Finally! I’ve been waiting for this Bush to show up. Democrats need a good smack down from the Texan dictator.
A defiant President Bush warned Democrats Tuesday to accept his offer to have top aides testify about the firings of federal prosecutors only privately and not under oath or risk a constitutional showdown from which he would not back down. ~news.yahoo.com
My political advice would have been to come out swinging this way from the start. But there you have it. Bush and the Republicans are always caught off guard by the Democrats political underhandedness and dirty tricks.
Democrats’ response to his proposal was swift and firm: They said they would start authorizing subpoenas as soon as Wednesday for the White House aides.
“Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That’s the formula for true accountability,” said Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, said, “We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants. … I have proposed a reasonable way to avoid an impasse.”
He added that federal prosecutors work for him and it is natural to consider replacing them. “There is no indication that anybody did anything improper,” the president said.  ~news.yahoo.com
Bam! Kick it up a notch!
“If the Democrats truly do want to move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I proposed,” Bush said. “If scoring political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal will really be evident for the American people to see.”
The House Judiciary Committee was expected to authorize subpoenas for Rove, Miers and their deputies on Wednesday; the Senate Judiciary Committee was to follow suit a day later.
Bush said he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.
“My choice is to make sure that I safeguard the ability for presidents to get good decisions,” he said. “If the staff of a president operated in constant fear of being hauled before various committees to discuss internal deliberations, the president would not receive candid advice and the American people would be ill-served.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is leading the Senate probe into the firings, spoke dismissively of the deal offered by the White House:
“It’s sort of giving us the opportunity to talk to them, but not giving us the opportunity to get to the bottom of what really happened here.” ~news.yahoo.com
Of course, this new Imperial Congress feels that they are the constitution.