Mr. Comey's Tale: Chilling and Sickening

That we have have a lawless administration should not come as a surprise to no one, by now.

That it was so lawless that, even, John Ashcroft drew the line, is quite surprising.

Mr. Ashcroft has never been one of my favorite people, but he wins some respect for the strength he showed in this situation.

Mr. Comey's Tale - washingtonpost.com:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to re-certify the legality of the administration's warrant-less wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.