Dubya says he won't recognize congressional subpoenas of current and former White House staff directly involved in the Prosecutor Purge.

When asked yesterday if he would "go to the mat" and "take this to court" if subpoenas were issued, he said, "Absolutely."

The proper response from Senate Dems should be: "Fine. Let's go."

Consider: what are the end goals of this whole effort?

The first goal is to hold people accountable for politicizing and weakening the Justice Department. This would include pressuring the president, via the grassroots, to remove those involved with the Purge from their posts.

But grassroots pressure only goes so far with a president who doesn't care about public opinion (and doesn't want to fire folks who know where a lot of bodies are buried.)

So while we should pursue this goal, we can't expect to achieve it.

The second is not to scuff up Dubya.

He's already as scuffed up as can be, and he's not running for re-election. It only gives other Republicans a free shot to appear independent from Dubya.

The second is to further public understanding of the negative impact of conservative government.

This should be an overarching goal, to help Democrats bury conservatism as much as possible and facilitate the articulation of a liberal vision for our government.

As argued here earlier, the Purge is part of the conservative project to cripple our civil service, so we are left with a government of partisan hacks loyal to special interest and not the public interest.

If we go to court over White House subpoenas, we have a shot of achieving one or both goals.

Either the subpoenas are properly upheld by the judiciary, and everyone's forced to testify.

That would give the public maximum information with which to press for further accountability (though again, all the pressure in the world may not achieve this goal), and also to further understand the true nature of conservative government.

Or, conservative activist judges protect the White House and nullify the subpoenas.

That may deny us accountability for White House staff, but it still gives Democrats the opportunity to expand the argument about the failure of conservatism to serve the public interest.

To be sure, one of Dubya's goals in leaving the door open to go to court is dragging out the process and allowing media attention to wane.

Certainly that's possible. It's already happened with Walter Reed.

But like with Walter Reed, the damage is done. Both are recognized as a failures to serve the public.

They may not yet be widely seen as failures of conservative government, but only because not enough Democrats are tying together the myriad of Bush scandals and advancing that fundamental argument.