That was Patrick Leahy, speaking this morning on Meet The Press about how President Bush has refused to comply with two subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee for documents relating to the President's illegal wiretapping program and his firing of eight US attorneys, citing executive privilege (which, I was interested to find out, hasn't been around forever: it's actually the product of the Nixon administration).

The case for handing over the documents is overwhelming: the program in question is illegal, the President had a direct hand in authorizing it, and whatever state secrets may be revealed in process have almost certainly been uncovered already by the press. Last week Senator Leahy, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, said he would take the administration to court if it continued to stonewall over the issue.

But let's leave wiretapping aside. Maybe releasing the requested documents really would give away vital secrets. Maybe the program really is legal. Fine. But then why refuse to comply on the growing US attorney scandal? The administration continues to claim that the Justice Department's actions were legal, and the President continues to claim that he had no hand in the firings. If that's the case, then they have nothing to hide by giving over their documents related to the matter.

I'm not convinced that the President was involved in the attorney's firings, and so I don't believe his actions here are about direct self-defense (that certainly isn't the case, however, with the wiretapping subpoenas). Rather, I think this is one more example of the President upholding executive secrecy even at the cost of justice.