Wednesday Night Ambush II

In online discussions of the Wednesday Night Ambush, one question goes unanswered that I have yet to see anyone ask: why didn't the subject of the ambush come up during Alberto Gonzales' confirmation hearing in January, 2005?

White House Counsel Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card accosted an ailing John Ashcroft on March 11, 2004, two days after major surgery to relieve his pancreaitis, in an effort to get him to sign off on the Bush regime's domestic wiretap program. As previously noted, Ashcroft refused, and the subsequent mutiny almost cost the regime its entire senior leadership at the DOJ (Ashcroft, Comey, and others threatened to resign before Bush pulled back).

The actions of Gonzales and Card didn't happen in a vacuum or under a cloak of extreme secrecy. Even if it did, secrets are hard to keep in Washington, DC. Someone (or multiple someones) knew of the Wednesday Night Ambush. On November 11, 2004, George Bush nominated Gonzales to replace Ashcroft as Attorney General. The subsequent confirmation hearings were contentious, but seemed to focus on a narrow set of issues (primarily, Gonzales' role in establishing the regime's torture doctrine). Illegal wiretapping was secondary, at best.

Following an unsatisfactory set of answers at Gonzales' rubber stamp confirmation hearing, Sen. Russ Feingold wrote a letter to Gonzales...