I really can not get over how ridiculous the latest Cheney bullshit is, and it makes me wonder what is really going on and if these folks really will just say anything. Article II, Section 1 is pretty clear:
Section 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows:
That is pretty explicit and straightforward, yet Cheney and company would have you believe otherwise:
Mr. Addington did not reply in writing to Mr. Leonard’s letters, according to officials familiar with their exchanges. But Mr. Addington stated in conversations that the vice president’s office was not an “entity within the executive branch” because, under the Constitution, the vice president also plays a role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, able to cast a vote in the event of a tie.
Waxman rejected that argument. “He doesn’t have classified information because of his legislative function,” Mr. Waxman said of Mr. Cheney. “It’s because of his executive function.”
Mr. Cheney’s general resistance to complying with the oversight request was first reported last year by The Chicago Tribune.
In January, Mr. Leonard wrote to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales asking that he resolve the question. A Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said tonight, “This matter is currently under review in the department.”
Why am I not surprised that Abu Gonzalez’s department has needed 6 months to rule on this issue?
I guess what really just floors me is not only will they say this stuff- but they don’t care that they are saying it. They are not even remotely ashamed. And they have supporters cheerleading them the whole way. It is mind numbing.
From now on, I am just voting with the smelly dirty hippies.
JKC
John-
This Administration increasingly reminds me of the government in the old John Brunner novel “The Sheep Look Up” which turned out to be run by the Mafia.
ThymeZone
Welcome to the stinky clique.
Today, you start saving big money on bath and laundry soap.
Zifnab
I mean, at this point the Bush Administration has discovered it really can lie and bullshit about virtually everything and STILL not suffer any real accountability.
You’ll notice they rarely claim pro-active powers that can be easily contested. Dick Cheney isn’t claiming he can investigate Congress or that he can have people arrested. He’s just claiming that no one can investigate or arrest him. When a federal offical’s job is to pick side A, side B, or do nothing, it’s alot easier to do nothing. So Cheney’s immunity can go uncontested because he can just keep on throwing up roadblocks that everyone else in government is reluctant to step over.
I seriously don’t know how this Presidency can possibly end without one side or the other simply snapping and sicking the cops on the opposition.
Tulkinghorn
If that is what it will take, let’s hurry up now, please? If Congress will not assert its constitutional powers, who can assert it on Congress’ behalf?
Just send the Sergeant-at-arms to pick up Cheney if he does not answer to a subpoena. Let the Secret Service decide whether or not to intervene. Let Cheney go out to explain why he is above the law.
Get this party started.
If there is going to be a constitutional crisis, then lets have it now, rather than the end of 2008.
Teak111
Let the slow coup continue, or I guess it started in 2000 with Scalia’s gavel.
Keith
The worst part for me was the spokeswoman’s line something to the tune of “We are confident we are operating within the law” followed by a refusal to elaborate. Sad thing is, I don’t expect anything more than Waxman’s letter to come of this. I mean, does anyone see this actually going to court (although I tend to think that Judge Bates said he’s in the executive branch in the Energy Task Force case dismissal, but Cheney will still say otherwise until taken to court again…and again…and again)
Cyrus
Explicit and straightforward? Well, not really. It almost seems like we have to resort to “original intent” here. The constitution does not, in fact, include the phrase “the office of the Vice President is part of the executive branch of government,” nor the phrase “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America and his Vice President,” nor anything similar. We could imagine a country with the same constitution but a different history in which the veep was not considered part of the executive branch.
That’s imaginary, of course. In the real world, the vice president is a major part of the president’s “team,” and the vice president’s official legislative powers are only a tiny bit greater than his official executive powers, and both of those are tiny anyway, and the devoted federalists who wrote the constitution and the relevant amendments would obviously not have wanted to create an office so close to power but not accountable to it, and… and so on. But just going by the constitution, you know, he has an argument.
