WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

The Baltimore Sun

Since when is political speech bad for democracy?

Some people are lamenting a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week that appears to loosen the gag placed on issue-oriented campaign advertisements by the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

Those who seek to throttle the money available to disseminate political viewpoints apparently do not believe the American voter capable of separating political nonsense from substance.

As for the charge that political donations corrupt democracy, where is the evidence? Politicians are remarkably faithful to their parties and their parties' ideologies. How often have political donations induced a Republican to vote like a Democrat or vice versa? Most campaign contributors give money to politicians whom they already agree with, so who is being corrupted?

And if by corruption, the speech-suppressors simply mean attempting to influence elections, then they are revealing that their real antagonism is to democracy itself.

-- Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch

They must have something to hide, right? Otherwise, why would the Bush administration resist subpoenas seeking documents and testimony on the controversial firing of U.S. attorneys and its domestic spying activities?

A quick glance at history shows, however, that even if the president is confident nothing bad would come from complying, he would still fight the congressional subpoenas.

The doctrine of executive privilege is rooted in the Constitution's separation of powers. Courts have held that the president has a right to keep Congress from prying into his or her business, but it's not an unlimited one.

The president has to assert a specific reason for the privilege. He or she can't make a general claim of privilege, as Richard Nixon did when he fought unsuccessfully to resist a subpoena for the now-infamous tapes of his conversations.

What this means is that if congressional Democrats stick to their demands for documents and testimony, the matter is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

With the administration's popularity ebbing and congressional outrage over alleged improprieties surging, it might seem that a failure to comply with a congressional subpoena suggests trouble for the administration.

It could be just as true, however, that Bush is protecting the office of the presidency and the Constitution he swore to uphold.

-- Portland (Maine) Press Herald

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