Showdown

UPDATED

The lower-third graphic on CNN reads:

COLLISION COURSE
DEMS DEFY PRESIDENT BUSH

Um... no.

President Bush is defying congress. Let's try to keep that straight, hmm?

UPDATE

Media Matters caught it, too.

On the March 21 edition of CNN Newsroom, CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash asserted that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law was going to "pretty much defy the president point blank" by voting to authorize (which the subcommittee subsequently did) subpoenas for White House senior adviser Karl Rove and other current and former administration officials in the ongoing investigation into the fired U.S. attorneys. Bash did not explain how the Democrats' insistence that current and former White House staff testify in public and under oath constituted defiance of the president, rather than President Bush's insistence that interviews be conducted in private, not under oath, and with no written record being a defiance of Congress and its oversight responsibilities.

Congress has not just a right, but a duty to exercise oversight of the Bush administration. The president, with his knee-jerk invocation of "executive privilege," is defying congress. It is as simple as that.