I say leave it alone. Firstly, there is no real mention of this in the constitution but there has been a few examples where it was used wisely IMO. What bugs me is when it is used for partisan politics. The exchange between the executive and legislative branches are pretty clearly defined and it need be taken on a case by case basis. If it deals with covering up a crime then the President need to be held responsible. This is universal in my opinion regardless of which party occupies the WH.

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Abstinence Education at its finest:

But, it's clearly broke.

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So many cowards.

You know who you are.

This is the kind of ridiculous hyperbole that contributes nothing to rational discourse. Like people who scream how we are a police-state, oblivious to the fact they would long ago have been arrested or shot in the head where even a fraction of what they irrationally believe to be true were so.

Which part of Congress having complete power to impeach and remove from office an overly intransigent president supports your "all-powerful" rhetoric?

Which part of the President not being able to spend money without Congressional appropriation supports your "all-powerful" rhetoric?

While the President was not intended to as you say be "all-powerful", he WAS intended to have the FULL Executive power of the Federal Government (that is what is meant by "unitary executive", it says nothing about the SCOPE of the Executive branch's powers, merely that the full scope of its powers belong to the President alone, however it may be delegated administratively at any given moment).

What you call dysfunction, I call part of the overall checks and balances of our constitutional structure. I am so tired of people ascribing the failure of the government to do what THEY want to it being "broken". It is not broken, it works pretty much as intended, with a few exceptions due to amendments (such as the popular election of Senators)

By the way, would you extend your principle of letting the sun shine in on the full judicial process? Attorney client privilege for example? How could keeping such things secret be a good thing?

Executive Privilege is intended to facilitate a President getting unvarnished input from his advisors, without fear of how any particular input into the process looks taken out of context.

Take the Energy Task Force. While the meetings and discussions were "secret", the OUTPUT of those meetings was not, the Bush Administrations policies on energy were pretty darn public. Beyond cheap political points, what relevance is there as a substantive matter of policy to HOW that police was arrived at, isn't what is important the substance of the policy? Does any particular policy's efficacy hinge on who's idea it was?

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Reactionary, much?


Perhaps if you want to try coming back to the level of rationality we can have a discussion.

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So many cowards.

You know who you are.

By that token, government ought to be ethical how?

Ethics are subjective.

Even if executive privilege were "revoked" and every Executive discussion and correspondence were brodcast daily on CSPAN and the Internet who would decide what was an ethical conversation and what wasn't? What deserved investigation and what didn't?

And who would carry out all of those inquries and investigations?

I disagree.

Secretiveness is essential to good planing either governmentally or personally.

Do you tell your boss the minute you start thinking about looking for a new job? Of course not. You wait until your employment situation develops before you make public information that could potentially hurt you.

Does a corporate executive broadcast strategic information on corporate direction and policy planning before a final decission is reached?

Of course not. Not in either case.

Because making such information public can have contrary or detrimental consequences in regard to the policy being developed.

Making public information regarding the minutia involved in every single executive decission, either personal, private, or governmental isn't necessarily beneficial to the individual, the company, or the entity being governed.

Thye Constitution doesn't mention any right to ethical government.

Ethical government is an ideal, not a right.

So presidential discussion of foreign policy positions toward, let's say Iran, wouldn't necessarially benefit by remaining secret until a final position is arrived at and announced?

I completly disagree.

Says who?

The logic of your argument is sound, but of course you know that.

The truths on which you predicate it, however, aren't necessarially truths. They're opinions, and they're wrong, in my opinion

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

I voted leave it alone.

Has the current administration invoked EP too often? More often than it should have to, at the very least. The various branches should keep each other in check, not harrass each other to prevent effective execution of office. Just as W rightly cannot have Congress arrested for (or en route to) execution of their duties, Congress should not micromanage executive duties, such as having intrusive hearings into the firings of lawyers who by law can only be fired when - gasp - the President decides to fire them.

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Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

Yeah, to your hyperbolic use of the term "all-powerful" as though such an observation is even remotely relevant to the reality we are discusing.

My point exactly, when you toss around such nonesense as "all-powerful" it is not in any way contributing towards the "level of rationality".

I however pointed to very clear and specific things which quite clearly limit the power of the Chief Executive.

Please explain exactly which part of what I posted you view as irrational?

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

All government secrecy is inherently harmful to a democracy. A government can only be "of the people" and "by the people" to the extent that the people know what that government is doing. National security exceptions need to be made but the frequent use of "national security" to hide politically embarrassing facts (even the documents disputed in reynolds turned out to have no national security value) dictates that even this exception needs to be narrow, temporary, and not completely removed from oversight.

