"The court also granted the House Judiciary Committee's motion for partial summary judgment in part.

"In doing so the U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ruled:

Harriet Miers is not immune from compelled congressional process; she is legally required to testify pursuant to a duly issued congressional subpoena from plaintiff; and Ms. Miers may invoke executive privilege in response to specific questions as appropriate

and that:

Joshua Bolten and Ms. Miers shall produce all non-privileged documents requested by the applicable subpoenas and shall provide to plaintiff a specific description of any documents withheld from production on the basis of executive privilege consistent with the terms of the Memorandum Opinion issued on this date

Just a reminder: The Judiciary Committee is seeking testimony and documents from the White House relating to the U.S. attorneys firings. Bolten is a party because he is the custodian of White House records, but it's really the White House on the line here.                                                            

From Balkanization comes more explanation: "First, as noted above, he unequivocally rejects the centerpiece of the Administration's privilege argument: the notion that the House has no legitimate interest in inquiring with respect to why the U.S. Attorneys were fired....that "[n]otwithstanding its best efforts, the Committee has been unable to discover the underlying causes of the forced terminations of the U.S. Attorneys. The Committee has legitimate reasons to believe that Ms. Miers's testimony can remedy that deficiency. There is no evidence that the Committee is merely seeking to harass Ms. Miers by calling her to testify."

Second: "the Executive's interest in 'autonomy' rests upon a discretited notion of executive power and privilege." Even the President himself "is entitled only to a presumptive privilege," and therefore "his close advisers cannot hold the superior card of absolute immunity. . . . Presidential autonomy, such as it is, cannot mean that the Executive's actions are totally insulated from scrutiny by Congress. That would eviscerate Congress's historical oversight function."

"Third, the court does not resolve the factual dispute about whether and to what extent President Bush himself was involved in the decisions to fire the U.S. Attorneys. The court does pointedly note, however (note 37), that to the extent the President was not involved, any privilege clams will be on decidedly weaker ground.

"I should emphasize something here: This is not the first Administration to have articulated the view that certain presidential advisers are immune from congressional process: It has been a mantra in Administrations of both parties for some time, which often have permitted close presidential advisors to testify before Congress while at the same time claiming to "preserve" a right to object to compulsory process.

"So the argument itself was not new. But the Bush Administration pushed the argument much more aggressively than any Administration before it: It claimed for the first time that such immunity extends even to former officials, because everything they did was absolutely privileged; it played hardball with Congress on the question where other Administrations have acceded to such testimony; and for the first time ever, the Executive had the gumption to ask a court to ratify its immunity claims."

However, the Bush administration will stonewall, obfuscate, and try every tactic to defy this ruling or, should Miers and Bolton eventually appear, they will claim executive privilege and refuse to answer most or all of the committee members' questions.