Turkana's top rated diary on today's WaPo report has us all up to speed on what's emerging as Dick Cheney's central role in pushing the NSA's unauthorized, unlawful and unconstitutional program of warrantless domestic surveillance, and his role in the Midnight Raid on John Ashcroft's hospital room. As the Post has it:

Vice President Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday. The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey. Comey's disclosures, made in response to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicate that Cheney and his aides were more closely involved than previously known in a fierce internal battle over the legality of the warrantless surveillance program. The program allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas.

So Cheney "tells" DoJ he "disagrees." Then Gonzo and Card are sent to kick in Ashcroft's door. Ultimately, it takes the FBI Director's orders to his agents on the scene to ensure that Comey not be removed from the room by Gonzo and Card under any circumstances to safeguard what little integrity the rule of law had left at that point, given that the program continued -- unauthorized and outside of the law -- for some time even after this confrontation.

Well, that and the threatened resignations of nearly the entire upper echelon of the Justice Department.

Yeah, by the way, about that...

Comey said that Cheney's office later blocked the promotion of a senior Justice Department lawyer, Patrick Philbin, because of his role in raising concerns about the surveillance.

Interesting, that. I wonder if that sort of bureaucratic backstabbing has anything to do with why the Cheney Gonzales "Justice" Department has been hesitant to act with dispatch on this:

The [Office of the Vice President] has been out of compliance with executive orders on the classification of sensitive national security information for several years. During that time, they've been inventing their own classification system (and spending taxpayer money for official-looking stamps bearing this fake classification). And now the Vice President's former top aide is on trial in federal court, offering as a defense for his role in the burning of a critical nuclear nonproliferation asset the excuse that the Vice President personally authorized the declassification of sensitive information. All the while, not reporting it, or complying with any of the presidential mandate covering the secure handling of sensitive national security information.

Since that time, of course, that former aide -- Scooter Libby -- has been convicted and sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for his crimes. And all the while, the Vice President's office has been playing fast and loose with the laws and executive orders concerning the classification and declassification of national security information, with no accountability to anyone save... the Department of "Justice."

But of course, the Attorney General knows that if you get in this Vice President's way, you get the shiv.

The Vice President's office is in blatant defiance of executive orders, putting some unknown and untold volume of national security information at risk, and the person whose job it is to crack down on this recklessness and ensure our safety is in his pocket and taking his orders.

[The President's] all-purpose incantation of national security as an inherent and absolute Presidential right, whatever the surrounding circumstances, a right to be exercised in secret at Presidential pleasure without accountability to Congress and the people, surely represents an extraordinary violation of public trust. Some of his own people have begun to understand this now, even though [the President] himself thus far has shown not the slightest evidence of comprehension, repentance, or even passing regret. "The key," [a penitent aide] recently said, "is the effect that the term 'national security' had on my judgment. The very words served to block critical analysis. It seemed at least presumptuous if not unpatriotic to inquire into just what the significance of 'national security' was." If [the President] is not impeached, it will be a message from Congress to future Presidents that they can define national security as they wish, share their definition with no one, and do whatever they claim national security requires. It will be difficult for future Congresses to object when future Presidents act upon the powerful precedent [the President] will thus have established.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

May 1974