Executive Privilege

Bush Asserts Executive Privilege, Refuses to Allow Aides to Testify in Front of Congress

Basically, two key aides involved in the White House attorney scandal were subpoenaed by Congress, but in an effort to prevent damaging information from being revealed in testimony the White House is asserting executive privilege in denying these subpoenas. No big surprise here. What will be interesting is how this whole saga plays out in Court. If it were to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, I would expect the Court to side with the President. But the interesting thing about executive privilege is that it has never been tested, and thus never has had its legality affirmed by the Supreme Court. This is because the Court generally tries to stay out of Congressional and Presidential disputes. Seeing how we'll be hearing about executive privilege quite a bit in the coming months, you should check out this article which explains a little about what executive privilege is and its history.

Personally I'm not sure how I feel about executive privilege. On one hand, I don't think secrecy is good for the Country, and its most often asserted when the White House has something to hide. On the other hand, the constitutionality of it has never been ruled on. It certainly never actually appears in the text of the Constitution, and its been around for a while and asserted by all Presidents, so maybe its not a good thing to mess with something that has been around so long. However, I'm not sure how we're worse off knowing MORE about what is going on in the executive branch rather than less.