The White House and Executive Privilege

Captain Ed suggested and participated in a conference call with the White House to discuss the administration's view of executive privilege. This is an extremely important issue, what with Congress' attempt to usurp presidential power of appointment (as well as other powers).

As Patterico pointed out in this post to which I linked earlier, there is a governmental power grab here, but the branch grabbing power is Congress, not the president.

The president has always had the power to hire and fire at will concerning executive branch employees. U.S. attorneys are executive branch employees. As the White House rightly points out, this fracas is simply an attempt to embarrass and bully the White House and has no historical basis whatsoever. Coupled with the fact that the Bush administration has repeatedly cooperated with Congress--by providing thousands of pages of documentation and offered to allow questioning (without oath or transcript) of various White House officials--it is obvious that the purpose of this "investigation" isn't to find out what happened to the fired attorneys. It is to cripple the executive branch's powers.

Read the Q&A at Captain's Quarters for more information.