The problem with this article is it's surprise. Ms Lithwick approaches the matter with her usual combination of analysis and wit, but what her reasoning leaves out is galling. One reads it only to be surprised by her surprise.
At this point in our history, the parliamentary functions of the legislative branch can be looked at as a game with rules that limit the actions of the participants to actions that fall within multiple sets of limiting factors. going after Gonzales but failing to do so with both guns blazing, the Democrats are only following the "cover-your-ass" principle, doing what they should do in a perfect world but only in half-measure while avoiding a direct confrontation with the White House while providing themselves with an endless show of moral rectitude and public concern for the law.
Following the CYA principle, they happily provide Gonzales and the President with unprecedented and unconstitutional surveillance powers that the administrations love of power and secrecy thrive on which allows them to dodge the inevitable charge that they are "soft on terrorism." In an ideal world, of real lawmaking by perfected lawmakers, this would be ludicrous, unfortunately, the distortions of reality brought about by the tactics of the current administration don't create the conditions needed for ideal-world lawmaking; substituting instead, a political atmosphere that creates example after example of paradox and nonsense.
With this in mind, any lion-like behavior on the part of the Democrats would find them 'trying to destroy the effectiveness of the office of a war-time president' or some such drivel which would more than likely hurt them the next time the Republicans want to charge them with a lack of patriotism or of their being "soft on terrorism." In other words, what the Democrats are doing simply mirrors the squalor of Karl Rove's strategizing: it is just a different way of hanging on to power. It just spares them the time and complexity of explaining the unconstitutionality and general craziness of pretty much everything the executive branch wants.
It's not noble or just, but there is every reason to believe that it will work if and until the Democrats can find a poisonous intellectual dwarf who can channel Machiavelli of their own.
