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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (39885)	7/22/2007 9:07:41 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Respond to of 541874

It may be absurd to discuss this matter and you're certainly entitled to your point of view. However, in accordance with the thread title I'll just say that I think that the courts rather than partisan politics should determine whether or not Bush's view prevails in the firing of the U.S. attorneys. According to an article in the Washington Post even Democratic legal scholars believe that Bush may prevail. Fight Over Documents May Favor Bush, Experts Say Contempt Charge Precedents Cited in Firings Case washingtonpost.com ..administration officials and other legal scholars, including some Democrats, noted that Justice Department lawyers in the Clinton administration made a similar argument during a controversy with Congress over the nomination of a federal judge. Walter E. Dellinger III, who headed the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department then, wrote in a 1995 legal opinion that "the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to the President or presidential subordinates who assert executive privilege." That conclusion echoed a broader legal opinion issued 11 years earlier by then-Assistant Attorney General Theodore B. Olson, who headed the OLC during the first term of the Reagan administration. Dellinger and several other legal experts from the Clinton era said yesterday that the Bush administration is fundamentally correct in its assertion that lawmakers cannot force the Justice Department to pursue a course that undermines a president's prerogative, including his power to protect information through executive privilege. "Congress can determine what's unlawful but not determine who should be prosecuted," said Dellinger, who is now a Duke University law professor. "It's an important part of the separation of powers. . . . The real issue in this case is whether the claims of executive privilege are valid," a matter that he said would have to be adjudicated on its merits in the courts.