What's more, Whitehouse welcomes the Constitutional showdown that would result. "I'm astounded at the breadth and the scope of the privilege that they claim," the first-term senator said. "I actually hope that it comes to a point where we end up litigating it and getting a court decision and settling this question."
Asked if he was going further than other senators, who'd use a possible contempt finding as a mechanism to compel the document disclosure,
Whitehouse said the Bush administration has gone so far in "grading its own papers" -- that is, deciding for itself what Congress is entitled to receive from the executive -- that it's time to return to Constitutional first principles. "I'd rather get it done," he said:
There has not been a lot of case law on this subject. We've been going on for a long time off of Department of Justice (attorney general) opinions, and a certain amount of tradition, and how settlements and agreements in the past have shaken out. But the Bush administration has shown why it's actually important that there be a legal line drawn to hold them to, because they've redrawn all the executive lines. I think it'd be good for the process to get a court decision for once and for all on the subject so everybody knows where we stand. It'll eliminate a lot of the back and forth in the future."
Whitehouse doubted that the process -- the committee holding the White House in contempt, the full Senate following suit, the subsequent court fight and its resolution -- could be completed before the Bush administration ends. But he said he would see it through to its conclusion regardless of who's president. "It might be, frankly, that with the Bush administration out we'd get a better decision," he said. "We might have an administration that isn't trying to protect anything, and is just interested in the legal question."
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