The NPR broadcast you didn't hear this morning

"Obviously, the Justice Department should issue subpoenas to congressional staffers and Democrat political advisers," officials said Wednesday.

"If we don't receive the answers under oath, we don't receive full answers. We've tried that. We are concerned that politics is driving Sen. Schumer and others, and the credibility of the justice system and the political system requries that we have answers to these questions."

QueensGuy replies: Such softballs you throw me sometimes! Name that tune: "for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place."

Columbus Guy says: You puzzle me, QG. Are you trying to make my point? I'm not challening that "softball" clause; in fact, my argument wouldn't work without it. I'm challenging the other part, the one that comes after the semicolon: "Unlike the 'president,' who serves as the whim of this hallowed body, and shall damn well answer any subpoena or Democrat news media whatever." Since you're looking at clauses, maybe you should check to see if you're reading the Articles of Confed.

QueensGuy says: We're agreed, I would guess, that the Framers explicitly gave one branch a pass for spouting stupidity, and implicitly denied it to another branch. (Inclusio, exclusio, etc.) And I'm guessing your argument probably isn't that we should find such protection for the poor harried executive in the penumbra {snicker}; but rather that it's inherent in separation of powers that one branch isn't at the beck'n'call of the other. Executive privilege is a slippery area, self-interestedly asserted by administrations going back to the first one, but never explicitly tested until US v. Nixon, so far as I recall. [ed. -- You don't recall it because when a Republican does it, it's a grave national challenge that bears weeks or months or years of repetition and becomes evergreen, watershed material; when a Democrat does it, it's a noble protection of the office from Javert] {QG. -- huh? please re-read last sentence, focusing on words that begin with "u."} Is this issue big enough, or clear-cut enough, to warrant the legislature testing its boundaries again in court? Not in my estimation. But the executive's position on the issue is most certainly weakened when the attorney general and his chief of staff are caught out mis-stating, mis-remembering, or otherwise repeatedly missing the boat in front of congress.