I agree with you, I’m just taking a detached and resigned look at all this. The administration is horrible, but it’ll only change before 2009 if individuals highly placed in government decide to defect, or when riots get reeeally ugly. The latter is unlikely, and the former has a whole lot of wild cards in it. While we wait, I’m just laughing and marveling at their chutzpah.
Jake
Shorter Cheney: I’m every woman!
To call it an argument is an insult to arguers the world over. I wonder if Waxman was thinking “Why the hell do I have give a serious response to this crap?” Or maybe he just laughed.
Welcome, just don’t bogart the joint.
Jake
Oh yeah, like the new tag.
Paul L.
The boneheaded argument that the VP is part of the executive and legislative branches so the rules of either do not apply to him reminded me of this.
I suspect that Cheney will drop this claim like Clinton did with his.
I am not defending Cheney. Just pointing out that the democrats/hippies are not as pure and shameless as they and John represents them.
The Other Steve
Why did 110 Republicans vote with the hate America Firsters?
Tulkinghorn
IIRC, Paul L., Clinton did not drop this claim, but lost at the Supreme Court. I don’t remember it being a basis to stonewall the other branches of government for the better part of a year, either.
And you are defending Cheney, by drawing an inapt comparison.
CDB
“The year 2008 was a general date by which time everyone will realize the world they thought they were living in was over.”
Dreggas
Paul, give it up. If that’s the best you can do then it really is bottom of the barrel territory. Face it this administration you and others had wood for, for such a long time is nothing more than the ugly old broad in “Kingpin”. It’s corrupt and criminal and far worse than anything Clinton ever did.
ATS
I am beginning to believe that Scowcroft had it right. We “don’t know THIS Dick Cheney.”
And his whole entourage has embraced the Tucker Carlson fallacy : they think frowning is the same as thinking.
ThymeZone
Is there a righty out there any more who’s got game?
Because PaulL is definitely going on the disabled list.
ThymeZone
That is just one of the best lines ever in here.
That is a keeper!
Tsulagi
Yep, another reason why Tard and Dickless will not part with their Gonz. They need that guy.
Republican patriot warriors for the new millennium. 9/11 changed everything.
Paul L.
You may be right. I got the impression that he dropped it from this.
How has he stonewalled the other branches? He is ignoring a executive order not a law passed by Congress.
How am I defending Cheney by calling his claim boneheaded and saying he will have to drop it. I am just pointing out hypocrisy with an example from the Democrat Crime Syndicate – aka the Clinton Admin. |
DougJ
Damn, Paul L. beat me to the “Clinton did it too”.
Tulkinghorn
Two words: inapt comparison.
If you prefer, apples and oranges, or rather, apples and echidnas.
ThymeZone
That’s right, Paul, the details of a meaningless sexual harassment suit are definitely equivalent to the trashing of the Constitution, destruction of our foreign affairs, starting of useless wars, incompetant leadership in military, foreign and domestic affairs, letting an American city sink under a storm surge, advancing torture as a symbol of American values around the world, sucking up to a Republican congress that set spending records that may never be broken, and generally trashing citizens’ confidence in their government to the point where polling numbers for that confidence are reaching, and will continue to reach, record lows.
Why don’t you take your stupid Clinton harangues and shove them up your ass, Paul? The country is in a deep hole and the present government is still digging as fast as it can. Try thinking up something clever to say about that, or something else that actually matters, okay?
Or are you just another lameass “righty” character floated by John to keep his classes involved in the blog?
Have you ever had an actual thought in your whole useless life?
Jake
Paul L. Says:
Rome Again
PaulL gets his citings for CourtTV? Seriously? OMFG!
Rome Again
Apologies, in my world, for = from every morning before 10 am.
The Other Steve
I thought the executive order said give the papers to Congress?
Rome Again
Methinks PaulL is carrying his own shovel.
DougJ
Pre-9/11 thinking at its worst, I’m afraid.
Rome Again
Care to grace us with the post-9/11 version?
