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Great editorial today from the NYT on the refusal of the White house to turn over all of the requested materials on Judge Roberts. Here's the critical portion. The emphasis is mine:

The White House has not produced these memos, and appears to be prepared to claim they are protected by attorney-client privilege. But the privilege does not apply. Attorney-client privilege is not a right of the attorney, but rather of the client - in this case, the entire United States. The current White House has no right to assert a privilege on behalf of the whole country. Even if it did, the attorney-client privilege applies to courts, not to requests from Congress. After the nominations of William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, among others, Congress sought and received similar documents.

The sentence in bold sums up nicely the problem with this administration. Bush is an elected representative of the people - all of the people - and his power and privilege comes directly from us. "We the people," in case he's forgotten, send representatives to multiple, co-equal branches of government. It is our government, and he is simply a temporary caretaker of but one of its parts. Not that he seems to care. --------