Congress vs. The Administration... EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE and SEPARATION OF POWERS DOCTRINE do you understand?

Question

I'm absolutely amazed at the number of people who don't understand these two principles which date back to the very founding of this nation.

Members of the Executive Branch cannot be called to testify in front of Congress as to the inner workings of the administration.... how policy is reached.

Members of the Judicial Branch cannot be called to testify in front of Congress as to the inner workings of the courts.... how decisions are reached.

Answer 1

Liberals are out to get the president. They never forgave the Right from bringing down their sex crazed president , and now they want to get even.

Answer 2

Separation of Powers -- each branch can exert checks and balances on the other. No branch is completely immune from and independent of the others.

Executive Privilege -- dates back a few decades (not to the founding of the nation). It protects specific confidential communications to/from the President that are deemed necessary for the president to be able to perform his job.

Executive Privilege was first recognized by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953) under federal rules of procedure. In Gravel v. US, the Court noted that "executive privilege has never been applied to shield executive officers from prosecution for crime". 408 U.S. 606 (1972). There have been 24 other cases decided by the Supreme Court that address and define it limits.

Most recently, the Court commented that "Executive privilege is an extraordinary assertion of power not to be lightly invoked. " Cheney v. US Dist.Ct for DC, 542 U.S. 367 (2004).
In in Rubin v. United States, the court commented that testimony and documents may be compelled, "unless those conversations clearly fall within the bounds of 'executive privilege,' the bounds of which are unclear". 525 U.S. 990 (1998).

So, yes, I think I understand what they mean.

Answer 3

The Supreme Court however rejected the notion that the President has an "absolute privilege." The Supreme Court stated: "To read the Art[icle] II powers of the President as providing an absolute privilege as against a subpoena essential to enforcement of criminal statutes on no more than a generalized claim of the public interest in confidentiality of nonmilitary and nondiplomatic discussions would upset the constitutional balance of 'a workable government' and gravely impair the role of the courts under Art[icle] III." Because Nixon had asserted only a generalized need for confidentiality, the Court held that the larger public interest in obtaining the truth in the context of a criminal prosecution took precedence.

Fuller discussion here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege

Executive privilege, in short, cannot be an excuse for evading investigation of wrong-doing.