Posted on 06/30/2007 9:33:04 PM PDT by lowbridge
After six years of kowtowing to the White House, Congress is finally challenging President Bush’s campaign to trample all legal and constitutional restraints on his power.
Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first — and likely not the last — criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress.
Predictably, the White House is claiming executive privilege and refusing to cooperate with the legitimate Congressional investigations, one springing from Mr. Bush’s decision to spy on Americans without a warrant and the other from the purge of United States attorneys.
The courts have recognized a president’s limited right to keep the White House’s internal deliberations private. But it is far from an absolute right, and Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege in the attorneys scandal is especially ludicrous. The White House has said repeatedly that Mr. Bush was not involved in the firings of nine United States attorneys. If that’s true, he can hardly argue that he has the right to conceal conversations and e-mail exchanges that his aides had with one another and the Justice Department.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
bump
This is real alternate universe stuff; lie upon lie upon lie. The shrill and desperate tone of this diatribe indicates the NYSlimes is fearful of losing its last five looney lib readers and is heading straight for the tar pits to join its dinosaur buddies.
I caught Mr. Bush listening in to my private phone call yesterday. He admitted he did not have a warrant and quickly hung up.
They're all in my kitchen now, having their coffee...
And most of their readers will nod their heads and say, "Yup. I knew it all along."
Does one of them have red hair and an attitude? He was here last week... we all hated him.
>>>>Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first — and likely not the last — criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress.
This is rich. Politicians accusing politicians of lying.
Whose lips are moving?
Wish I could think of clever things to say. *sigh*
I was wondering how Laura Bush got my recipe for pumpkin bread.
I was not aware of such a campaign. I suspect it exists only in the minds of the Times editors.
Congressional committees have issued subpoenas for documents and witnesses in two major cases and have asked for the first — and likely not the last — criminal investigation of an executive branch official who might have lied to Congress.
Just because Congress asks for something does not mean that Congress will—or should—get it. As I understand it, the White House is willing to provide information to Congress, but not under the threat of a subpoena.
Predictably, the White House is claiming executive privilege and refusing to cooperate with the legitimate Congressional investigations, one springing from Mr. Bush’s decision to spy on Americans without a warrant and the other from the purge of United States attorneys.
The New York Times editorialists have declared the Congressional investigations legitimate. Their judgment is suspect, however, because they mischaracterize the administration's intelligence gathering as "spy[ing] on Americans without a warrant."
The courts have recognized a president’s limited right to keep the White House’s internal deliberations private. But it is far from an absolute right, and Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege in the attorneys scandal is especially ludicrous.
No, what is especially ludicrous is that anyone would call the firings of the attorneys a scandal.
The White House has said repeatedly that Mr. Bush was not involved in the firings of nine United States attorneys. If that’s true, he can hardly argue that he has the right to conceal conversations and e-mail exchanges that his aides had with one another and the Justice Department.
The reasoning—if it can be called that—is dumb. Executive privilege does not apply only to the person of the president, but extends to members of his staff. Unless someone broke the law by firing the attorneys, why does Congress have any right to know what communications passed between the president's aides? For that matter, even if the law was broken, why does Congress have any right to the information? As I understand the separation of powers, it is not the business of the legislative branch to prosecute presidential aides.
The guy with the acne scars was going through my trash. He got pi$$ed when I told him I don’t recycle ;’}
Yeah, I caught that, too. I would call that reasoning Stalinist.
Even without Executive privilege, which is absolute, it goes to the fifth amendment; cop to citizen: If you say you have nothing to hide, then you must let me search your car. Patent horse manure.
I was speaking with a liberal friend today. She had gone to to a play in NYC about the Frost interviews with Nixon. I hadn’t heard of it and asked about the play. She said ‘It’s about the time that Nixon was impeached’. I pointed out that Nixon hadn’t actually been impeached that he had resigned. Went right over her head. She’s a faithful reader of the NYT.
I think we need to relabel it......Republican Derangement Syndrome anyone?
A Precedent from the Clinton Years
Finally, no case to this point holds that executive privilege applies to conversations between Executive officials and persons outside the government, such as corporate officers of Enron and other companies.
The closest the courts have come to extending the privilege to such discussions was in the 1993 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. v. Hillary Clinton. That case raised the question whether the Federal Advisory Committee Act (”FACA”) applied to the health-care-reform panel chaired by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. And that question, in turn, depended on whether the First Lady is, or is not, an officer or employee of the government.
