Executive, Privilege! No Way, Jorge.

As we have said before, executive privilege goes out the window if Congress asserts that it is investigating a crime.

Nixon got busted for using the IRS against his "enemies" and trying to use the CIA to block FBI investigations into Watergate. These acts were considered an abuse of power, as they should have been.

The Bushites, in turning the DOJ into an arm of the Republican party election theft machine is the most serious abuse of power I have ever seen. No president should ever be allowed to get by with the kinds of abuses of power this president and vice president have committed, becaue if they are allowed to get by with wholesale law breaking, the it's every man and woman for themselves.

Any foolish ideas we have of a nation under law are just that; foolish in the extreme.

Christy at FDL looks at the Bush Administration’s invoking of executive privilege:

What (Fred Fielding) and the White House are doing is playing a game of chicken with Congress, and they are using Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers, among others, as their own personal shields from accountability. But this only works for so long as Congress allows them to play their silly game. The trump card in all of this is a threat of contempt, not against the subpoenaed witnesses, but against the President himself for falsely claiming a privilege to which he is not entitled in this matter.

This is the card that John Dean recognizes from his Watergate days - and it is one with which Fielding is also intimately acquainted. It is their bluff of assertion of privilege that is the current bet on the table. Congress ought to call the bet - and raise with a threat of contempt if testimony is not immediately forthcoming and if documents are not immediately delivered.

But while we await the next move, it is worth asking a few questions, starting with whether former Fielding research boy, now Chief Justice John Roberts, will recuse himself from any consideration of this matter if and when it reaches that point of constitutional consideration? The separation of powers issues hang in the balance on this one, and the ambitious Mr. Roberts ought not be allowed a second bite at an apple he has already infested.

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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free