WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors. ...
''With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation,'' White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to the chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. ''We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.''
'Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law,'' said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He portrayed the president's actions as ''Nixonian stonewalling.''
His House counterpart, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said Bush's assertion of executive privilege was ''unprecedented in its breadth and scope'' and displayed ''an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government.''...
The White House also had offered a compromise in which Miers, Taylor, White House political strategist Karl Rove and their deputies would be interviewed by Judiciary Committee aides in closed-door sessions, without transcripts.
Leahy and Conyers rejected that offer.
Fred Fielding was, of course, a White House lawyer during the Nixon impeachment hearings. Maybe he's looking for a return engagement?
What say you, John Dean?
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