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.

I remember when I was kid I visited Washington DC to see the Smithsonian and an exhibit on the Presidency. There was a little piece on Nixon and secret service guards. Apparently Nixon tried to change the guards' uniforms to be more Imperial, more European - he added gold-rimmed tunics and peaked hats. The public pretty poorly pretty quickly, and the uniform was discontinued. Yet the imperial mindset that made those uniforms seem appropriate continues to this day in the White House.

more after the jump

One of the recurring themes of these posts is President Bush's determination to get what he wants, often secretly and outside of the normal legislative process. We've seen it in his use of executive signing statements and his bureaucratic restructuring of the civil rights division. These are done without press releases or speeches, but their effect is just as dangerous as any law the President might sign.

The administration now appears to be using the same tactics in their fight against evolution in colleges. President Bush could never convince Congress to cut funding for evolutionary biology majors, so instead he's changed the financial aid paperwork to make such funding impossible.