On February 15, 1938, Truman personally filibustered Milligan’s reconfirmation by the Senate, calling him incompetent, immoral and guilty of using "Hitler-Stalin tactics." Time magazine called Truman’s speech "one of the bitterest…ever heard on the Senate floor."

Despite Truman's efforts, Milligan was endorsed by the Senate and went on to bring down his close friend and mentor, Pendergast. But Truman never forgot what he had done. Within days of becoming president in 1945, after the death of Roosevelt, one of Truman’s first acts was to fire Milligan. When Attorney General Francis Biddle protested Truman’s action, he fired Biddle, too.

In other ways as well, Democratic presidents have long used federal law enforcement agencies for political purposes. Roosevelt often had his political enemies audited by the Internal Revenue Service. He also used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate and tap the phones of journalists and newspaper publishers who opposed his policies.

In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and President Lyndon Johnson also used the FBI and IRS to investigate and harass their political opponents. As is well known, they bugged Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s phones and hotel rooms just to gain political intelligence—falsely justifying their actions on the grounds that King was in league with the Communists.

The point of this history lesson is not to excuse or justify anything Bush and Gonzales may have done, which seems mainly stupid rather than malicious, but to suggest that Democrats would be wise not to push their protests too far. Their own presidents have done far worse with less justification. That's a fact.