Condi's nice try

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that she may refuse to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, despite the subpoena that the House just issued to her.

She said she has already answered the committee's questions about the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa. "This is an issue that has been answered and answered and answered," she said.

Secretary Rice was, at the time, President Bush's national security adviser, and this, she contends, exempts her from the need to comply with a congressional subpoena.

"There is a constitutional principle," the secretary of state explained. "There is a separation of powers and advisers to the president under that constitutional principle are not generally required to go and testify in Congress."

Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the "constitutional principle" they cite is at odds with the Constitution, which gives the U.S. Congress the power to impeach the president, the vice president, and all civil officers of the United States.

The Constitution also gives Congress all the powers that are "necessary and proper" to carry out the powers delegated to it by the Constitution.

By any reasonable interpretation, it is both necessary and proper to investigate in order to determine if impeachment should go forward.

The power of investigation, therefore, is implicit in the power of impeachment.

The "principle" that advisers to the president are "not generally required to go and testify in Congress" is non-existent. The potential targets of an impeachment cannot have some unwritten constitutional power to stymie a congressional investigation by refusing to testify or provide documents.

Nice try, though.

Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the 1974 book, Executive Privilege: A Constitutional Myth, by the late Harvard law professor Raoul Berger. You might also like to read the earlier post, "Fred Fielding's bad day."

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