Earlier this week, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, issued a subpoena to former Bush adviser Karl Rove to appear before that committee. Now Karl Rove has responded rather derisively:

“I don’t know if I’d call it a witch hunt; I don’t think of myself a witch,” Rove said during an interview on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor” on Wednesday night. “He’s sort of like Captain Ahab, and I’m the whale.”

“This is a guy who went to the cloak room and asked to ‘get his’ — and then filled in a crude way to describe my posterior,” Rove said. “He could wait until the United States judicial system resolves how this ought to be handled, but instead he wanted to have a stunt, and we’ll see what happens.”

Rove has long claimed that executive privilege shields him from ever having to testify in front a Congressional committee. I agree with my friend Radley Balko when he writes that executive privilege is a legal fiction:

Executive privilege is the idea that a president should be able to shield his staff from congressional or legal inquiries because staffers who know they could potentially be subpoenaed may not feel as free and open to give the president candid advice. This is nonsense.

The president’s political appointees are public servants. Their salaries are paid by taxpayers. What they do and say on the public payroll should be accessible to the public, to the courts, and to congressional oversight. If a presidential aide fears that advice he gives the president could subject him to legal action or congressional subpoena down the road, he shouldn’t give advice that’s of questionable legality or that’s ethically dubious in the first place. It really is that simple. If the president wants to hire a personal attorney who can give him personal legal advice that’s protected by attorney-client privilege, that’s fine. He should pay that attorney out of his own pocket, or out of campaign funds.

Here’s the video of Rove’s interview with Bill O’Reilly; Rove actually refers to himself as “Moby Dick” about the 5:09 mark: