The story behind the story about Ashcroft in the hospital

Is why it was such a big deal that the White House tried to force an ill man to sign off on the warrantless wiretapping:

It’s time that the Democrats in Congress blew the lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program. Whatever form it took for those years was blatantly illegal; so egregious that by 2004, not even the administration’s most partisan members could stomach it any longer. We have a right to know what went on then. We publicize the rules under which the government can obtain physical search warrants, and don’t consider revealing those rules to endanger security; there’s no reason we can’t do the same for electronic searches. The late-night drama makes for an interesting news story, but it’s really beside the point. The punchline here is that the President of the United States engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, until senior members of his own administration forced him to stop. That’s the Congressional investigation that we ought to be having.

When will we learn that the Bush administration has been blackmailing members of Congress to keep them in line? That they spied on the Democratic party? That they listened to John Kerry's phone calls?

We, as the employers of the White House residents, have the right to know.

Update: The pressure to sign off on the program may have come from Bush himself.