OK, color me impressed. Only six months in, and already, the Shrub is invoking executive privilege. Weirdly, he's doing it in the service of Clinton administration papers, which makes less than no sense, given his demonstrable antipathy to all things Clinton. (The hack job they did on the once elegant and informative Whitehouse.gov and State Department sites, for no other reason than that they were started by Clinton, is enough to make a geek weep. Still.) The only thing I can think is that (1) the papers contain exculpatory information, or (2) he's actually trying to defend the papers purely for institutional reasons -- he doesn't want to set any sort of precedent for his administration to hand over information to Congress, because when he really does want to hide things from them (and he will -- all presidents do), it will be less startling and cause less public notice when he refuses if he's already set a precedent for refusal. I expect the answer is a goodly part of both, really.
It is interesting to note that Burton, whatever else you may call him, is consistent in some ways. He was a pain in the ass for Clinton, and he's clearly going to be a pain in the ass for the Shrub.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!