officials, including President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers. That authorization will be delayed until next week, at the request of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the panel. Such delays are routine in Senate panels, invoked by both Democrats and Republicans to buy time.

And, saying she found it ""very difficult for me to believe" that a mid-level Justice official acted alone to change the Patriot Act, Dianne Feinstein wants to hear from that guy too:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., urged that the panel authorize a subpoena also for William Moschella, a Justice Department official who told McClatchy Newspapers on Wednesday that he was acting without his superiors or the White House when he wrote the provision in the Patriot Act that changed the law on replacing U.S. attorneys - and that he did not intend to circumvent the Senate.

Maybe this will quiet those on the left who feel "nothing is being done."

And maybe, if we get really lucky, the pundits and bloggers on the right who have mounted a pigheaded defense of Gonzales and the administration will finally come to understand that this is a nation of laws, not men.