From NBC’s Meet the Press this morning:

RUSSERT: Do you believe Congress has the right to restrict the sale and transfer of machine guns or do you think that Judge Alito is correct that Congress should not be interfering in that?

SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OK): No, I think we probably have the right to do it. But I don’t think a judge has the right. That brings us back to the whole point. Those aren’t decisions judges should be making. Those are decisions legislatures should be making. That’s how we’ve gotten off on this track that we allowed judges to start deciding the law, new law, rather than interpret the law that the Congress — what should have napped this case is this is an area that’s up for debate and needs to go back to Congress. And if Congress decides that, then it should be there.

RUSSERT: So Judge Alito was wrong?

COBURN: Sure.

RUSSERT: And he was legislating?

COBURN: Sure.

We couldn’t agree more.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials repeatedly claimed that Iraq was providing al-Qaeda with training in chemical and biological weapons. The administration’s claims were based on the statements of a known fabricator, al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. It gets worse. The Washington Post reports that al-Libi formally retracted his claims in early 2004:

In fact, in January 2004 al-Libi recanted his claims, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information.

Months later, Cheney was still pushing al-Libi’s claims anyway. Here’s Cheney on CNBC’s Kudlow & Kramer, 6/4/04:

It’s clearly established in terms of training, provision of bomb-making experts, training of people with respect to chemical and biological warfare capabilities, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Iraq for training and so forth”¦

It’s inconceivable that, by that point, Cheney didn’t know that al-Libi had recanted. If Cheney didn’t know, he was grossly negligent. Either way, Cheney owes the public an explanation.

“[S]everal of the most important lawyers who deal with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said they saw more clues last week that Fitzgerald is continuing to look into the possibility of charging Rove with lying to investigators or the grand jury or both.”