On Wednesday, during an appearance on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got in on the act. (Hat-tip to Think Progress’ Matt Corley.) Here’s the transcript:

MICHEL MARTIN: I wanted to again cite the president’s words when he said, “I view the quality of empathy of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential quality for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.” I wanted to ask you, Attorney General Gonzales, do you think that, do you agree with that? Do think that’s appropriate?

GONZALES: Well, I think everyone wants to think that their government officials are kind, compassionate people. And I think someone having that kind of image is certainly helpful in a confirmation hearing. I do worry a little bit, well, I worry, I worry about about justices on the court making decisions based on what they think makes them feel good. I don’t think it’s fair to expect society to anticipate the outcome of a case based upon what makes a justice feel good. In essence what you’re saying, I think, is that “I’m going to, I don’t care what the law says, I’m going to come out, I’m going to pursue an outcome that I think is fair and just. I’m going to rewrite the law.” And I think that’s dangerous.

“They are going to continue to talk about these truth commissions, but at the end of the day, they are probably not going to get anywhere, because there were dozens of Democratic members on both sides of the Capitol who were briefed on these techniques, said nary a word, and in some cases encouraged our intelligence officials [to] go further,” Boehner said.

Pelosi in particular has been at the center of this issue. Republicans claim she has not been candid about briefings on interrogation she received while serving on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. She’s become something of a figurehead in the GOP’s attempts to redefine the torture probe as a hypocritical, partisan witch hunt. Said Boehner: “I think at the end of the day, we just ought to know, what did she know, when did she know it and what did she do about it? You can’t have your cake and eat it too. And it appears that is what the speaker is attempting to do.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., wondered if the hearings were a “political stunt,” and hinted that he, too, wouldn’t mind seeing Pelosi on the hot seat. “I don’t want to retry Nancy Pelosi — that’s not my goal — but if you’re going to accuse these people in the Bush administration of being evil and committing a crime, then if she was told, I want to know what she was told,” he said.

Pelosi has admitted that she was briefed on interrogations in September 2002, but has said she wasn’t told the methods were actually being used. New reports indicate that in February of 2003, one of her aides was briefed about the use of waterboarding on al-Qaida member Abu Zubaydah, and that the aide informed her about it. The aide, Michael Sheehy, also reportedly told Pelosi that Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who’d also been briefed, was drafting a letter of protest. Pelosi is said to have told Sheehy to tell Harman that she supported the letter, but she’s not listed as a signatory or otherwise mentioned in it.

The Post’s Dan Eggen says companies that collectively accepted $150 billion in TARP funds have spent about $22 million on lobbying since the government began its handouts last fall. Topping the list of offenders for the first three months of 2009, though, were General Motors, which spent roughly $2.8 million, along with Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase, each of which spent about $1.3 million.

This sort of news, as the Post rightly points out, is sure to leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. As William Patterson, executive director of CtW Investment Group, which is linked to a grouping of labor unions, told the paper: “Taxpayers are subsidizing a legislative agenda that is inimical to their interests and offensive to what the whole TARP program is about. It’s business as usual with taxpayers picking up the bill.”

Patterson is at least partly on point. In the last three months of 2008, for instance, collapsing automakers Chrysler and GM spent millions lobbying the House and Senate on issues ranging from vehicles emissions and safety regulations to climate change. It’s hard to feel, in these cases, that corporate interests are in line with the public good. But, as in a great deal of the public debate that has surrounded the bailouts and the stimulus, when the actual amounts at issue are put in to perspective, it’s clear that these stories are being overblown. Eggen did concede, towards the end of his article, that many of the firms spent less on lobbying during the first three months of 2009 than they did during the same period in 2008. But he didn’t provide some key perspective about the sums being spent, which pale in comparison to the amount of money the government has given out.

Based on data in a Post graphic, it appears that out of all the firms involved, the one that spent the largest percentage of its aid package on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009 was American Express, which devoted a sum equivalent to a whopping .024 percent of the money it got from the Feds to lobbying. General Motors, which topped the list in terms of cold cash, got $13.4 billion in government assistance and spent just .021 percent of that on lobbying. (The companies say they’re not actually using TARP money for lobbying purposes, but it’s impossible to verify that because of the way companies move funds internally — and, of course, they might have just cut their lobbying expenses if not for the infusion provided by the government.)

Of course, this doesn’t mean that people don’t have a right to feel uncomfortable about the fact that taxpayer dollars, in whatever percentages, are being used to lobby the government for corporate interests. It’s just important to maintain perspective. The real issue here might be an irony that the Post pointed to in an earlier article. Some analysts believe that we could start seeing a feedback cycle: The more the government gets involved in the private sector, the more the private sector will feel it needs to lobby to protect its interests.

“You can call it a ‘natural’ grassroots movement, as opposed to astroturf,” High Times magazine’s Senior Editor David Bienenstock joked to Salon, referring to allegations that the tax-day tea parties have been hijacked by Fox News, the GOP and corporate lobbyists. “We are the rational and mature ones, unlike the others out in fantasy land today. We’re out here to represent constituents that are eager to pay taxes. All we want is to be able to smoke our pot in peace.”

Jointly organized by High Times magazine and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the event was staged to raise awareness for the “tax and regulate” approach to marijuana decriminalization. Advocates of the approach argue that it would not only greatly ease the financial demands of the U.S. government’s “War on Drugs” but also provide a substantial source of tax revenue. They point to a study done by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, “The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition,” which estimates that “tax and regulate” could save up to $7.7 billion in enforcement expenditures and raise $6.2 billion in revenues, if the drug were taxed like alcohol and tobacco. Hence, the $14 billion check to the U.S. Treasury, which Bienenstock and NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre maintain is a conservative estimate.

St. Pierre thinks the timing is right. Aside from a “certain degree of cultural zetigeist,” as he put it, the financial crisis is a unique opportunity to push the economic advantages of decriminalization. Said Bienenstock, “This is the most exciting time. It’s a friendlier situation for us. We have an economic situation that makes change more feasible. It took the Great Depression to end alcohol prohibition. That’s the situation we feel we’re in now. We’re here to show that $14 billion is a lot of money.”

After the Post Office event, Bienenstock, St. Pierre and their small group of supporters were to head to City Hall to pirate some of the official NYC tea party’s publicity. Bienenstock mused, “I suspect we will create a bit of a split in the crowd. We will put the pot-smoking libertarians in a very weird place.”

The changes to the estate tax that were passed under former President Bush included a gradual phase-out of the tax, with a completely untaxed year in 2010. President Obama wants to eliminate that untaxed year, and keep the tax at this year’s levels, under which 997 out of 1,000 people have absolutely no taxes levied on their estates. What’s more, Tax Policy Center research found that only 5 of every 100,000 taxable estates consist primarily of small businesses and farms. It goes without saying, then, that Lincoln and Kyl’s amendement will benefit a tiny portion of the country.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post had scathing editorials on the issue today; they’re worth reading.