Bush Stonewalls...Again

McClatchy's Rob Hotakainen June 29 report, "White House asserts executive privilege in air-quality case" says that the White House is setting up a "constitutional showdown" in asserting executive privilege to refuse to produce thousands of pages of documents requested by in order to sort out Bush's role in the Environmental Protection Agency's rejection of California's efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-CA) who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is conducting the investigation, says,

I don’t think we’ve had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president....There are thousands of internal White House documents that would show whether the president and his staff acted lawfully. But the president has said they must be kept from Congress and the public.

In testimony last month, Johnson refused to say whether he’d discussed the waiver request with Bush.

Waxman canceled a contempt vote that had been scheduled for June 20, Friday morning against Johnson and White House official Susan Dudley after the White House informed him of its last-minute decision. Waxman said the two had refused to cooperate with his panel.