CONGRESS PUSHES BACK

When FBI agents searched the Capitol Hill office of a U.S. representative last month, they touched off a legal and political dispute that is far from over, largely because it is over much more than just a raided office.

House Republican and Democratic leaders, usually at odds, demanded that the FBI stop reading documents they took from the office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., and immediately return them. There was even talk that House Republicans might call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.

On the other side, some of Mr. Gonzales’ associates were quoted as saying that he had threatened to quit if the FBI was forced to give up the seized papers. He has defended the raid as legal and necessary, since Mr. Jefferson had not cooperated with the investigators’ search for evidence in their bribery probe. They had obtained a search warrant signed by a judge after investigators found $90,000 hidden in a freezer in the lawmaker’s house.

The eight-term congressman, who denies wrongdoing, filed a motion asking the judge to order the FBI to return all of the documents taken in the search. The Justice Department cited a century-old Supreme Court decision holding that “the laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime.”

President Bush tried to ease tensions by ordering a freeze of the documents, sealing them for 45 days. But the struggle between the Justice Department and the House leadership goes on, and that is a healthy sign because after five years of giving the president most of everything he wanted, Republicans seemed to have learned that appeasement of the executive branch does not bring peace or mutual respect. It brings assertions of still greater power.

That is what the protest from Congress is about. Republicans enthusiastically joined in the president’s agenda of tax cuts and increased spending, defended him when questions about the reasons for the Iraq war arose, and looked the other way when he issued signing statements that emptied bills of meaning. The response from the White House was to approve a precedent-setting raid on the office of a member of Congress.

It is a member of the opposition party this time, a man who must convincingly explain the $90,000 in cold cash, but next time … Congressional Republicans aren’t waiting for a next time.