"A direct attack on the rule of law", and so forth

Josh Marshall sums the DOJ matter up this way:

Back up a bit from the sparks flying over executive privilege and congressional testimony and you realize that these are textbook cases of the party in power interfering or obstructing the administration of justice for narrowly partisan purposes. It's a direct attack on the rule of law.

This much is already clear in the record. And we're now having a big public debate about the politics for each side if the president tries to obstruct the investigation and keep the truth from coming out. The contours and scope of executive privilege is one issue, and certainly an important one. But in this case it is being used as no more than a shield to keep the full extent of the president's perversion of the rule of law from becoming known.

It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they're not even really denying the wrongdoing. They're ignoring the point or at least pleading 'no contest' and saying it's okay.

Note that Marshall goes after el Presidente himself, here.

But I had been thinking today of this matter in a diiferent plane. Not that Marshall is wrong as such. He is right, but more than right: we have had "direct attacks" from The Regime on the integrity of scientific research, upon the United Nations, upon national intelligence agencies, upon the laws protecting covert government agents, upon human rights, international treaties and conventions, upon sound economic and regulatory practices, and not to mention routine, direct attacks upon truth and common sense.

Does the DOJ's USA "replacement-gate" matter really raise the ante, or is it just another instance? I am not sure, as a matter of logic. I am only glad that at last they seem to have found a place where people are fighting back effectively. Perhaps this has to do with the new Democratic majorities in Congress; perhaps with WH stepping on senatorial (even GOP) prerogatives in the matter; perhaps with lawmakers' sense of vulnerability to federal DOJ partisanship. I don't know. But it's good that the resistance has found a base in Congress at last (and just maybe the MSM), and not just the blogs.