White House won't testify under oath

As the loyalists like to say about domestic surveillance, if they have nothing to hide, why are they afraid to testify under oath? Our "give me my war with no strings attached" president is threatening to fight Congressional subpoenas for testimony about the business of the people. Via his mouthpiece attorney:

"Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," Fielding said in a letter to the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees.

In the letter, Fielding said more than 3,000 documents released by the Justice Department "do not reflect that any U.S. attorney was replaced to interfere with a pending or future criminal investigation or for any other improper reason."

Right. For one thing no one has had time to read all 3000 documents and for another what has turned up so far rather clearly demonstrates their plan to politacize our judicial system.

Bush is trying to spin this as some kind of big precedent setting favor.

“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.”

Reasonable proposal? The reasons behind the proposal are what's evident. And as Think Progress points out, there is certainly precedent for sworn testimony. "According to the Congressional Research Service, under President Clinton, 31 of his top aides testified on 47 different occasions." If Republicans were allowed to ask the questions then, they sure as hell should be ready to answer a few now - under oath.

Meanwhile, this was an easy pass.

The Senate, by a 94-2 vote, passed the bill that would limit the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys. Democrats say the administration abused its authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.

Who were the two idiots who voted no on this one, I wonder?