“But nobody told us we’d have our rights infringed!”

After either rolling over or abetting the expansion of Federal power to investigate, search, probe, and otherwise ransack the homes, lives, and records of suspected terrorists/criminals, with little or no oversight, it’s more than a little amusing that Congress — GOP as well as Democrat — is up in arms over a weekend search of a Congressman’s office in connection with a bribery investigation.

Resentment boiled among senior Republicans for a second day on Tuesday after a team of warrant-bearing agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation turned up at a closed House office building on Saturday evening, demanded entry to the office of a lawmaker and spent the night going through his files.

The episode prompted cries of constitutional foul from Republicans — even though the lawmaker in question, Representative William J. Jefferson of Louisiana, is a Democrat whose involvement in a bribery case has made him an obvious partisan political target.

Speaker J. Dennis Hastert raised the issue personally with President Bush on Tuesday. The Senate Rules Committee is examining the episode.

The justification for their outrage, aside from “Dammit, we’re Congressmen — we’re above being treated like criminals!”?

A court challenge would place all three branches of government in the fray over whether the obscure “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution, which offers some legal immunity for lawmakers in the conduct of their official duties, could be interpreted to prohibit a search by the executive branch on Congressional property.

Lawmakers and outside analysts said that while the execution of a warrant on a Congressional office might be surprising — this appears to be the first time it has happened — it fit the Bush administration’s pattern of asserting broad executive authority, sometimes at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches.

An assertion that GOP Congressfolk have been more than willing to back up as long as it’s other folk who are being investigated.

Members of Congress are mindful that much of the public is not familiar with the speech and debate clause, which, among other things, requires that lawmakers be “privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same.” Many people may wonder why a Congressional office cannot be searched in a criminal case and what members of Congress are complaining about.

But — but — but — we’re Congress!

To many lawmakers, that is secondary to the larger separation-of-powers principle they see at risk. “I clearly have serious concerns about what happened,” Mr. Boehner said, “and whether the people at the Justice Department have looked at the Constitution.”

A pity it’s taken so long for them to notice.