Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Continuing in their usual "we'll let you know what you need to know" mode, the misAdministration has agreed to release some 75,000 documents "concerning [Supreme Court nominee John G.] Roberts' work during the Reagan administration." At the same time, they've announced they will release no documents concerning his work on behalf of The Weasel's father:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration... will claim attorney-client privilege for internal memos generated during the four years he was deputy solicitor general in the first Bush administration.
[...]
It was during this period that Roberts wrote a legal brief on the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized a woman's right to abortion. He said in the brief that "we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

The White House cited a position agreed on in 2002 by seven former solicitor generals in declaring the internal memos protected by attorney-client privilege.

The solicitor general argues cases on behalf of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court.

"I think that if you were to make this information available publicly, that it would have a chilling effect on the ability of the solicitor generals to receive candid, honest, and thorough advice from their attorneys during the decision-making process," McClellan said

Curious, I hunted down the cited 2002 "position agreed on" case. Per CNN's Law Center, this position was laid out at the time of the confirmation hearings for Miguel Estrada, who had "served in the solicitor general's office during Janet Reno's tenure as Attorney General."

Three of the solicitors general served under Democratic administrations, four under Republican presidents.

"Any attempt to intrude into the Office's highly privileged deliberations would come at the cost of the Solicitor General's ability to defend vigorously the United States' litigation interests -- a cost that also would be borne by Congress itself," the former officials said in a copy of the letter obtained by CNN,.
[...]
"Although we profoundly respect the Senate's duty to evaluate Mr. Estrada's fitness for the federal judiciary, we do not think that the confidentiality and integrity of internal deliberations should be sacrificed in the process," the letter concluded.
[...]
The letter was written by Seth Waxman, the last of three solicitors general under the Clinton administration. The letter was sent on behalf of Waxman, Walter Dellinger, and Drew Days of the Clinton administration; Kenneth Starr from the George H.W. Bush administration; Charles Fried who served under Ronald Reagan; Robert Bork who also served under Reagan; and Archibald Cox who served under President John F. Kennedy.

One tires of repeating the phrase "this is soooo typical" regarding the way The Weasel's minions work. Tired or not, one can't help pointing it out when it happens. What's at work here, in this case, is a typical pincer assault on the notion of conducting the people's business in a way that serves the people:

1. On the one hand, fight like hell to avoid cooperating with any other branch of government on any matter of substance. Claim executive privilege; claim the general importance of the separation of powers; claim, as here, attorney-client privilege.
   
2. On the other, dump a truckload of information into the pipeline -- information which is (a) of little interest to anyone, and (b) so voluminous that no one could parse its relevance in the first place.

Naturally, there's no precedent they can lean on from years prior to The Weasel's first term; and naturally, they're claiming as "precedent" a document whose only standing is one of convenience for their obstructionism. Archibald Cox was a great folk hero for his role in prosecuting the Watergate case, and his presence on that list of seven gave me pause. But c'mon. Even folk heros commit gaffes of judgment from time to time, and the others on the list don't exactly predispose one to think it was anything like a "diverse" group.

What a crock.