This administration covers its tracks well and won't give in so easily

Firing federal prosecutors for political reasons is sleazy, but not illegal; they serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire them if he feels like it. Furthermore, the Justice Department is part of the executive branch, so an executive privilege claim is actually not that hard to make, unless Congress has some reason to believe there was a crime. Part of the purpose of executive privilege is to prevent Congress from unduly interfering with the Executive Branch. It's being used for evil here, but it's not actually illegal, and Congress likely doesn't have a legal basis to get these documents if Bush does assert executive privilege. It's worth noting that use of executive privilege expanded rapidly under Clinton.

Congress also has similar privileges, and sometimes also abuses them: when Rep. William Jefferson was found with $90,000 in his home freezer as part of a bribery investigation, and the FBI wanted to search his Congressional office, Congress got very angry about the matter and tried to shield him from scrutiny. The legal argument was that the FBI was part of the Executive branch, and that it was a violation of the legislative branch's privilege for it to be subject to such scrutiny by the executive branch. The search ultimately did go ahead, but with very special procedures to shield the privacy of all documents in Jefferson's office that weren't part of the criminal investigation.

In short, both Congress and the Executive branch are locked in a continual power struggle, regardless of who is in office. Each branch wants to enlarge its power at the expense of the other.

Something that a lot of people haven't fully understood is how methodical and careful the Bush administration is about constructing legal cover for all its dubious actions. It will be very hard to catch them "with their pants down", so to speak. I wish people would focus on (1) the most outrageous Bush administration actions, and (2) the actions most easily provable to be criminal. The rest is just a distraction and increases the perception of partisanship.

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Posted by Brian

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