Remember the good ol’ days, when presidents lied about blowjobs? How every minute of every news cast was filled with tales of tawdry tape-recorded confessions, presidential denials, interesting uses for cigars, and the definition of “is”?

Sure you do. It was so important we had to invoke impeachment proceedings and spend $40 million dollars to investigate. We had the full chamber of the House of Representatives discussing the president’s sex life. We even spent more time and money on that than we did the 9/11 Commission.

But when damning documents surface that prove the President lied to Congress and lied to the American people about the rationale and timetable for war, war that has killed over 1,700 US servicemembers, it gets ignored by the media and relegated to a basement closet with the few representatives bold enough to speak truth to power. And hardly anyone I know understands what “Downing Street Minutes” are until I explain it to them.

In the picture above, Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) is trying to serve his letter to the President, signed by himself and 88 colleagues, and co-signed by more than a half-million Americans.

And the big White House goon is turning him away. And the press goon Dana Wilbank at the Washington Post is protecting the coverup by dismissing Conyers’ hearings as a “dress-up game”. His account ridicules the faux hearing in a basement closet while conveniently ignoring the fact that the location was forced by Republicans refusing to allow Conyers the use of many more suitable and available hearing rooms.

We’re not going away. The more you pick up your gavels and go home, the more you “disassemble” and cover-up, the more curious we and the media become. The more Scott McClellan tells us “these matters have been addressed” when the only addressing is to tell us they’ve been addressed, the more we smell a rat.

Some people are taking the “Well, so what? We knew he was lying back then!” angle (Bill Maher, I’m looking in your direction…) Then there’s the “well, that’s in the past now” approach. Some with no sense of irony are trying to tell us it depends on what the meaning of “fix” is.

Hmm. If I learned anything from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, it is that it is not about the sex, it is about the lying. Same standard applies here. Whether you were pro-war or anti-war, whether you thought Saddam had WMD’s or not, it is about the lying. Doesn’t matter if France or John Kerry or Bill Clinton thought Saddam had WMD’s or not; they didn’t lie about it to the people to justify a war. It also doesn’t matter how far in the past it was; when was the Whitewater land deal, anyway, 1978? What’s the statute of limitations on lying to Congress and the People about war?

So, Mr. President… what did you know and when did you know it? What are your answers to the Five Questions in Rep. Conyers’ letter?

1) Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document?
2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain’s commitment to invade prior to this time?
3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate?
4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq?
5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to “fix” the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states?

These questions will be addressed. You can answer now or you can answer later. I’m betting you’re not going to like the “later” option as much.