I don’t know about the mechanics of this specific instance, but stuff like this isn’t particularly unusual for the government. People are often subject to restrictions of various kinds upon leaving federal employment, which certainly means that they must accept direction from the executive branch.
This is common both for holders of security clearances and people who might be unable to lobby their former agency for a period of some years. Other rules certainly may apply, but these are common ones.
So yes, this can be done, at least in general terms.
Huh? The only way to know would be to take it to the SCOTUS. How would agreeing to Congress on this amount to acknowledging that we don’t know? It wouldn’t.
The Bush Admin is taking the position (apparently, insofar as Fielding will even explain their position) that all intra-WH communications are covered by EP, end of discussion.
Dude, it’s a negotiating position. When you go and buy a car, do you just accept the first price that the dealer names? As much as Bush likes to ignore laws, I have no doubt if the SCOTUS compels her to testify, they’ll do so. But on this single issue of HM, I’d do exactly the same thing Bush is doing, and I think most presidents (regardless of their party) would do the same thing.
Not the choice the Clinton Administration made some years back either. I think we can assume that the executive will assert executive privilege as a general rule.
Certainly there is some plausibility to confidentiality for conversations between the President and his advisers. National security, and all that. I don’t want to know the contents of his intelligence briefings, I’d be pleased to be assured that he has them!
But they are attempting to stretch this umbrella of protection to a circus tent adequate to the Shrine Circus, with the three rings, the elephants and the clowns. How can the confidentiality of executive privilege protect past conversations, with people who have no further official function?
When we permit such pernicious expansion of power and protection, we set a pretty poor bar. Imagine what might happen if a scoundrel should become President? Or worse still, an ignoramus! A dire prospect.
And he got a blow job. So Bush is okay if he wants a hummer from an aide as well.
The tu quoque kabuki. You can count on it like fireworks on the fourth around here. They ought to make 'em do it on Dancing with the Stars. I’d very much like to see Julianne Hough do the tu quoque kabuki, especially if I were one of them.
When we are discussing the legality and applicability of executive privilege, the fact that Bill Clinton, one of only 42 men to hold the presidency, invoked it some six times becomes quite relevant - especially as that term immediately preceded this one.
So no, hardly a tu quoque. Just a reference to recent history.
I agree. George freakin’ Washington claimed EP, so citing a recent President doing the same is absolutely germane to this discussion.
Czarcasm: **Moto **is not saying, well it’s bad, but Clinton did it, too. That would be a tu quoque. He’s saying it’s unclear whether this is bad, especially since other presidents have done the same thing.