Rome Again
and if given the desirable outcome for Gonzales, he will not rule on it at all.
ThymeZone
I think this is the new Post-911 Constitution.
Simple. Strong. Better.
Rex
CNN is on it, John.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/06/22/cheney.documents/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Paul L.
I guess it depends on whose Ox is Gored
Assault Weapons Ban
Kosovo
Waco, Cole Bombing, fraudulent SEC/Stock reports from Enron, Global Crossing and Worldcom, the Agreed framework with North Korea.
I suspect that the new Democratic-led Congress will set a new spending record. Or do you think they will cutback on any government spending except National Defense?
As for record low of the approval of Congress.
Congress’ Approval Rating At 14%
zmulls
Could someone send me a copy of the Wartime Constitution? All I’ve got is this stupid Peacetime Constitution and it doesn’t seem to be effective.
Rome Again
There’s a serious flaw in your assumptions there PaulL, those numbers would go way up if impeachment were put back on the table.
The fact is Congress gets such a low approval rating now because they’re afraid to seriously challenge this administration. Hardly a point in your favor.
ThymeZone
You are going to argue that an assault weapons ban is a trashing of the Constitution?
You are a spoof, no doubt about it. Or a crazy fuck.
What do you think of the fact that you can’t buy a SCUD missile at the gun show, Paul? Or a tactical nuke?
Second Amendment violation? Doesn’t the Second Amendment mean that we are entitled to any weapon the government can have?
Stop cutting and pasting from the Cartoon Network and make an actual argument, dude.
Idiot.
Rex
You don’t go to many gunshows, do you?
Tulkinghorn
man, I was starting to miss Darrell. Then we get this third-tier hack freshly driven out by Atrios and Firedoglake.
Now I really miss Darrell.
DougJ
That’s not an approval rating, it’s a “confidence in the institution” rating. As such, it asks people what they think of Congress as an institution, not what they think of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, or John Boehner. And it is likely to elicit responses that indicate how people feel about how Congress has been over a reasonable period of time.
Given how Congress acted between 2001 and 2007, I’m surprised the number wasn’t zero.
Congress as an institution has failed us miserably, desperately, completely. I’m glad the American people understand that. I have high hopes for the new one, but they’ve got a lot of digging out to do.
Fwiffo
The same people bragging about W’s reception in Albania were the ones whining about Clinton’s actions in Kosovo. The capacity for enduring cognitive dissonance is inspiring.
ThymeZone
I don’t agree at all, although I can understand the superficial sentiment.
However, more relevant is how these sentiments translate into votes. So right now the people are grumpy with congress. But they ain’t going to go out in 2008 and elect a shiny new Republican congress.
That’s the difference between congressional politics and national, presidential politics. Your next congress will be an expression of several hundred districts and various incumbencies. I see a gain in Dem seats.
Your next president is not likely to be a Republican, unless the Dem candidate is a turkey or fucks up somehow. Which is not impossible. Of course, the possibility of a GOP turkey is also on the table. In fact, a quick glance at their lineup leads me to think that they are very likely to put a turkey on the ballot next year. Unless some non-turkey we don’t know about appears out of the woodwork real quick.
Zifnab
I don’t know about that. The funny thing about Congress is its historically low approval ratings, but historically high Congressman retention rate. It appears as though people hate everyone’s Congressman/Senator except their own.
semper fubar
Just send the Sergeant-at-arms to pick up Cheney if he does not answer to a subpoena. Let the Secret Service decide whether or not to intervene.
That’s what it’s going to take. Some bold action on the part of someone from congress. Screw Waxman trying to take these subpoenas through the courts. That’ll take years, and we don’t have years. Let Cheney take his arrest through the courts and see what happens.
In other outrages, did you see Jane Harmon’s post over at steve clemons’ place? Jeezus christ on a popsicle stick. Even voting with us dirty hippies isn’t going to help, John. We’re f*cked. Just plain f*cked.
