"The Bush presidency seems determined to go out in a blaze of executive overreaching." That may not seem a profound insight, but it is noteworthy that it was written by Douglas Kmiec. Kmiec was head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidencies and is now a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine. The function of the Office of Legal Counsel is to give legal advice to the presidency and is presumably the source of advice the current President Bush is getting about "executive privilege."

In the linked post, Kmiec provides a brief summary of the history of executive privilege and its underpinnings and limits, how the current Bush administration has distorted and abused the doctrine, and how it's clear that the doctrine does not justify White House refusals to let Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Joshua Bolton and others testify before Congress about politicization of U.S. Attorneys' charging decisions and about torture policies.

Perhaps it's even bigger news that Kmiec has endorsed Barak Obama for President (and has been denied communion by one Catholic priest as a result).