Saturday, July 26, 2014

Eleanor Holmes Norton on Executive Privilege

"You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.


 
What are the chances the congressional delegate would defend presidential executive privilege, if, let's suppose for the sake of argument, Karl Rove was being invited to testify?

12 comments:

ricpic said...

Total bitch.

ndspinelli said...

She's the ebony Pelosi.

edutcher said...

Gee, I can remember when Donaldson and Plante talked about nothing but the Public's Right To Know.

Unknown said...

She's wrong and she's a liar. She is twisting language to paint a false impression of elastic fun-house mirror boomerang logic. We all have a right to know everything our government is doing. YOU WORK FOR US, BITCH.

But then again, in the age of neo-fascism, what difference does it make?

Shouting Thomas said...

Stalling. They've got to stall out 2-1/2 years.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

If Obama is unimpeachable could it be argued he really doesn't have "privileges" per say.

I mean, to me, in my limited capacity to understand this, "privilege" concedes the authority granting it, in this case the people via their representatives, to be higher than the executor of the privilege.

If Obama is unimpeachable then those so called "privileges" are really, in effect, rights. If that makes any sense.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

When I look at Obama's presidency in the light of a theoretical right conferred upon him to be president, then at lot of it makes more sense, ie the pen and the phone, going around the congress.

We don't have any right to question him because he has a higher right, a higher calling... or something.

Shouting Thomas said...

Obama's presidency is a symbolic one.

A majority of Americans, responding to the prodding of decades of indoctrination, decided that absolution from the Original Sin of racism would solve our problems.

It didn't and it won't.

We can't impeach Obama because we cannot afford the civil unrest and racial antagonism that could cause. That's reality. We have to struggle through the final years in the hope that the symbolic value of his presidency, and the full assimilation of blacks represented by that, is fulfilled.

The remaining years of Obama's presidency will be lost to all the messes, incompetence and scandals. There is nothing to do about this but to wait it out.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

I'm also going under the assumption that "privileges" can be taken away, whereas rights cannot be taken away.

edutcher said...

Lem said...

I'm also going under the assumption that "privileges" can be taken away, whereas rights cannot be taken away.

FWIW, consider Section 4.

If he's in violation of that (and he is), Lem may be on to something.

The Dude said...

She is a shining example of why DC should never have statehood.

Methadras said...

She's not only wrong, but she is laughably wrong. Separation of powers isn't about the president not sending advisers to congress under subpoena or under any other pretense simply because he is a part of the executive branch and therefore is a separate power that isn't beholden to anyone but himself. As if all the separation of powers operate under some kind of sandboxed actions and aren't held to account for their actions.

In fact the entire point of separation of powers is that each power, separate, can check on the other power to make sure that they are all operating under the principals of the idea that one column of power cannot overburden or overpower another column of power. Not only does this woman get it wrong, but her entire idea is backwards. Leftists are fools and they prove it daily.