I certainly never said that Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch was “unconstitutional.” To the contrary, I was at great pains in many of my comments to point out the NUMEROUS ways in which Congress could exercise oversight of the Executive Branch, both by subpoenaed testimony and otherwise. The ONLY thing that I have said would be unconstitutional would be for the Congress, too craven to do its own dirty work, to try to control an Executive Branch official, forcing one of the President’s Constitutional subordinates to work for Congress rather than the President. That would indeed be unconstitutional. And I note that you decided not to actually address that particular issue, preferring to toss out some absurd strawmen and argue against them, instead.

Since you chose not to argue that point, I presume you agree with it.

Note to readers. Those who defend lying under oath are (obviously) not credible.

Dictionaries define “oversight” as “watchful care,” and this approach has proven to be one of the most effective techniques that Congress has adopted to influence the executive branch. Congressional oversight prevents waste and fraud; protects civil liberties and individual rights; ensures executive compliance with the law; gathers information for making laws and educating the public; and evaluates executive performance. It applies to cabinet departments, executive agencies, regulatory commissions, and the presidency.
Time and again, the oversight power of Congress has proven to be an essential check in monitoring the presidency and controlling public policy.
State Department

There is no explicit Constitutional “oversight” authority in Congress over the other branches of government other than through the legislative function. Congress is not Lord over the executive or judicial branches, and cannot supersede their areas of Constitutional authority, nor their areas of statutory authority other than by changing the statutes using their own legislative powers. The other branches of government are separate and co-equal, not subordinate.

It gives me a great chuckle to hear people whining about “above the law” when they don’t even seem to know what the law is, and when what they are championing is Congress putting itself above the law to bully the other branches of government for partisan political purposes.

Such is the logic of Political Derangement Syndrome.

So much for transparency and accountability.

And with that, I’m out of here for a bit, folks. Got family visiting in town, so may not be back this evening. It’s been a great thread, and I’ve enjoyed the discussion.

And Congress has ample power to investigate the executive, as I’ve pointed out. They can get testimony from disgruntled former employees. They can subpoena lower ranking employees to whom privilege cannot reasonably be claimed. They can demand answers from appointees who are up for Senate confirmation. They can force the White House to pay political costs by continuing through and actually issuing subpoenas and voting to hold the President or his aides in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the subpoenas.

Presidents do assert the privilege against the judicial branch, as well. Of course, the judicial branch itself doesn’t initiate any investigations. They get involved only when the government or some other party seeks to enforce the law against somebody else. Presidents have asserted Executive Privilege in court cases for a very long time. President Clinton asserted that he was entirely immune from the Paula Jones lawsuit, simply because it would be a distraction from his duties as President (and I think subsequent events have shown that the Court was wrong to have let that proceed, as I thought at the time… Jones’ lawsuit should have been held in abeyance until Clinton left office). Sometimes those exertions of privilege succeed, sometimes they don’t.

As to the extent of the privilege, there’s no simple answer to that. It’s generally considered to exist only among the President and his closest personal advisers. I don’t know just how far in this episode the Bush Administration is asserting it. Being an imprecise privilege, inferred (like Congressional subpoena power itself) from the “inherent authority” of that branch of government, it is not terribly well defined. Which, again, is why it’s rarely tested in court, and the end result is usually some sort of political compromise.

And if the Executive is able to claim privilege against the Legislative Branch, why not against the Judicial Branch as well?

Do you remember when the DoJ and Congress were fighting over whether or not they could search Congressional offices?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june06/probe_05-26.html

I’m not sure what you mean by “evidence”.

Without an investigation, how can evidence–or its absence–be discovered?

You make a reasonable case, Pat, for the idea that there should be Executive privilege. (Indeed, it’s the same case made by supporters of President Clinton during the previous Administration.) So I ask you, is there no equally reasonable case for oversight of the Executive by the Legislative branch?

Should there be a blanket privilege that prevents any investigation of the Executive?

Just how much Executive privilege is there? Does it cover every single employee of the Executive branch, or just those who actually speak to the President (the actual Executive)? Does it extend past the President’s term in office?

And if the Executive is able to claim privilege against the Legislative Branch, why not against the Judicial Branch as well?

It’s insane!

George… The answer to your last question is Scooter Libby.

Don’t forget to look at this from the flip side. Try being just as skeptical of the motives of the Democrats in Congress. Would you agree that, absent a crime, Congress should not be able to get at the innermost internal political deliberations of the President? If so, then Congress is trying to take for itself the “sole power” to avoid that kind of entirely appropriate claim of executive privilege.

Congress, not some disinterested court, has determined that it wants to see these documents and take this testimony. Why do they get to judge whether the President has a claim of privilege or not? They are trying to threaten individual human beings, who work for the President, with JAIL if they refuse to disobey the President and testify against the President’s instructions.

In the law generally, the existence of a privilege does not depend on the content of the privileged communications. Privilege is claimed not just to protect those specific communications but to promote open communication between future holders of the privilege. The doctor-patient privilege exists so that patients can get proper treatment, even if that means telling the doctor that they’re having a heart attack because they snorted cocaine earlier. If the privilege is taken away, the next patient in that situation might die because he’s too afraid of the doctor testifying against him to tell him the truth. Attorney-client privilege exists so that people will get truly effective assistance from their lawyer; without it, clients would be so careful in the questions they ask and the things they tell their lawyers that their own rights would suffer. Here, we don’t want future presidents and their aides to not be open and honest with each other, out of fear that their political enemies in Congress can grab the records whenever they want. They should speak bluntly with each other, hashing out battles internally. That is the nature of the beast, and it would be a detriment generally to effective government if all internal memos had to be crafted in language and temperament suitable for the New York Times and the political correctness crowd.

It’s true that privilege generally doesn’t exist when the two parties are conspiring with each other to break the law. But there is no actual evidence of any law-breaking thus far, and you can’t breach a privilege just to go on a fishing expedition to see if the two parties were conspiring with each other.

Remember, Congress is not asking some disinterested court to review the documents and listen to the testimony, and then publicly disclose them if they reveal evidence of a crime. No, Congress wants to breach the privilege FIRST, with no actual evidence of a crime, and it is asserting its absolute RIGHT to do that every bit as strongly as the President is asserting the contrary position of his branch of government.

Why, and on what grounds? Do you believe that Reid and Co. would conceal actual evidence of criminality, if they had it? Pull the other one! If they had real evidence of a law being broken, they’d already have something to refer to a grand jury. They don’t. They’re fishing. In this particular case, they’ve not even alleged a statutory crime, just politics in action in an inherently political sphere.

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Is prohibiting a person from being employed by the White House a punishment? Maybe.

Since he’s an appointee, I’ll that’s at least debatable. But depriving someone of their existing employment sure sounds like a punishment to me. Now if he were a career-track civil service employee it would indeed clearly be a punishment, as he’d have vested rights in his job, rights that such an act would arbitrarily deprive him of.

IIRC, in Foretich the Court found that by singling out Foretich with legislation, Congress both judged him and lent credence to the unproven criminal allegations against him. I also recall that they found the Act was both punitive and motivated by a Congressional intent to punish, making the Act a bill of attainder.

Though I should have cited Morgan v. Foretich, the appeals court reversal, and not the original case. But enough digressing.

Does the President have to pull a Michael Vick on the White House lawn before Congress considers impeaching him?

Unfortunately, my guess is that the limit on the local level is that the DA is fired if he uses discretion in an unpopular manner. This however then would take us back to impeachment as the only way to change a Presidential decision on this matter.