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Politics : The Donkey's Inn

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To: Mephisto who wrote (1549)	12/27/2001 11:36:15 PM
From: Mephisto	of 15516

Abused Privilege : White House too eager to keep things secret Detroit Free Press December 21, 2001 While all eyes last week were on the Osama bin Laden tape, the Bush administration executed yet another power grab. Attempting to duck congressional oversight, President George W. Bush invoked executive privilege to keep documents from prior Justice Department cases secret. He claimed that access to the Justice Department documents would harm prosecutors' ability to deliberate freely criminal cases, in fear of their conversations being revealed later. The order prevents Congress from gaining access to government documents pertaining to two closed cases: the FBI's handling of mob informants in Boston in the 1960s and the Clinton-era fund-raising probe of the 1990s. Unless the president relents or Congress sues, the public may never know if the FBI or any other government agency mistreated innocent citizens in those cases or engaged in any other illegal or constitutionally suspect behavior. While it is not the first time a president has invoked executive privilege for dubious purposes, it's hard to see why these old probes need to remain closed, unless the government has something to hide. But the specific cases aren't the issue so much as the increasingly cavalier attitude of this administration toward accountability. The war on terrorism and the president's enormous approval ratings are no excuse for ducking checks and balances. Congress should remind the White House that an elected president is not an anointed emperor. In a democracy, leadership is accountable to the people. freep.com

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