mdsinclair

Executive Privilege

Last Monday, we chose “executive privilege” (in the context of the Federal government) as the topic for Monday, 20 December. I found a pretty comprehensive article on the subject in Wikipedia.

There are a number of ways I can think of to approach this topic, including:

Who should be able to assert executive privilege, and under what circumstances?

In particular, should a former president (he who shall not be named) or a former member of the executive branch be able to assert executive privilege, and under what circumstances?

Do the answers to the previous questions change, depending on which branch of government (Congress or the judiciary) has subpoenaed testimony or documents over which the privilege is asserted? If so, why?

Under what circumstances should a claim of executive privilege be deemed to have been waived, for example by prior publication? Would the waiver apply only in the case of prior publication by the person claiming the privilege?

I’m sure there are other questions that can be raised about executive privilege.

Many politicians, and some economists and historians, claimed that the US had “won” the cold war when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, and that the result would be “end of history” (i.e., world-wide adoption of US-style democracy and capitalism) and a “peace dividend” resulting from the anticipated fall in US defense spending. Were there other US expectations at that time as the result of the end of the cold war? What were they?

Have those US expectations been met? If not, how has reality differed from those expectations, and why?

One aspect of reality vs. post-cold war expectations is described in an article in the Business Section of The New York Times for Sunday, 24 September (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/business/economy/military-industrial-complex.html).