Tony Snow is a precious little resource for this administration, ain't he? Yesterday's best-of.
And so now we have a situation where there is an attempt to do something that's never been done in American history, which is to assail the concept of executive privilege, which hails back to the administration of George Washington, and in particular, to use criminal contempt charges against a White House chief of staff and the White House legal counsel. Ironically, this comes as the very same committee is marking up the attorney-client privilege protection act, apparently not believing that attorney-client privilege applies to the President and his own lawyer.
The inability to differentiate between national security and required secrets versus bad behavior and the obfuscation needed to cover up misuse of power are vastly opposed.
We think a confrontation of this sort is neither constructive, nor necessary. As I said, we maintain our position of accommodation toward the House of Representatives. But make no mistake, based on legal precedent this is something that the drafters of this particular referral know has very little chance of going anywhere. And so the question is, why are they doing this rather than the people's business?
Oversight, investigation and protection of both the rule of law and the constitution, IS the people's business.
What we've been trying to do is to create a little air of dignity in this town, where at the very beginning of this Congress there was a lot of talk about getting work done, setting a new tone. And instead what have we gotten? We have got insults, insinuations, investigations and inquisitions. This is not the kind of thing --
I'm sorry Tony, I missed that segment in the last 6.5 years. Could you please cite examples of dignity you and your team have created. I'd love to laud *something* on your behalf.