You know, if you are going to pick a fight, the first thing you should do is have a pretty good idea, beyond mere hope and assertion, that you might actually win. I think it more than ironic, if indeed irony is something that applies in this case, that it may well be the very same Supreme Court that ensconced Boy Wonder in the White House in the first place that could very well be instrumental in his removal from office. Perhaps, were Bush the type to be reflective, he might find some kind of sour humor in it; I doubt whether he shall ever rise above petulant self-pity.
By vowing yesterday to "go to the mat" (does he mean he wants to wrestle Patrick Leahy and John Conyers?; or did he mean "go to the mattresses", a term made famous by Mario Puzo in The Godfather?) to fight subpoenas of White House aides Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, Bush has to know that the invocation of executive privilege in a case such as this is a loser. Even if he doesn't know it, his lawyers should know it, because the Supreme Court, in US v. Nixon was as clear as a September morning that executive privilege was a pretty narrow privilege - limited to issues of national security or great matters of state - and as Nixon's evocation of the privilege was blanket (his attorneys never even thought of making the argument, because they most assuredly would have been laughed out of court), as is Bush's, it seems pretty clear that, should he or Congress (it would seem Bush will go to court first, but accuse the Democrats in Congress of doing so, just like in Florida in 2000) take this to court, he will lose. Should he ignore such an order, impeachment will follow. Should he follow through, and Miers and Rove appear, attorneys in tow, claiming their Fifth Amendment right to protection from self-incrimination, impeachment will follow. Should they testify under oath, perhaps after negotiating a limited immunity deal similar to the one granted Oliver North by the Iran-Contra committee in 1987, their testimony will no doubt lead to . . . you guessed it.
There seem to be few options left, except perhaps a palace coup, a terrorist attack on Congress (would anyone believe it was really a bunch of terrorists?), or acquiescence in the face of mounting disgust among the American people for the entire criminal enterprise formerly known as the Bush Administration. They could go quietly - as Nixon decided after years of stone-walling; or they can fight it out, lose, and go in a very ugly fashion, but in the end, I do believe we are watching the beginning of the end, not just of Alberto Gonzalez (although good riddance to bad rubbish can never come too soon), but of the entire thing - Bush, Cheney, Rove, the whole lot of them.
