White House clams up

By Libby

I've been cruising around the intertubes today, leaving the occassional comment, answering my own commenters and trying to make sense of the world. But nothing makes sense.

The White House continues to maintain they did nothing wrong in the attorney purge scandal but refuse to produce documents to prove their innocence. It appears the Congress is ready to call their bluff which will surely lead to a constitutional showdown that will likely end up in front of SCOTUS.

Good luck with that since Bush stacked the court with his loyal cronies, but the main thing is the case will likely be tied up in the courts through the end of our Feckless Leader's term so the White House won't have to talk about it, which I'm sure suits them just fine. In fact they're taking the executive privilege claim one step further and forbidding former employees, Harriet Miers and Sarah Taylor from talking about it either.

Talk about confusing. As Atrios asks, "What possible authority does the White House have to try to prevent a former employee from testifying about something?" Good question. Since when does the unitary executive's privilege extend to dictating the testimony of private citizens?

Meanwhile, Steve Benen encapsulates the ludicrous substance of their position.

This makes the tack on Taylor even more confusing. The White House is effectively claiming that a former aide, who no longer works for the administration and is willing to testify, can’t talk about conversations with the president she didn’t have.

You will of course recall that the original position of the White House was that were not involved in the terminations at all. I guess they're hoping the average Jake won't remember that.

Bush also attempted to deflect attention from his own inconsistentcies, accusing Congress of "being more interested in investigating than legislating, noting that Democrats have held 600 oversight hearings since taking control of Capitol Hill in January." And here we thought they were doing nothing.

Well we know that Bush thinks oversight is quaint and not applicable to "war presidents" but I guess he just forgot that it's impossible to pass legislation when his party obstructs the bills from reaching the floor and he threatens to veto anything that doesn't rubberstamp his edicts. Perhaps he didn't notice that his party was voted out of power for failing to conduct those hearings in the first place.