Today's Senate judiciary hearing on the attorney firings, mainly called, it seems, so that Karl Rove wouldn't show up, was notable for little new information and much senatorial outrage about White House deputy political director Scott Jennings's refusal to answer questions based on Bush's invocation of executive privilege (he used the phrase, "Pursuant to the president's assertion of executive privilege, I must respectfully decline to answer that question at this time," at least ten times--Chairman Patrick Leahy, who cut him off a couple of times before he got to "assertion," grumpily called it the new "taking the fifth"). But my two favorite moments were literary in nature. The first came when Jennings, who made repeated, self-pitying entreaties about how this was just as frustrating for him as it was for them (Charles Schumer: "Trust me, it's not"), gave his opening statement: "I hope that you can appreciate the difficulty of my situation," he said. "It makes Odysseus's voyage between Scylla and Charybdis seem like a pleasure cruise." (His lawyer made an embarrassed smirk when the words came out.) Points for having read the Odyssey; points taken away for being obnoxious about it; points given back for allowing us to imagine George Bush as a mer-dragon and Patrick Leahy as a sucking vortex of death. The second came courtesy of Leahy, who had accused Jennings of hiding behind the executive privilege wall selectively. Leahy asked Jennings, "Did you ever read Catch-22 when you were younger?" Jennings said he was aware of the concept. "You might want to go back and read it," Leahy advised him. "In fact, it should be part of your training manual." --Britt Peterson