[Inspector Harry Callahan]

Bush is protecting Clinton. In turn, you are defending Bush. Pretty neat, huh?

I never would have guessed you'd become a Clinton defender.

[horsewhispersc]

I would never have guessed you've become a Clinton supporter

LOL, such a good point everyone should look at, aaaaaah Great Point, wish I had said it! ;-)

[sinkspur]

Bush is protecting Clinton.

You have no evidence of that, of course; it comes from the cogs of your little JBS-conspiracy-filled mind.

Simpletons think things are simple, Harry.

Stop being a simpleton.

[Penny1]

I really don't think this has much to do with Clinton...it has everything to do with the Presidency itself and what kinds of power and control the Presidency should have with regard to interaction with Congress and how much Congress should be allowed to "oversee" the Presidency.

I'm reading up on Iran-Contra right now, and one of the main problems with what happened, and my apologies for being so simplistic, is that Congress was able to pull the rug out from under important foreign policy issues, and then when the !@#$ hit the fan, instead of resolving the power struggle between Congress and the Executive branch over foreign policy, nearly everyone focused on covering themselves. That allowed the weakening of the Executive branch to continue.

I think President Bush may be using his "political capital" to try to better define the boundaries of the Executive branch with regard to Congress and particularly with regard to Congressional oversight of the Executive branch. It's also quite possible, maybe even likely, that the President wants the Executive Branch to examine the abuses of the previous administration, rather than having Congress do it--again to re-assert some independece in the Presidency.

This may be a very important thing to settle. One of the ways you do that is to test certain boundaries in order to better define them.

-penny