All Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chávez ever wanted for America was a dictator just like him running the show.  And now we have one.

It isn’t just the Fast & Furious cover-up, although that IS a very big deal.  Invoking executive privilege to keep documents under wraps is a big deal.  What leaves me completely baffled is, if the White House knew nothing about the monkey poop fight at the zoo known as Fast And Furious, then what possible authority allows the assertion of that privilege?  Either Obama and Holder knew that gun dealers in Arizona were told by the BATF to sell guns to straw buyers, or they didn’t.  Either they knew that 1,000 of those guns had gone missing, or they didn’t.

Richard Nixon taught us that the chief executive cannot invoke executive privilege to cover up screwing the pooch.  Or rather, the Supreme Court taught us that, when they slapped Tricky Dick around and made him cough up his tapes.  (Somehow, eavesdropping on your opponent seems quite mild compared to losing track of 1,000 firearms and having a few of them turn up in investigations of murdered law enforcement agents.  Your mileage may vary.)  That this allegedly brilliant Constitutional scholar doesn’t know he can’t use the privilege in that way makes him look like a clown in charge of a very warped circus.  read more »