Rome Again
Well, I understand what you’re saying, but the new rating is a reaction to the slowness of putting a noose on this administration I think.
As an aside, I have never liked my Reps/Senators, personally.
Rome Again
Got a link?
She scares me sometimes, I wanna see what she’s gone and done now.
Paul L.
So that is a excuse to ban guns that “look” scary or have a barrel shroud. It could be a SCUD or TACNUC.
John Spragge
Has anyone yet explained exactly why this “wartime vice-president” hasn’t managed to get his office to comply with standards for securing classified information? I mean, it seems to me that in a war, secrets get to matter a little more than constitutional details. FDR may have treated the constitution as a set of suggestions from time to time, but neither he, nor afaik his vice, ever got careless with information about troop movements, Bletchly Park, convoy sailings, or Uranium hexaflouride.
Sri Ramkrishna
I suspect he refers to this post:
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002193.php
Jane wants to regulate small recreational boats because one can put explosives on them and blow up ships or something like that. Why? Because it happened to the USS Cole in Yemen, no less. If it can happen in Yemen it can happen here!
Why not regulate everything? Where we go, what we do that way we will be absolutely safe. The only safe activity now is TV and American Idol and 24.
sri
Mike
The one that the Bushies have returned to, after eventually figuring out that name-calling wouldn’t work?
MBunge
Anybody remember “The End of History”? That phrase came to embody the post-Cold War consensus among our political elite that all the major questions about how the world should be run had been definitively answered, and from then on we would only be arguing about the details.
The Bush Administration has proven that history will never end, because people will NEVER agree on how the world should be run. It is pretty darn obvious that many members of this Administration, folks born and raised in the United States of America, don’t believe in democracy. Heck, they barely believe in the concept of reason, itself. They are actual, 21st century barbarians who only believe that they should have the power to do whatever they want.
That element of humanity will always be with us. Hopefully, if we don’t stumble into armageddon in the next year and a half, the lessons of this decade will be remembered for at least a few generations…before the dynamic repeates itself again.
Mike
Rome Again
MBunge, the Cold War gave them a hard-on, they needed to get it back, and Viagra simply wasn’t available at the time.
Paul L.
Can you post a link where the Bushies:
Started unilateral talks with North Korea (led by Jimmy Carter)
Started shipping free food and oil to North Korea.
Restarted construction of the Nuclear Reactor for North Korea.
In return for a empty unverified promise that North Korea will not build any Nuclear weapons.
ThymeZone
Despite the fact that you think you are being cute, you actually did answer the question.
You can’t find a justification to ban any weapon.
Too bad, because the non-crazy world can, and will.
PeterJ
ThymeZone said:
The current administration has changed my view on the Second Amendment. Problem is that ordinary guns aren’t really enough any longer, nor are assualt weapons.
If this continues, citizens should be allowed to have their own tactical nukes.
Dulcie
Or fucks a turkey. On national television. On a Sunday. During the Superbowl. After Janet flashes her pasties.
The Other Steve
You’re right. They pretty much just let North Korea build Nuclear weapons without doing anything about it.
Dreggas
You must have missed where bush resumed all of that recently…oh and he’ll be negotiating directly with them…
ThymeZone
You actually make a very good point. Maybe these guys’ whole modus was to create a government so toxic, we’d be motivated to let citizens have any weapons at all.
Well if so, it’s working. These guys are that toxic.
Thanks for pointing that out.
DougJ
Congress ceased to function as an independent branch of government between 2001 and 2007. You can’t deny that, can you?
Jake
How did we get from Cheney being a felonious pig to North Korea?
The Disenfranchised Voter
Same here. I read up about the second amendment and learned that one of the reasons the founders insisted on it was to prevent tyranny in the land of the free.
Bush has made me agree with them.
ThymeZone
Congress does largely what it wants. Sometimes that works out and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the nature of the republic. I have faith in the larger American experiment, even though this particular episode may be a failure.
