Executive Privilage? Not hardly...

From American Progress:

ADMINISTRATION -- NO PRECEDENT FOR 'EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE' IN PROSECUTOR PURGE:

Yesterday, President Bush announced that he would offer "key members" of his staff, including Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, to be "interviewed" by "relevant members" of congressional committees about events surrounding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. These interviews would be conducted off the record "with no transcript, with no oath." The Senate rejected his offer.

The prohibition of testimony from White House aides and the promised opposition to any congressional subpoenas is, according to Bush, an attempt to protect his executive privilege to receive "candid" and confidential advice from White House staffers.

But as Salon's Glen Greenwald notes, the protections from subpoenas granted by executive privilege have been ruled by the Supreme Court (in U.S. v. Nixon - 1974) to be relevant only when there exists a need "to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets." Similar reasoning was used by "District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson in her decision denying Clinton's attempt to rely on this privilege to resist Ken Starr's subpoenas."

The Congressional Research Service has identified 31 individuals from the Clinton administration who testified -- under oath -- on Capitol Hill.

Nevertheless, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Snow told the National Review's Byron York that "we feel pretty comfortable with the constitutional argument" of executive privilege.

But in a March 1998 op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Snow attacked President Clinton for trying to "to shield virtually any communications that take place within the White House. ... Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up."

Wrap...