Executive privilege is running rampant in Washington, DC.

President Bush is evoking it over CIA leaks that led to the outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Vice President Cheney doesn't want to talk about that, either. And he feels he doesn't need to share what happened when he met with energy industry executives.

And Darth Karl Rove says he has executive privilege with regards to Justice Department firings of attorneys who were not Republicans. He has told Congress to go jump in the lake. He won't appear to testify.

Catchy and convenient this thing called executive privilege. The political elite seem to have it and the rest of us don't.

But there is almost nothing that smacks of shady dealings more than executive privilege.

Executive privilege is a balancing act between the president's need for obtaining sound advice and the public's right to know. The argument is that the president, from time to time, may need frank and candid advice to make important decisions.

But some of that information may be too sensitive for the health and well-being of the nation to share with the public.

The president can claim executive privilege, but Congress has subpoena power. Occasionally the two co-equal branches of government have sparred. Nixon and Watergate and Clinton and Monica Lewinsky are the biggest cases in recent memory, and in both, the Executive was attempting to block damaging information from seeing the light of day.

But there is some question of whether executive privilege is real or a kind of mythology.

Executive privilege is not directly mentioned in the Constitution, even though the father of our country - George Washington - was the first to use it.

So what are politicians doing when they evoke it?

In the cases of Cheney and Rove, it could potentially shake the foundations of our society. If Cheney (and Bush by association) worked out some dubious arrangement with energy executives, one that they have personally profited from, the public should know.

If Karl Rove directed the firings of attorneys based on their political affiliations rather than their job performances, he has caused irrevocable harm to our system of justice, and the public should know.

When it comes right down to it, it's hard to find many things that the public doesn't deserve to know.