Congressional Democrats are ratcheting up their onslaught against Bush and the White House . In a dramatic development of events they have cited two top Bush aides --- White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and White House Counsel Harriet Miers --- for contempt for failing to cooperate in the investigations regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Then rapidly ramping up the pressure they called for a special prosecutor to probe perjury allegations against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Paul Kane provides some details about the Democrats' charges against Gonzales.

Four Senate Democrats today formally asked the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales lied to Congress in his testimony about a domestic surveillance program for terrorists...Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), a senior committee member, accused Gonzales of taking an oath, both when he assumed his current office and before each of his congressional appearances, that he has now broken through deliberately misleading testimony.

"He tells the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but the truth," Schumer said in announcing the request, made to Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who is acting attorney general in all matters related to the congressional investigations of Gonzales.

Schumer pointed to Gonzales's testimony to the panel Tuesday, when he said that a critical March 10, 2004 meeting with congressional leaders at the White House concerned intelligence activities other than the NSA's controversial warrantless surveillance program. Several Democrats who were at that meeting have said it was about the surveillance program, and a May 2006 letter from then-Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte to Congress showed the same thing.

Gonzales testified Tuesday that the intelligence program he referred to was supported by congressional leaders in the 2004 briefing, despite resistance from senior Justice Department officials who were refusing to re-authorize the program because of concerns about its legality. But several Democrats present have said they opposed the program and were unaware at the time that Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card, would next attempt to persuade then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to overrule his deputies. The two went to Ashcroft's hospital room, where he was recovering from emergency gallbladder surgery.

But the most dramatic twist to the Democrats' offensive is their subpoena of top Bush aide Karl Rove in the attorney firing case. The Associated Press has more on the political fire fight.

President Bush is expected to claim executive privilege to prevent two more White House aides from testifying before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors. Thursday is the deadline for Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, to provide testimony and documents related to the firings, under a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Also subpoenaed was White House political aide J. Scott Jennings. The Justice Department included both men on e-mails about the firings and the administration's response to the congressional investigation. White House Counsel Fred Fielding has consistently said that top presidential aides — present and past — are immune from subpoenas and has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege.

Rove is clearly the chief target of the Democrats' multi-pronged attacks on the White House . The objective is not difficult to decode: bring down Rove and you bring down Bush. The Democrats have suceeded in using the setbacks in the Iraq war to critically injure Bush and even to cripple him politically. Using their relentless attacks they have forced him into a lame-duck status several months before his last term ends. But that's not enough for them. They aim to demolish him. In their strategic calculations regarding the 2008 general elections, the road back to power in the White House goes through Bush's political graveyard. A big portion of the Democratic base have a visceral loathing, indeed hatred, of Bush, and every attack on him and on his top lieutnants serves to whet their bloodlust and their determination to use the polls next year to oust the Republicans from the White House. And in the estimations of the Democratic strategists the most effective way to demolish Bush and maximize the opportunity for victory in 2008 is to demolish his top strategist, Rove. It's no secret that the Democrats have a deep-seated grudge against Bush's long-term chief political strategist. They have never forgiven him for being the mastermind of their defeats in the 2000 and 2004 general elections. In their eyes he's the man who made the election and re-election of George W. Bush possible. Although Bush and his White House team of strategists, headed by Rove, now appear fatally weakened politically, the Democrats still fear the man Bush described as the "architect" of his 2004 re-election. In the runup to the 2008 elections they can never really feel safe until Rove is neutralized and rendered incapable of masterminding the Republicans' '08 battle strategies.

And so they are going after his jugular. But Rove seems to have more lives than a cat. He has survived many previous assaults on him by the Democrats. A few years back Democrats unleashed special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald against him. For a moment it appeared they finally had him. But somehow Rove wriggled loose from the noose before it was yanked tight. But goaded by the baying of their far left Moveon.org base who will be satisfied with nothing but the dead political carcasses of Bush and Rove, the Democrats are back again in the hunt for Rove.