"Bedside manner" is a phrase that refers to how the doctor treats you when you're in the hospital and he stops by to see how you're doing. A doctor with good bedside manner sits down and answers all of your questions so that you don't need a medical dictionary to understand what he's staying. Bad bedside manner is when the doctor only comes into your hospital room to look for cigarettes.

The best stories about bad bedside manner involve political figures who take advantage of the sick guy when he's hitting the morphine pump and hallucinating. Recently, a former Bush administration official gave public testimony about this kind of bedside manner in the context of the administration's wiretapping program, which came under fire because the New York Times discovered that it authorized wiretapping of U.S. citizens without a warrant.

The media was not alone in objecting to the wiretapping program. Some lawyers working for the Bush administration felt the same way. One of those lawyers was James Comey, who held the prestigious job of chief Federal prosecutor in New York City. When he was designated Acting Attorney General once John Ashcroft was out of commission due to gall bladder surgery, he said "No" when asked to reauthorize the wiretapping program. Technically, when Ashcroft was in the hospital, Comey was Attorney General. The problem was that Comey thought the wiretapping program was against the law, and he would not re-authorize it.

What happened next will interest anyone who thinks the Bush administration is staffed with nutjobs and other like-minded people. The whole story is here, but here are some excerpts if you are reading this while driving.

On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.

In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft, summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the room, turned and left.

The sickbed visit was the start of a dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department in early 2004 that, according to Comey, was resolved only when Bush overruled Gonzales and Card. But that was not before Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass resignation, Comey said. The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said.

Comey testified that he drove his car as fast as he could to the hospital when he learned that Alberto Gonzalez (White House Counsel) and Andrew Card (Chief of Staff) were on their way to get Ashcroft to sign the re-authorization. This was Comey's call, not Ashcroft's, because Comey was filling in for Ashcroft who was lying in agony in his hospital bed.

The crisis in March 2004 stemmed from a review of the program by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which raised "concerns as to our ability to certify its legality," according to Comey's testimony. Ashcroft was briefed on the findings on March 4 and agreed that changes needed to be made, Comey said.

That afternoon, Ashcroft was rushed to George Washington University Hospital with a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis; on March 9, his gallbladder was removed. The standoff between Justice and White House officials came the next night, after Comey had refused to certify the surveillance program on the eve of its 45-day reauthorization deadline, he testified.

About 8 p.m. on March 10, Comey said that his security detail was driving him home when he received an urgent call from Ashcroft's chief of staff, David Ayres, who had just received an anxious call from Ashcroft's wife, Janet. The White House -- possibly the president -- had called, and Card and Gonzales were on their way.

Furious, Comey said he ordered his security detail to turn the car toward the hospital, careening down Constitution Avenue. Comey said he raced up the stairs of the hospital with his staff, beating Card and Gonzales to Ashcroft's room.

"I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that," Comey said, saying that Ashcroft "seemed pretty bad off."

Comey said he was angry because "I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me."

When they all got to the hospital room, Gonzalez and Card and Comey were standing around Ashcroft's bed. According to the Washington Post which summarized Comey's testimony, "Gonzales [was] holding an envelope that contained the executive order for the program. Comey said that, after listening to their entreaties, Ashcroft rebuffed the White House aides. 'He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me,' Comey said. Then, he said, Ashcroft added: 'But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,' and pointed at Comey, who was appointed acting attorney general when Ashcroft fell ill."

In the end, this all didn't matter. Bush signed the Executive Order re-authorizing the wiretapping program despite objections from his lawyers as to its legality. Comey quit the next day.

The guy who tried to take advantage of a sick man in the hospital was Alberto Gonzalez. Today he's the Attorney General!