I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and I've come to a conclusion: this entire 'debate' is fake. Completely, totally, 100%, top-to-bottom fake.
The Republicans are looking for ways to draw dividing lines between themselves and Bush, because of Bush's ever-declining poll ratings. If they hope to not be COMPLETELY squashed this coming election, they need to publicly divorce themselves from Bush's policies. At the same time, however, they can't, because at the end of the day, Bush's policies are their policies (tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate welfare, cheap illegal labor for business, etc.)
And so we have a Congress that keeps making big public displays of disagreements with the White House, then goes ahead and does exactly what Bush tells them to. Recent examples: Hayden's confirmation to head of the CIA (wherein the Republicans made a big show of questioning the nomination, then went right ahead and voted for it) and the immigration bill (wherein the Republicans made a big show of being outraged at 'amnesty', then passed (in the Senate only, so far) pretty much exactly what Bush wanted.)
Looked at in this light, and the Jefferson 'controversy' makes perfect sense: its an issue in which the Republicans can make a big public break from the White House, and doing so perfectly advances their agenda - making Democrats look bad. Without this controversy, what would we have? A Congressman gets busted for taking a bribe, and is being investigated. Its news, sorta. It would get some coverage, but considering that there's a half-dozen Republican congressmen involved in the hookergate scandal, a dozen more in the K Street project, Arbramoff selling out all his old pals, etc, etc, it just doesn't stand out.
This 'controversy' does exactly that: make the one Democratic scandal stand out above the dozens of Republican ones. And now we have a 45 day seal on the records, guaranteed to bring the controversy right back to the front page in a month and a half. And I got cold hard cash that says that they'll be 'temporarily' resealed again after that, because this controversy needs to last until the November elections.
This whole 'Constitutional crisis' is nothing more than a stage show to distract attention away from the real issues.