If the President doesn't like a Supreme Court ruling, he doesn't have the authority to call all nine justices into the Oval Office to defend it. Any President foolish enough to try would get a lesson in the definition of "three equal branches of government."

And, just as the Supreme Court isn't at the President's beck and call, the President is not at Congress's beck and call. I really don't know where Congress got the idea that it can demand explanations from other "equal" branches of government. Yes, I'm saying executive privilege isn't necessarily a bad thing, regardless of Nixon's attempts to stretch the concept to cover criminal activity.

Of course, because of the Separation of Powers, the President is required to sell ideas to Congress in order to get them approved (think 95-0 vote against the Kyoto treaty even though President Clinton wanted it ratified), the President will often voluntarily talk to Congressional committees. But Pelosi can't demand Bush appear before the House any more than Bush can demand that Pelosi hand him a list of her biggest political supporters. That's the definition of "equal."

So, it turns out that the anti-war left does not have enough votes to put strings on that aproprations bill meant to catch Bush in a poorly-planned trap, and they're now loading it with pork to buy the missing votes. Let's see, what could Bush do about that? Ah, yes, he could veto the bill and claim it's over the pork. Then Pelosi and Reid end up in their own catch-22 -- either support the pork and look like the stubborn bad guys as Bush starts sending generals to testify that lack of funds is killing the same troops Pelosi and Reid keep talking about (Gingrich and government shut-down anybody?), or remove the pork and lose any chance of keeping those strings attached. They could try demonizing the politicians that are thinking of switching parties. That's always a winner.

I guess that now they've squandered any sympathy the public had for them, they'll need to drum up investigations into Bush (say, human resources practices).

But that's precisely why Bush's numbers are improving. When Bush stopped talking about "all-Iraq all the time," and started efforts toward keeping old campaign promises, his numbers magically rose. If the Democrats tried something similar (stop the "all-Bush all the time" talk and start passing things), they would improve their political position.