In 2007, there was an impending Constitutional Showdown over Presidential Executive Privilege and the Congressional Power to Subpoena. Over the U.S. Attorneys standoff, White House Counsel Fred Fielding mentioned "the constitutional prerogatives of the presidency" in a letter offering a compromise to Congress. Democratic members had demanded that Administration officials testify under oath about why eight U.S. attorneys were fired.
With partially divided government coming back to Washington in January and a test on Chapters 13-14 slated for Tuesday, the re-runned post should be helpful in figuring out what the heck the terms mean.
Executive privilege: George Washington invoked it, Dwight Eisenhower named it and Richard Nixon abused it. Now it looms as the nuclear option in George W. Bush's battle with Congress over its investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. So what the heck does it mean, and how much weight will it carry in the current standoff?
Last spring, a subcommittee in the House of Representatives voted to issue subpoenas to several Bush Administration officials in the House investigation about the firings of 8 U.S. attorneys from the Justice Department.
Legislative subpoena power gives members of Congress the ability to interview Americans under oath as part of their investigative powers. But President Bush claims that us
ing this power to question his advisors threatens the quality of advice given to the Chief Executive.Advisors will be less forthright, he argues, if their words might one day appear on the public record.This is one of the issues that makes divided government so intriguing. Whether it was the Congressional investigation into Watergate, Iran-Contra or Bill Clinton’s financial dealings, legislative inquiry of the Executive Branch gets to the heart of separation of powers these days.
The question is, not whether you think Attorney General Gonzales or Karl Rove should (have been) fired, but whether Congress should have the power to call these advisors into a committee hearing and question them under oath. Is the scenario healthy or hurtful to our constitutional structure?
Time.com has a good article on all of this stuff from March, 2007 posted here:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1601450,00.html
3 comments:
While both powers are equally important, I believe that a single answer cannot be applied to every case. While with something like Watergate, the subpoena power clearly outrules executive privilege as there is suspicion of criminal activity tied to the presidency, in something such as the Afghanistan war, executive privilege, as conveyed through the Secretatys or Defense and Homeland Security should be able to overrule Congress's subpoena power for a certain duration of time.
I don't believe that the executive privilidge is right. I have a problem with the Central Intelegence Agency and would rather have a truly international organisation like INTERPOL conducting international policing and intelligence. And how far can the excuse of national security go? Theoretically, its an issue of national security if the Commander in Chief is impeached (truly is if Joe Biden is the successor :) )
Although I do not like the fact that the president can withhold documents from the people, it would be worse if the majority party in congress could show classified documents to light for political gain. For example during the Army–McCarthy hearings in 1954 Eishenhower rightfully used Executive Privlege. In the current system, executive priviege can be challenged in the Supreme Court and if the president is wrong, executive privilege is overturned.
Post a Comment