I was going to post about the Los Angeles Times’ uncritical story about how attorney-client privilege might or might not apply to John Roberts’ work in the Solicitor General’s office, but Patterico does a better job than I could.

My take: after writing “The question of how much access Congress should have to executive branch documents is a long-running debate in legal circles, and there is no consensus on whether attorney-client privilege can be invoked for government lawyers,” reporter Maura Reynolds should have either stopped there or supported that assertion.

She shouldn’t have then written “In general, the Bush administration has resisted congressional demands for executive branch documents” — because administrations of either party do that.

And when she wraps up with:

Some academics said the case for full disclosure was greater in the case of Roberts, who, unlike Estrada, was a political appointee helping shape Justice Department policy, and had been nominated to the nation’s highest court.

… she leaves us with the impression that some other academics (who, exactly?) don’t agree on the disclosure issue.

Then,

Others criticized the distinction the White House was drawing between documents Roberts produced while working as a White House counsel and those bearing on his tenure at the solicitor general’s office.

… sounds like she was fishing for a quote to make a case, not reporting. Presumably “some others” did not criticize the distinction?

Anyway, read Patterico. He went to law school. I have to ask my wife about this stuff.

—
See also the enlightening comments on Patterico’s post by xlrq and Kevin Murphy.

Technorati Tags: John Roberts, LA Times, Los Angeles Times, Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2005 at 10:56 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.