“It’s our party and we’ll lie if we want to …”

The ongoing show-down over using “executive privilege” as a means of shrugging off any oversight continues.  Congress continues to seek to interview some key White House folks, and the White House continues to say, “neener-neener,”

President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors. […] In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers’ demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.

Fielding was responding to a 10 a.m. EDT deadline set by the Democratic chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Conyers, for the White House to explain it’s privilege claim, prove that the president personally invoked it and provide logs of which documents were being withheld.

As expected, Fielding refused to comply. He said he was acting at Bush’s direction, and he complained that the committees had decided to enforce the subpoenas whether or not the White House complied.  “The committees have already prejudged the question, regardless of the production of any privilege log,” Fielding wrote. “In such circumstances, we will not be undertaking such a project, even as a further accommodation.”

I.e., We’re making a good faith effort, but we think you’re playing politics so we’ll play politics, too.  An odd definition of “good faith.”

On what basis does the White House decline all this?

“You may be assured that the president’s assertion here comports with prior practices in similar contexts, and that it has been appropriately documented,” the letter said.

 Except, of course, nobody can see the documentation.

Fielding dismissed the chairmen’s attempt to “direct” the White House to provide the legal underpinning of Bush’s executive privilege claims and a detailed listing of the documents he is withholding. He said the White House already has provided its legal argument and so does not need to do so again — and won’t.

“We are aware of no authority by which a congressional committee may `direct’ the Executive to undertake the task of creating and providing an extensive description of every document covered by an assertion of Executive Privilege,” he wrote. Fielding suggested that asserting executive privilege on the testimony comes as a result of this impasse and the lack of good faith it demonstrates on the part of Congress.

You told us we had to tell you things we weren’t telling you, so we’re telling you we don’t have to tell you things we don’t want to.  Nyah.

Interesting, it’s not so much that the White House doesn’t want Miers and Taylor to talk to Congress — it just doesn’t want them talking in public, and under oath.  Because, y’know … that might meant they actually have to say something that could come back to haunt someone — or, just as bad, they might look like Alberto “No Recollection” Gonzalez on the stand.

The Dems wasted no time in chiding the Bush Administration.

Retorted House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers: “Contrary what the White House may believe, it is the Congress and the courts that will decide whether an invocation of executive privilege is valid, not the White House unilaterally,” the Michigan Democrat said in a statement.

[…] Leahy also questioned the explanation. “I have to wonder if the White House’s refusal to provide a detailed basis for this executive privilege claim has more to do with its inability to craft an effective one,” he said in a statement.

Quite possibly true — but unless the Dems are willing to act, and to go to the wall on this one, we may never find out.