{"id":30440,"date":"2012-06-21T15:24:20","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T19:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=30440"},"modified":"2012-06-21T15:36:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T19:36:59","slug":"deja-vu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=30440","title":{"rendered":"Deja Vu"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Poetrooper’s article earlier today<\/a> concerning “Fast and Furious”, I’m a bit hesitant to post this.\u00a0 I generally try to stay mostly away from politics unrelated to the military here at TAH.\u00a0 But today I feel compelled to make an exception.<\/p>\n

“I don’t give a shit what happens.\u00a0 I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it’ll save it – save the plan.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, the above isn’t a quote from any official of the current Administration about “Fast and Furious”.\u00a0 But it sounds like it could be.<\/p>\n

I doubt this is news to most TAH readers, but the current Administration is now claiming “executive privilege” regarding documents relating to “Fast and Furious”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to debate the merits of “Fast and Furious”, or the possible motivations (political or otherwise) which led to that DOJ operation.\u00a0 Nor am I going to opine on whether “Fast and Furious” was a good idea, or was executed competently.\u00a0 I’ll leave that to others.<\/p>\n

But the claim of executive privilege for “Fast and Furious” is, well, IMO bullshit.\u00a0 And it’s also highly dangerous bullshit.<\/p>\n

Under certain conditions executive privilege can indeed be legitimately invoked by the POTUS.\u00a0 But it’s generally limited to matters of national security or diplomacy<\/a>.\u00a0 It can’t be invoked to hide matters that are merely criminal or embarrassing.\u00a0 No Administration should ever invoke a claim of executive privilege for such reasons.<\/p>\n

But the current Administration has yet to make the case why Fast and Furious qualifies for a claim of executive privilege.\u00a0 And absent such justification, they’re essentially making a claim that all, regardless of political leanings, should find deeply disturbing and dangerous.\u00a0 Essentially, they’re arguing for unlimited application of executive privilege – that is, they are arguing that executive privilege should be allowed whenever desired by the POTUS and\/or senior Administration officials, and about matters that do not involve national security or diplomacy.\u00a0 Because Fast and Furious is not a national security or diplomatic matter.\u00a0 It’s a law enforcement operation gone awry.<\/em><\/p>\n

Allowing such unrestricted claims of executive privilege essentially places a serving POTUS above the law.\u00a0 And if extended to other senior officials, it would similarly render serving senior officials above the law as well.<\/p>\n

In short, it would render the President a King, answerable to no one, and his senior officials untouchable nobility.\u00a0 That’s not something I ever want to see in this nation.\u00a0 Do you?<\/p>\n

And in case you’re wondering:\u00a0 yes, you’ve indeed heard the above quote before.\u00a0 That was Nixon – speaking to some of his senior advisors about Watergate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nixon’s claim of executive privilege was a transparent attempt to obstruct investigation of Watergate.\u00a0 It was absolutely wrong, and was slam-dunked by the SCOTUS.\u00a0 And unless the current administration makes a far better case than it has to date, the same needs to happen today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Poetrooper’s article earlier today concerning “Fast and Furious”, I’m a bit hesitant to post this.\u00a0 … Deja Vu<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,15,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns","category-legal","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}