Playing Nice

President Bush gave the special counsel all he wanted which the press, among others, may regret

In case you don’t, all were novel but ultimately discredited legal defenses asserted by the Clinton White House and its allies in 1998, as the president tried to fend off a federal criminal investigation led by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Used in conjunction with some legitimate but inappropriate-to-the-circumstances defenses, like executive privilege and lawyer-client privilege, they were part of a wall of obstruction built by the president in an effort to stop the investigation in its tracks.