Under FACA, if a person who is not an officer or employee of the government is a member of a government group, then the group’s proceedings must be open to the public. The health-care-reform panel had kept its proceedings private, so if the First Lady was not a government officer or employee, it had broken the law. Fortunately for the Clinton Administration, however, the court held that the First Lady is indeed an officer or employee of the government, and FACA thus did not apply.
The court strained the statutory language in order to reach this conclusion - but why? The answer is that a contrary result—to be precise, a finding that the statute’s requirement of public meetings applied to the health-care-reform panel—would have raised a difficult constitutional question. And, under a well-established principle of legal interpretation, courts construe statutes in order to avoid difficult constitutional questions. The D.C. Circuit applied that principle in this case.
According to the D.C. Circuit, the difficult constitutional question was this: Does executive privilege extend to conversations between Executive officials and persons outside the government? If so, then FACA unconstitutionally violates that privilege by requiring those conversations to be disclosed. Had the court ruled that the First Lady was neither a government officer nor a government employee, it would have had to decide the difficult constitutional question—for FACA then would have required disclosure of deliberations between the (non-government) First Lady and the executive branch government officials on the commission.
Why the Hillary Clinton Case Suggests Cheney’s Privilege Claim May Prevail
The relevance of this complex case to Cheney’s situation is straightforward: The D.C. Circuit thought that executive privilege might extend to conversations between executive officials and persons outside the government. And any appeal in the Comptroller General’s case against Vice President Cheney would go to the D.C. Circuit (before possibly going to the U.S. Supreme Court).
Thus, a claim of privilege by the Vice President could succeed - particularly if GAO were to go beyond its current requests and seek not only the names of people with whom Cheney consulted, but also the content of deliberations. The D.C. Circuit’s speculation as to the breadth of the executive privilege indicates that even if private industry representatives acted as members of the Energy Group, the Group’s deliberations may still be privileged, and thus not subject to FACA disclosure.
Will we soon learn the answer to the question the D.C. Circuit left open and the other puzzles surrounding executive privilege? Probably not. If history is our guide, it seems more likely that at least one branch of the government will find a way to avoid deciding the question directly.
So I can find in the NYT archives their condemnation of Slick’s claim of executive privelige? On what day? Does the weather section call for snow in Hades?
Run into that kind of stupidity all the time from libs.
Nixon was impeached. (He wasnt impeached, he resigned)
George W. Bush is the worst President of the 20th Century (This from a liberal blogger who claimed he was a political analyst. Bush 42 was never President of the 20th Century. He is a President of the 21st Century).
The My Lai Massacre: Nixon's fault (My Lai happened on LBJ's watch. The 1968 elections havent even occured yet).
The President votes on legislation and the Congress either signs or vetoes it (I pointed out to the lib that he had that backwards. It was the Congress that voted on legislation and the President was the one who signed or vetoed bills. The lib told me that I was stupid and that I didnt have a clue as to what I was talking about. I was shocked at the guys stupidity and thought I was debating politics with a ten year old. I looked up his member profile and was stunned to find that he was a 52 year old man)
President Bill Clinton, a federal judge has ruled that White House aides may not claim executive privilege before the Whitewater grand jury looking into sex-and-perjury allegations against the president.
it is disturbingly apparent that President Clinton’s lawyers have liberally employed executive privilege as a delaying tactic.
In 1996, executive privilege was invoked as the basis for refusing to turn over 2,000 documents to the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee as part of the investigation of the Filegate scandal.
During the campaign of that same year, the Clinton administration invoked executive privilege to prevent Congress from obtaining a memo written by the FBI Director and Drug Enforcement Administration Chief in which Clinton was criticized for failing to effectively deal with illicit drug use and narcotics smuggling.
In June of 1997, the Clinton administration engaged in an executive privilege battle with Independent Counsel Donald Smaltz, who was investigating former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. Smaltz sought 84 documents that had been withheld by the Clinton administration. The documents pertained to Espy’s acceptance of bribes.
President Clinton on Thursday claimed executive privilege
and refused a congressional subpoena seeking details of
his clemency offer to 16 Puerto Rican terrorists.
It was the sixth investigation in which Mr. Clinton invoked
executive privilege. The last was in the Monica Lewinsky
scandal.
It was leftover guilt from when he was Ike's veep.
Spy on those who are talking to terrorists, and firing people who serve at the privileged of the President. Both very standard executive powers, and both immune.
Sorry, NYTimes, but honestly, there's a thing called The Constitution. Might want to read it sometime.
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