Oh, this is good.

One of the fascinating dynamics in the Justice Department for going on 4 years now has been the tension between the Bush loyalists and those loyal Republicans who still have a shred of decency left. The poster child for the latter category has been James Comey, the deputy attorney general for part of John Ashcroft's tenure, who appointed his old friend Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor to investigate the Plame affair. Comey was also the guy who refused to reauthorize the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, forcing the White House to get Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed. Bush, as is his way, nicknamed Comey "Cuomo."

Comey is two years removed from DOJ, now serving as general counsel for Lockheed Martin. But, as Josh noted, Comey popped up this week singing the praises of canned U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to the Washington Post: "David Iglesias was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general."

You could almost hear the knives being sharpened.

Then yesterday, as Paul noted, the Bush loyalists fired back, telling the Post that Comey had been consulted by his successor as deputy attorney general, Paul McNulty, about some of the canned prosecutors before McNulty approved the final list.

Ooops. Not so, the Post says today:

In a related matter, administration officials said they were mistaken in saying that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty consulted his predecessor, James B. Comey, about some of the U.S. attorneys before they were fired. Comey was not consulted, the officials said Saturday.

In a different era, this would call for pistols at dawn. Good stuff.