Tony Snow, today:

"Now we have a situation where there is an attempt to do something that's never been done in American history, which is to assail the concept of executive privilege which hails back to the administration of George Washington and in particular to use criminal contempt charges against the White House chief of staff and the White House legal counsel," said White House Spokesman Tony Snow.

Perhaps no White House chief of staff and no White House legal counsel have ever faced contempt of congress charges simply because never before in American history have the chief of staff and the legal counsel been so contemptuous of congress or the constitution.

As to "assailing the concept of executive privilege" -- also known as checks and balances -- Booman reminds us:

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee.

Booman goes on:

This demonstrates an appalling erosion of principle among GOP lawmakers. Ronald Reagan was not only a Republican president, unlike Bush he was a popular president. Nevertheless, in 1983, not a single Republican member of congress was willing to let him stonewall a congressional committee. Today, not a single Republican on the Judiciary Committee was willing to say the same.

What happened in the interim?

What happened indeed?

At long last, have they no shame? (Er, that's obviously rhetorical):

The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”

Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Tom Davis R-Va., the leading members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, objected to the refusal Friday in letters to the White House and the Defense Department.

White House and Pentagon officials have turned over about 10,000 pages of material, but Waxman and Davis said those papers lack critical documents that would show communications between senior administration officials and top military officers shortly after Tillman was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.

Forget for a moment how specious the legal argument or how craven the implications, and ask yourself: at what point (and over whom) will the Congress stand up to this administration's continuous flaunting of legislative oversight? Taylor? Miers? Tillman? Gonzales? And what more will it take than an administration claiming executive privilege over the release of a soldier's records before the Congress finally stands up and says, Enough?

Maybe those questions are rhetorical, too.

You know, if you agree with the Federal District Court ruling today regarding the constitutionality of the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program, now would be a good time to show your support to those who brought the case to court.

Think Progress has the link:

Fox News reports a federal district court in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration’s NSA warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it....

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor opinion HERE (PDF). She writes:

In this case, the President has acted, undisputedly, as FISA forbids.FISA is the expressed statutory policy of our Congress. The presidential power, therefore, was exercised at its lowest ebb and cannot be sustained.

According to the injunction the government's program "violates the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."