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George W Bush has seen off Al Gore, John Kerry and Saddam Hussein. But with the varnish fast disappearing from his administration, the president may finally be about to meet the man who could prove his undoing.
Preet Bharara is a 38-year-old Indian-American lawyer, who made his name prosecuting the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo crime families in New York.
Now the former district attorney has President Bush in his sights, as well as the man they call "Bush's Brain": Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
Mr Bharara is spearheading the Democrat campaign to uncover corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and financial impropriety at the heart of the Bush administration.
In a flurry of subpoenas and press releases, the Democrats have launched 36 investigations, holding about 220 committee hearings since seizing control of Congress last November - and forcing the resignations of six Bush administration officials. It is as if several dozen Hutton inquiries had started at once.
Mr Bharara is already well on his way to claiming his first prominent political scalp through his role as senior counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, one of three bodies conducting inquiries into the sacking by the Bush administration of eight US lawyers.
The hearings generated damaging headlines for the Bush administration as they investigated accusations against Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, that government lawyers were dismissed if they investigated Republicans or failed to investigate Democrats.
Mr Gonzales had an apparent "amnesia" attack, being unable to recollect any relevant evidence during testimony - only for his aide Monica Goodling, who was granted immunity from prosecution, to admit that the Justice Department routinely took the political views of lawyers into account.
The growing body of evidence that Mr Gonzales, who was once Mr Bush's personal lawyer, abused his position is seen as a triumph for Mr Bharara. Indeed, it was Mr Bharara who originally suggested to the New York senator Chuck Schumer, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who hired him in 2005, that he launch the investigation when news of the lawyers' sackings began to leak out.
A congressional official told The Sunday Telegraph: "He knew it didn't smell right and he put in calls to his old contacts to find out what was going on. He has managed to get people to testify who would normally have seen this as a politically motivated attack."
John Galotto, a friend from Columbia law school, told Legal Times magazine: "He's so disarming and friendly, people don't realise he has a 100 mph fastball as a lawyer."
Mr Gonzales's deputy, Paul McNulty, coaxed to go public by Mr Bharara, admitted that one of the attorneys had been sacked to open a job for a former deputy to Mr Rove. The Senate Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Mr Rove's emails, but the White House claims many have been "lost".
Meanwhile, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by the Democrat congressman Henry Waxman, is conducting 20 investigations.
They include inquiries into misinformation about weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq War - something that has the potential to embarrass the British Government - corruption in postwar reconstruction, White House contacts with the convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the leaking of the identity of the CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Despite bitterness about the treatment of Bill Clinton by a Republican congress over the Monica Lewinsky affair, Democrat majority leaders insist that presidential impeachment would be a waste of time and resources.
But not all Republicans believe them. The conservative FrontPage magazine described Congressman Waxman as "spewing out subpoenas all over the place in what is the beginning of an obvious drive toward impeaching the president". In fact, he has issued just three subpoenas.
OpEdNews columnist Allen L Roland is available for comments , interviews and speaking engagements ( allen@allenroland.com )
Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net
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