Hey, remember the U.S. attorney scandal? Fishy potentially-motivated-by-partisanship firings of nine U.S. attorneys by the White House?

Well, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hasn't forgotten. At the Democratic National Convention yesterday, Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz asked Leahy for reaction to the news that a U.S. district court judge has refused to stay an order that former White House aide Harriet Miers is legally required to testify about the firings.

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.