Fred Hiatt has published his opinion on Bush’s unconstitutional and illegal stonewalling. And all he has to say (aside from ‘Clinton did it, too) is that he wishes both sides would break it up and stop fighting.
If Congress were to make good on the threat, it would probably try to direct the U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia to lodge the contempt charges in federal court here.
Last week the White House said it would never let that happen. As legal justification, it dusted off a 1984 Justice Department memorandum that concludes that allowing Congress to order around a federal prosecutor would violate the separation of powers, permitting Congress to usurp a role the Constitution clearly assigned to the president. The Clinton administration relied on similar logic in a 1995 legal opinion. We believe that argument has enough merit to discourage lawmakers from taking this route.
So what should Congress do?
If lawmakers are truly serious about getting information — rather than milking the situation for all its political worth — they should drop their more questionable tactics.
That’ll definitely teach them. Anything else?
If all else fails, Congress could consider other, less constitutionally troubling options, such as filing a civil suit in federal court so that a judge could decide whether the administration was properly invoking executive privilege.
And that will effectively run out the clock for the Bushies. Hiatt concludes:
But we hope it doesn’t get that far. There’s a long history of accommodation between the two branches on these kinds of matters without dragging the third branch into it.
Really? In this administration? Hiatt never ceases his wanking.