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The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

Nonesense, how does the specific content of any particular meeting or advice that constitutional officers get from their advisors harm democracy if the actual policies resulting from those confidential discussions are public? When the President puts forward his administrations energy policy, isn't the only meaningful thing the actual content and substance of the policy?

Furthermore, most of you are fixated on the executive branch, what about the Legislative and Judicial branches? Should every meeting on capital hill and in the courts be video-streamed, every document publicly available except for very limited national security exceptions? Should strategy meetings among elected officials, their staffs, and members of their political parties be public?

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"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

As a rule, it's sound policy to disallow scoundrels and those serving special interests from helping to shape policy. Such people, IMO, are the only ones who would be inclined to hesitate in giving "unvarnished" input out in the open.

IMO, people who aren't prepared to publically stand by the advice they give aren't worthy of the time of day.

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

Every closed door meeting is an invitation to cronyism and corruption. And politicians don''t need much invitation. The process is just as important as the end result. Citizens cannot make informed judgements about government if they are not allowed to see the workings of that government.

I have always believed congress should be equally open. I have no problem at all with the idea of eliminating all closed door congressional meetings and I think putting every document online is a great idea. Politicians need to be kept on a very short leash.

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The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

The same as it is done, by enforceable ethical standards (such as laws which codify said standards).
Before you make such a statement you might want to look into deontology.
I don't think that anyone is arguing that "every Executive discussion and correspondence were brodcast daily on CSPAN and the Internet." We are talking about Executive Privilege which pertains to the relationship between the Executive and the other two branches of government. It would be the responsibility of the other branches to issue the appropriate warrants/subpoenas for whatever information/witnesses they wanted.


"Could" was the correct word here, and it proves my point that the relationship is not necessary but contingent.


1. Not all rights are enumerated.
2. Every right it does mention places a requirement (either positive or negative) on government towards ethical behavior.

This thread is not meant to discuss rights per se, but if you understand what rights are vis a vis ethical rights, then you would understand that it is indeed a right.





A priori based on the function/purpose of government.

Yes, I do know that the logic is valid.

Logical truths are necessary truths.

You are entitled to your own view.



Have a cookie for keeping it civil.

Oaky, I did that, but only by referencing the wikipedia article (I don't have the time to look any further into it at this point).

It doesn't change the fact that ethics are subjective.

The arguments made in the "criticisim" section of the Deontology article, as well as the contrasts between Deontological and Teleological ethics makes this quite clear.

If we subscribe to different schools of ethics our understandings of what is ethical are necessarially different, at least on some level.

So who's right?

Congress already has the power to issue subpoenas and to initiate contempt actions should subpoenas be ignored.

A warrant is a judicial instrument and should't be issued by anyone other than an officer of the court. But Congress does have access to the Federal court system and the SCOTUS should a warrant for search and seziure of executive documents or material, or arrest of executive employees, be necessary.

I assume you're proposing more legislative power than what already exists but from what you've said I don't see what that additional power could be.

Right, you said:

But there is a contingent or conditional relationship.

Secrecy isn't always necessary. But sometimes it is necessary.

So now we're looking at what? A truth functional negation?

Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater based on that?

AND

And now we're back to the subjectivity of ethics.

Of course they are. I used the wrong terminology.

I should have said that your arguments are logical, but in my opinion they are not sound.

We may very well end up having to agree to disagree here.

But thanks for the cookie.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

Pretty sound argument you've made, if we don't get picky about the definition of "ethics" and "accountability" and such. Personally, I think the power put into the hands of executive branches around the world is a dangerous adaptation to our times. To some degree it is necessary, but there is an unhealthy dose of opportunism I think. I haven't voted in your poll yet, mainly because I'm curious about how we would restrict executive privilege without actually eliminating it.

If we restrict executive privilege to request, I assume you mean that the executive would have to ask Congress or the judiciary not to comply with their interventions, likely on the grounds of national security and defending the Constitution to the best of their ability. But who would be the arbitrator? In order to decide whether the documents or data were essential to national security, the body would have to be secret, or else the information would go public anyway. And if you enshrine accountability, a secret court might not satisfy you. My question still stands; how do we restrict executive privilege without completely eliminating it?

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No man is an island...
Each man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind.
And therefore, never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

I don’t think the numbers would quite reflect that compared to others, so instead of starting a partisan war, I'll just say, there were many who have used it,