We assign privileges to communications we want to protect, e.g., doctor/patient, priest/penitent, attorney/client, spouse/spouse.

In each instance, the person from whom we would elicit testimony (doctor, lawyer, priest) asserts the privilege as a means to resist doing so. Conversely, the target of the investigation (patient, penitent, client) may assert the privilege to prevent testimony which might be harmful. But for the privilege, the parties might not feel free to communicate.

So in this instance, the White House is itself asserting the privilege, not "extending to Taylor . . . the right but apparently also the duty to claim executive privilege."

You can (somewhat easily) argue that the White House's construction and assertion of executive privilege is overly broad. But that such a privilege would be used to prevent testimony is not uncommon; it is, in fact, why the privilege exists.

Counselor Eggleston is right when he avers that the "clash may ultimately be decided by the judicial branch."

Could the WH also limit her right to free speech? Specifically could it prevent her from writing a book about her involvement? On what grounds could they do so?

Could they prevent her from speaking about her WH experiences to RNC fundraiser? Have they been doing so?

I suspect the answer to each of the above is NO. Taylor's free speech rights are only limited while she is an active member of the executive.

In asserting privilege, the White House is not seeking to limit her free speech rights. She is free to hold a press conference, write a book, do an interview, whatever. Clearly she does not want to, elsewise she would. What the White House is preventing is her testimony to a fact finding body.

Sarah herself appears to want to have it both ways. She wants to tell her story, but without offending, in the words of the "Hot Document," someone she admires and for whom she has worked for most of her adult life. A cynic might suggest that she wants to throw her boss under the bus while girded in the fig leaf of a subpoena, a win-win in stark contrast to the lose-lose she currently faces. C'est la guerre.

Her free speech rights are not the issue of a subpoena; testimonial privileges are.

She is free to testify. If the administration wants to prevent her from doing so, they will need a court injunction. Good luck with that. Executive privilege is not absolute.

can exec.priv. extend to ex-govt employees? hasn't she resigned? so how could she be under that rule, if there is one. poor girl, she is afraid to hurt bush's feelings.... another religio dimwit in high office.