As noted yesterday, President Bush is insisting that he will not allow his Senior Advisor, Karl Rove, or his former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, among others, to testify under oath before Congress with respect to the burgeoning (I do love that word) US Attorney scandal. “Bad precedent,” he said. Presidents won’t be able to get candid advice if that kind of thing is allowed to go on, he said.
Of course, it’s all bullshit. Did he really think that no Democrat would remember what the Republicans did to President Clinton? How they had not one, not two, but five White House Counsels testifying under oath — including as to matters that, in the private sector, would be covered by the attorney-client privilege? How Clinton’s Chiefs of Staff (three of them), Senior Advisors, and others, all did the same? How the Clinton White House supplied thousands upon thousands of emails and other documents, costing the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars?
Waxman lays it out, chapter and verse. Nice try, W, but this dog won’t hunt.
tblade says
…just look in the mirror!
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Appologies for the pun, but there’s a story. I was in an Italian lit class, lead by one of my favorite Italian-accented profs. During class discussion, the prof posed some question to the effect of “What bad precedent is the charachter talking about?”
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“Uh, Nixon?”, one of the brigter students in the class offered in all seriousness. It was funny, not only because of the confusion in words, but Richard Nixon most certainly is not present in turn of the century Italian literature!
frankskeffington says
Right now Congress does not want to know what these aides have said to the President. Congress justs wants to know what these aides were saying to each other (because their stories keep changing). So how does Executive Privilege apply?
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Of course that is probably what the White House wants to hide…that Bush give the final OK to purge these folks because they were behaving like professional prosecutors and not “Bushie hacks” (remember the phrase is, “I serve at the pleasure of the President”.)
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Nope the White House has got themselves in a pickle: They really can’t hang their hat on Executive Privilege because, they claim, the President wasn’t involved. Yet if they testify under oath, then it will (no doubt) quickly become apparent that Bush was involved and they’ll really NEED to claim Privilege.
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It seems we have Gonzales right at the cliff on a Perjury charge and if Rove testifies under oath he’ll fill a septic system of secrets that White House would never want revealed.
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Hey, if we can’t take them down for the war?I take this.
raj says
…what brought down the Nixon malAdministration wasn’t the crime, it was the cover-up. The slow drip-drip-drip.
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I don’t know whether or not Bush himself was directly involved. Quite frankly, given his rather bizarre behavior in his public performances recently, it’s difficult to believe that he could have been. So, yes, there might be an issue as to whether discussions regarding decisions made below the level of the presidency are covered by executive privilege, but I doubt that the courts would limit executive privilege solely to discussions regarding matters that are ultimately directly presented to the president.
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Where to draw the line? I don’t know. But Congress should subpoena Rove and Meirs if they believe they had anything to do with this, and go to the courts to find out how far executive privilege goes.
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BTW, on other web sites, there has been mention that executive privilege extends to a narrow range of matters, such as national security, but would not necessarily extend to rationales for firing of US Attys.