It was Gonzales who chose April 17

It seems that all of a sudden the Bush administration can't wait to get one of its high-ranking officials under oath.

Until recently, department officials also said they wanted to give Congress enough time to go through the more than 3,000 pages of e-mails, memos, calendar pages and other documents detailing the decision to fire the prosecutors.

That changed Friday — the day after Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, testified to the committee — when aides said they would try to get Gonzales to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to explain his side.

Do they think he's going to talk his way out of this, or do they want to get it over with and get him out of office ASAP? Or does it have to do with the fact that Senate Democrats will be using their recess interviewing other Justice Department officials to be better prepared for Gonzales?

Testifying under oath is already like garlic to the vampires of the Bush administration.

Testifying under oath before well-prepared Democrats has to be like, well, sunlight. Whatever the administration's reasoning, Democrats aren't playing along.

The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said Gonzales had been offered earlier dates but turned them down. It was Gonzales who chose April 17, said Leahy, D-Vt., and that date will not change now because "everybody has set their schedule according to that."

"It's the date that the attorney general originally picked. It's the date the hearing will take place," Leahy said.

Democrats have the White House and Gonzales sweating. Let them keep sweating.