Democrats had done a pretty good job so far this year in holding back calls for retribution against the Bush Administration on a host of fronts.  That is now melting away in the Congress.

The release last week of the "terror memos" which authorized a variety of controversial CIA interrogation techniques for high value detainees in the War on Terror was sort of like throwing a match into some dry grass off a rural highway.

You could feel wildfire spreading in the halls of the Capitol yesterday, especially after President Obama unexpectedly left open the possibility of a full scale investigation of those responsible for the memos that authorized the CIA interrogation techniques.

Mr. Obama made a lot of us in the Press Gallery wonder if he had blindsided Attorney General Eric Holder by saying that the AG would be the one to make the decision on whether Bush lawyers who worked on those memos could be under investigation.

Democrats quickly seized on that, with some like Sen. Patrick Leahy demanding that torture memo author Jay Bybee - now a federal appeals court judge - resign his post on the bench.

Some even suggested the idea of impeachment to force Bybee out.

Meanwhile, Rep. John Conyers said he would convene hearings on the terror memos, maybe even before an oversight report from the Justice Department is made public.

Democrats like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) predicted that review would be "devastating" for the former administration.

"There's clearly a whiff of impeachability about this whole thing," Whitehouse told a group of us just off the Senate floor about Bybee.  "The question is whether the facts will bear that out."

While Republicans denounced such talk as purely political, Democrats certainly do have to step back and take a deep breath about a big time probe of the last administration, mainly because it could be seen by some as a big fat waste of time while the economy is sinking.

But there are a lot of Democrats who want nothing less than to dig and dig and dig with a 9-11 style blue ribbon commission and maybe come up with big time evidence of wrongdoing and more.

And it was obvious to me yesterday that the blood is moving quickly in the veins of many Democrats on that very subject.

Too quickly?  That's a judgment for another day. 

Let's first see what fork in the road they take.

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