Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883

Executive Privilege: Flimsy historical defenses

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, as we have seen, did not fail to address the issue of presidential authority to invoke executive privilege. Rather, they chose not to clothe the president with power to withhold information from Congress.

The framers of the Constitution, part of a generation that fought executive tyranny in the form of King George III, studiously avoided any pretense...