Condi knows, but she figures you don't

"It's a long-standing principle that the president's advisers do not testify in front of congressional committees," Rice said Tuesday [March 23] on Fox News Radio's Tony Snow Show. "So, as much as I would like to be able to do this, it would really not be a good precedent."

  source

Two points, please:

1) A long-standing principle apparently is of one year's duration, as presidential adviser and head of the Department of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge testified before Congress on April 9, 2003.

2) The 9/11 Commission is not a Congressional committee. It was created by Congress and signed into commission by the pResident. Some (maybe most) are ex-legislators, but none are congresspeople now; therefore, this is not a congressional committee. Chairman Kean is president of Drew University in New Jersey. Vice Chairman Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Richard Ben-Veniste is a partner in the Washington law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw. Fred Fielding is senior partner in the law offices of Wiley, Rein, & Fielding. Jamie Gorelick is a partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. Slade Gorton is of counsel at Preston Gates & Ellis LLP. Bob Kerrey is President of New School University in New York City. John Lehman is chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity investment firm. Tim Roemer is president of the Center for National Policy (CNP). James Thompson is chairman of the law firm of Winston & Strawn.

In keeping with typical operating procedure for the Switch to Another Lie When the First One Is Challenged administration, Rice has been forced (on 60 Minutes) to modify her story about precedent, narrowing the limitation to National Security Advisers only. (And it certainly isn't bothering her to talk to any and all news media. She'll even talk to the committee - just not under oath, and not in public. How much more public can you get than 60 Minutes?)

Christ.

To quote an anonymous Cyberspace Orbit forum participant from somewhere in the past on another subject:

"What a huge stinking shadow government olive green repturd pile of fragging disinformationalistic fusterclucked crap."

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update 8:00 pm: Excuse me, Condi's restatement is even narrower. Excrutiatingly, insanely, ridiculously narrow. As Josh Marshall points out, it's "flagrantly bogus":

Look again at these last two sentences of Rice's flagrantly bogus argument: "This is a matter of policy. And we have yet to find an example of a national security advisor, sitting national security advisor, who has - been willing to testify on matters of policy."

Each word of these two sentences was chosen to fit an unhelpful set of facts.

Sandy Berger twice testified in 1990s -- once in 1994 on Haiti and then again in 1997 during the Asian campaign contribution hearings. In 1994 though Berger was Deputy National Security Advisor. Constitutionally, it's not at all clear to me why a Deputy National Security Advisor should be more obliged to testify before congress than his boss. But that's their out in this case.

Then in 1997, when he was NSC Director, he was testifying in the course of an investigation into a scandal -- but certainly one with policy implications, since I'm pretty sure what they were asking him about was whether money affected policy. Why this is a constitutionally significant distinction is lost on me too. But again, that's their out -- it wasn't about 'policy'.