Oh me oh my. A Federal judge has actually ruled that the president's advisors are not above the law.
President Bush's top advisers are not immune from congressional subpoenas, a federal judge ruled Thursday in a long-running dispute between the two political branches.
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In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Bates said there's no legal basis for Bush's argument and that his former legal counsel, Harriet Miers, must appear before Congress. If she wants to refuse to testify, he said, she must do so in person. The committee also has sought to force testimony from White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten.
"Harriet Miers is not immune from compelled congressional process; she is legally required to testify pursuant to a duly issued congressional subpoena," Bates wrote. He said that both Bolten and Miers must give Congress all nonprivileged documents related to the firings.
Bates is a Bush appointee. Ain't it perfect?
Bush is rumored to be in a deep state of shock after learning that a Republican judge ruled for the Constitution instead of him. He has taken to his bed and is believed to be sucking on a pretzel and muttering bitterly about ungrateful hacks.
(Update below the fold)
UPDATE: (7/31/08) Glenn Greenwald has much more on just how outrageous Bush's own judge thought his "executive privilege" claim to be.
[T]he Judiciary Committee issued Subpoenas to Miers and Bolten in an effort to find out, among other things, who actually made the decision for those U.S. attorneys to be fired. The subpoenas ordered Miers to appear before the Committee in order to testify, and ordered both to produce documents to the Committee. Both Miers and Bolten refused to comply with the Subpoenas. Miers simply failed to show up for her hearing, while Bolten refused to produce the demanded documents. They did so in reliance on the Bush administration‘s claim that both of them, as top-level aides to the President, enjoyed absolute immunity from Congressional subpoenas. It was that extremist theory which the court today rejected -- and rejected decisively and unequivocally.
In unusually strong language, the court pointed out that the President's claim that his aides enjoyed absolute immunity from Congressional investigations was "unprecedented" and "without any support in case law" (p. 3). Like so many perverse claims of absolute presidential authority, this claim was plainly contrary to the core principles of how our country has long functioned: "Federal precedent dating as far back as 1807 contemplates that even the Executive is bound to comply with duly issued subpoenas" (p. 31). To underscore how frivolous the administration's claim here was, the court emphasized (p. 78):
The Executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other context. That simple but critical fact bears repeating: the asserted immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by case law. In fact, there is Supreme Court authority that is all but conclusive on this question and that powerfully suggests that such advisors to not enjoy absolute immunity.
That the Bush administration's claim was purely lawless has long been obvious. After all, the Supreme Court, in 1974, already explicitly ruled (in the context of a criminal investigation) that Richard Nixon lacked exactly the absolute immunity that Bush officials claimed here.
(emphasis in the original)
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