It looks like Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller, along with a number of their senior aides, made the president back down from a criminally stupid decision this week -- even though he still made the wrong one.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.

Unfortunately, even the decision to seal the evidence pending "negotiations" was the wrong one, and indicates the fundamental weakness of George W. Bush at this time.Bush surrendered the authority of two branches of government at the invocation of a non-existant privilege of the third. And unfiortunately, this has only emboldened Congressional leaders in both houses to be more defiant.

On Friday, Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he had been meeting with Senate counsel to explore potential procedures and had given Mr. Frist a memorandum on a possible approach.

"The Justice Department is going to have to look at what we put in place and agree to it," Mr. Lott said. "I hope we can work it out."

But he said, "I am perfectly willing to get it on with the administration and take it right to the Supreme Court if they want to argue over it."

So much for cooling down the situation so that sides did not become entrenched. Lott is implicitly denying the clear constitutional mandates of the the Executive Brabch to see that the laws are faithfully executed and the Judicial Branch to issue warrants for searches under the Fourth Amendment. In effect, the Congressional position is that, unlike the rest of America and contrary to the clear language of the Constitution, it will decide when and if valid subpoenas and warrants may be executed. Seems to me that these clowns are looking at them selves as the Imperial Legislative Branch.

It seems, though, that the obscene obstruction of justice ordered by the President was motivated by politics.

"If you tell the House to stick it where the sun don't shine, you're talking about a fundamentally corrosive relationship between two branches of government," the senior administration official said. "They could zero out funding; they could say, 'Okay, you can do subpoenas, so can we.' "

However, Lott's position makes it clear that the corrosive situation still exists. And having rewarded Hastert, who now concedes that the warrant was lawfully issued and that the FBI therefore had the authority to conduct the search of Jefferson's office.

House leaders conceded Friday that FBI agents with a court-issued warrant can legally search a congressman's office, but they said they want procedures established after agents with a court warrant took over a lawmaker's office last week.

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In an editorial in USA Today on Friday, Hastert said he and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have directed House lawyers "to develop reasonable protocols and procedures that will make it possible for the FBI to go into congressional offices to constitutionally execute a search warrant."

So even though there is consensus on the fact that the Jefferson search was legal, the FBI and Justice Department are to be shackled for totally speciousreasons -- just to save the working relationship between Congress and the White House.