So the US Senate has subpoenaed the White House for documents relating to internal White House communications relating to the firing of federal prosecutors being sacked, allegedly, only because they were unwilling to go along with White House politics. See here and here.
You know, I wish I had ‘executive privilege.’ While obviously I highly doubt I will ever be subpoenaed for anything, I nonetheless wish I had the ability to say ‘no, I don’t think so’ to whomever wished to see my private documents. But no, I don’t have that privelege and neither, I think, should President Bush in this instance. I am glad to hear that
Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy responded by accusing the administration of “Nixonian stonewalling”
Nixon, as we know, was “not a crook” but, in fact, he did orchestrate the break-in of opposition party headquarters. I’m sure President Bush has nothing to hide just as Nixon didn’t (cough, bullcrap) and therefore I’m sure he has every reason to reject these subpeonas (cough, BULLSH**). Pardon my French there, as it were.
While every President feels some parts of his (or future her) inner workings and inner memorandums or whatever are subject to ‘executive privelege’ I thnk no. I think you serve the American people and, therefore, anything you do should be subject to Freedom of Information-type requests such as this. Especially when you’re in hot water over the firing of federal prosecutors and your own Attorney General Gonzalez has made a mockery of the oversight committee with his ‘I don’t recall’ malarkey. But then again, why do I even bother to rant over this. The Bush administration is one of the most private and most guarded administrations in history, going above and beyond anything Nixon could have dreamed of, in my opinion. Why should we expect anything less than stonewalling?