Same deal with Gonzales and Ashcroft:

Comey testified Tuesday that when he refused to certify the program, Gonzales and Card headed to Ashcroft’s sick bed in the intensive care unit at George Washington University Hospital.

When Gonzales appealed to Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general lifted his head off the pillow and in straightforward terms described his views of the program, Comey said. Then he pointed out that Comey, not Ashcroft, held the powers of the attorney general at that moment.

Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.

“I was angry,” Comey told the panel. “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general.”

“Thought” you say? That’s what you did see!

There they are, hovering round Ashcroft’s bed:

Sign, Goddammit! Sign, and the pain will stop!

Nice picture, eh?

Whoever thought there’d be an Attorney General that made John Ashcroft look good?

Oh, and even though they couldn’t Ashcroft to say what they were doing was legal, they went ahead and did it anyhow:

The White House, Comey said, recertified the program without the Justice Department’s signoff, allowing it to operate for about three weeks without concurrence on whether it was legal. Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other Justice Department officials at one point considered resigning, Comey said.

“Considered resigning,” eh? What else were they going to do? Stamp their tiny feet? And we thought the Beltway Dems didn’t have balls.

NOTE And what a nice man Pony Blow is:

“Because he had an appendectomy, his brain didn’t work?” Snow said of Ashcroft.

Guess it’s OK to “visit” with Pony in the hospital when he’s recuperating from an operation. Good to know.