Today two prominent women in the Bush administration once again make front page news, unfortunately under ignoble circumstances. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the BBC Americas all lead with similar front-page stories, essentially informing the public of an indomitable lack of information coming from the White House as our President evokes executive privilege to keep Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Myers from testifying on-record before congress about the firing of federal prosecutors for seemingly political motives. If you’ll remember, the last time the Bush administration evoked executive privilege to keep these women from testifying, it was announced that these (former) top aids could be interviewed by Congress, but not while they were under oath and not if any transcripts were made of their testimony.
It would take singularly convoluted logic for the American people to convince themselves that this behavior is indicative of innocence on the part of the executive, for if there was no attempt to bully the Justice Department and all federal prosecutors into following an agenda set by the executive, how can this lack of transparency be explained?
How short our memories must be; for if we could remember the troubles of the generations before us, then surely women living in a fairly free and open society where courts could act apart from political concerns would not help to put an authoritarian, religiously-motivated establishment in its place.
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