The Short and Sweet Of Fast and Furious
If you aren’t up to speed on the Fast and Furious scandal, I don’t blame you. The media was slow to the story, and the Justice Dept has dragged it out for months, but in a nutshell President Obama granted a last minute request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents to try and head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. If you aren’t up to speed on what Fast and Furious is really all about, the Ted Cruz camp put out this video that serves as a kind of primer on it.
Turns out that back in 2007 Obama wasn’t such a big fan of executive privilege.
Obama: “You know, there’s been a tendency on the part of this administration to — to try to hide behind executive privilege every time there’s something a little shaky that’s taking place. And I think, you know, the administration would be best served by coming clean on this. There doesn’t seem to be any national security issues involved with the U.S. attorney question. There doesn’t seem to be any justification for not offering up some clear, plausible rationale for why these — these U.S. attorneys were targeted when, by all assessments, they were doing an outstanding job. I think the American people deserve to know what was going on there.”
It seems that every time Pres. Obama does something controversial, there is a video of him earlier saying he would never do such a thing as President.
Grassley, ranking Republican of the Senate Judiciary Committee, slammed the White House on Wednesday for the move.
“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement?” Grassley said in a statement. “How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?”
As far as Fast and Furious goes? I think there is something a little shady taking place.
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I am appalled by the ignorance, real or feigned, of men like Senator Grassley and Judge Napolitano of Fox News who assert that executive privilege attaches only when the President is involved in the communication. It has been the law of the U.S. since 1958 that “intra-agency advisory opinions” are privileged from inspection to promote “the policy of open, frank discussion between subordinate and chief concerning administrative action.” (See, Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. v. United States, 157 F.Supp. 939, 946 (U.S. Ct. of Claims, 1958), quoted with approval in EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 86 (U.S. 1973))
CUMMINGS ISSUES STATEMENT ON COMMITTEE CONTEMPT VOTE
Washington, DC (June 20, 2012) – Rep. Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued the following statement today about the Committee’s vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
“What we just witnessed was an extreme, virtually unprecedented action based on election year politics rather than fact,” said Cummings. “Even in the face of an assertion of executive privilege, the Republicans didn’t even pause to consider the law and instead decided to take this extreme step.
“The House has never held an Attorney General in contempt, and the only precedent for what this Committee did today was in the 1990s when then-Chairman Burton held Janet Reno in contempt. It was so extreme that even then-Speaker Newt Gingrich refused to bring it to the floor for a vote. If Speaker Boehner brings this contempt citation to the floor, he will be known as one of the most extreme Speakers in history.”
The Short and Sweet of Executive Privilege:
President George W. Bush invoked the privilege six times.
President Obama, until today: ZERO
Even on FOX news today Brit Hume said that executive privileged was invoked when the when White House thought it was being harassed. Issa is a vile little attack dog whose only reason for existence is harassment.
Executive privilege was a source of hypocrisy even before partisanship drove it to new levels. I’ve never seen, over decades, a single case where everyone didn’t line up with complete regard to positions they took before. One never really needed to look to know that Obama had made hypocritical statements on it. I haven’t seen any examples, but it can almost be assumed that the same holds for Issa.
The sad things is that this usually comes up with issues where there are real allegations against the executive branch, ie times with it is both important and partisan.
I’m not so wound up about this issue as many, but I think the premise that you can excuse one side because the other side does it is just a way to avoid responsibility. If it is wrong, are we saying Obama still gets to do it 5 more times without being held responsible? As I’ve said before, one of the weird synergies in partisan ship is how it allows both parties to use the sleaze of the other to cover their own.
And, of course, the republicans won’t accept that if something is wrong for both sides, then it is wrong for _both_ sides. They will cry “false equivalence” to try and attack Obama while ignoring what they have done.
http://riseofthecenter.com/2012/05/17/political-false-equivalence-excuses-and-the-analogy-of-the-embezzler-and-the-thief/10562
“If it is wrong, are we saying Obama still gets to do it 5 more times without being held responsible?”
I do not believe that I asserted that invoking executive privilege is necessarily wrong — or that it is something to be “held responsible” about. I just made an observation that there is no reason to cry foul when Obama does it for the first time, while …
BTW, DPS, I have been meaning to compliment you on your objectivity on this issue of executive privilege (You have been more objective on this than I have, I must admit)
The only thing I have to add on the point that both sides do it, that the other side does it, too, “false equivalence” et al,is that sometimes one side does it so much more methodically, so much more pervasively, so much more frequently, so much more effectively, so much more hypocritically that one just has to point such out.
And, yes, I am probably being quite subjective/partisan in saying this.
But, thanks for your comments.
The problem I have is that too often it all seems about “which” side gets the “blame” when it is clear that the blame should go to “both” sides each individual remains responsible for their own actions.
It might behoove the author to read this article:
http://themoderatevoice.com/150569/fast-and-furious-the-witch-hunt/
then re-write her piece and re-title it: “The Short and Sweet and the Truth of Fast and Furious”