How often do you see history being made? Now an amazing drama of immense importance for the world’s strongest nation unfolds around a single word. And since the country in question is the United States of America, what’s not amazing is that lawyers fill center stage.

The word at issue is “recall”. When it’s served up 70 times by the same person in one meeting, the mystery is why.

This battle of the lawyers, by the lawyers and for the lawyers takes place in the Senate Office Building. Gathered on one side, senators who lead the judiciary committee, with degrees from Georgetown University’s, Harvard’s, and Yale’s law schools, ask the questions.

On the other side the US’s highest ranking lawyer, the justice department’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, takes his position backed by a degree from Harvard Law School, and (in words, at least) by his boss, the president who hired him.

The two sides have squared off over Attorney General Gonzales’s firing of eight other lawyers, federal prosecutors who served in districts around the country. None of their law degrees comes from Georgetown, Harvard or Yale.