The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush’s warrant less
eavesdropping program.
How dare they.
Sure Mr. Vice President, you've made some mistakes:
1) Architect (along with his neocon cabal) of the worst foreign blunder in U.S. history and an immoral war.
2) Cheerleader and or “chief of torture.” Just ask Condi and Colin.
3) Mr. Law and Order doesn’t actually obey the law regarding his office.
4) Secret Energy Commission meeting
5) Chickenhawk (five deferments) who sends others off to fight his wars.
6) The leaking of Valerie’s Plame name.
7) His relationship to the criminal activities of Scooter Libby and Mary Matalin.
8) Pushing for no-bid contracts from his former company: Haliburton.
9. Shooting someone in the face at close range and then waiting to report it (until alcohol was out of his system.)
But that doesn't mean you need to be humiliated.
Cheney: I am all powerful
The Vice President exempted himself from an executive order on the handling of classified materials. To rationalize the decision, Dick Cheney and the White House want people to believe that the Vice President is not part of the executive branch of government. No one, anywhere, is buying it.
Yesterday, Cheney’s lawyers rolled out Absurd Rationalization #2.
Vice President Cheney’s office offered its first public written explanation yesterday for its refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified material, arguing that the order makes clear that the vice president is not subject to the oversight system it creates for federal agencies.
In a letter to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Cheney Chief of Staff David S. Addington wrote that the order treats the vice president the same as the president and distinguishes them both from “agencies” subject to the oversight provisions of the executive order.
Addington did not cite specific language in the executive order supporting this view, and a Cheney spokeswoman could not point to such language last night.
This need not be complicated. Sec. 6.1(b) of the executive order explicitly states that it applies to any “‘Executive agency…any ‘Military department’…and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.” To exempt Cheney, the White House to argue that he a) doesn’t have access to classified information; or b) is not an entity within the executive branch. Those are the only two options.
If Cheney’s a member of the legislative branch, the Democratic Caucus chair Rahn Emmanuel suggests, the vice president won’t need all the money that currently goes to pay for his executive office, extensive staff and that secure undisclosed location that is so often his haunt. So Emanuel plans this week to offer an amendment to a spending bill that would defund the Office of the Vice President.
An early view of Cheny in the Bush government
Nixon's Attorney John Dean take on the Cheny shadow government
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