Tim F.
Who the heck are those 14% who have confidence in Congress? Confidence has to be earned. After six years of grabbing ankles for Bush and six months of failing to do crap about the Iraq war I have a hard time believing they break single digits.
My feeling is that Congress will need to show it is a coequal branch again if it wants to break 30%. Let’s see them drag some bushies to jail for inherent contempt, impeach Gonzales and put a leash on our deranged veep, and then maybe I will have some confidence in Congress.
Zifnab
Much like his idol, Kim Jong-Il, Dick has taken up making his own movies. Ironically enough, he plays the lead role in the action packed Jack Bauer Motion Picture “Felonious Pig: This Time It’s Constitutional”
DougJ
Between 2001 and 2007 it did what Bush wanted. I think that we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but we’ve gone through possibly the worst period in the history of Congress since the civil war.
Zifnab
Except that Congress is composed of both Democrats and Republicans. The former are without balls, but that’s ok because the general population can usually cattle-prod them into doing the right thing (see: the original Iraq Supplemental). The latter are without a shred of moral character, and will bust that empty space between the former’s legs until they get their way. Even as a minority, Republicans continue to run Congress. This is, perhaps, because a fair number of “conservative” Democrats are ideologically friendly to the Republican Party despite being across the aisle. These are the putzes who got or stayed in power through the 90s and early ’00s by playing Republican Lite. And they didn’t get voted out in ’06.
Congress needs fresh blood, period. This isn’t as much of a partisan thing as the parties would have you believe.
ThymeZone
I’ll need to see your scratch paper on that one.
Send along your review of each congress, the issues and opportunities, and the measures passed.
Thanks. Nobody said summer school was going to be easy.
ThymeZone
Short of a catastrophe, or a massive reversal of the last 20 years’ districting, ain’t gonna happen.
Incumbency is by far the strongest predictor of congressional election outcomes.
Zifnab
Not exactly. Congress did what it wanted. Bush did what he wanted. Usually, with both of them being Republicans, they did things they both wanted. But Bush never managed to push through his immigration agenda under the Republicans because they didn’t want it. And Congress didn’t rubber-stamp most of Bush’s illegal wiretapping and and Gitmoing and War Profiteering. They just pretended not to notice by constantly hamstringing Dem investigations. And there was never a bill too pork filled that Bush wouldn’t sign. It was very mutual.
DougJ
I don’t think that’s true, I think that a lot of the Republicans feel that they let the White House strong arm them.
ThymeZone
Yes, but my point was, congress always does what it wants. That’s because the other branches have no constitutional power to tell them what to do. If congress wants to pass the president’s bills, they can. Or not. He can use his influence, but he has no actual power over them.
So if they pass his bills, that’s what they wanted to do, or chose to do. The fact that the president and the majority in congress are from the same party should not be mistaken for any actual power of the executive over the legislative. In this example, it’s the GOP that has done what it wanted to do. Which of course is tragic for us.
But it’s not because congress failed in some way. From their point of view, they succeeded. And if the war had gone well, who would be able to argue otherwise? People love pork. It’s only the pork for other districts that they don’t like.
ThymeZone
Yeah, but the active verb there is “let.”
They did what they wanted to do. Nobody made them do otherwise. They caucused and largely chose to do what they did. Congress controls its own destiny. At the end of two years, the people can grade them. That’s about it.
And the grading is done on a district basis, not on a national politics basis. So people may hate congress, but as has been said here by others, they will still reelect their own beloved congressperson. Yet another reason why congress does what it wants. The accountability thing is out of alignment. The district votes its own interests, and the country may very well be fucked.
Oh well, talk to the Framers, I didn’t design it. But I still think as clunky as it is, it’s the best thing out there unless you want kings.
DougJ
I agree but it needs to start reasserting its prerogatives, as some pompous ass from the New Republican might put it.
ThymeZone
I think that’s from a Geico ad.
Tulkinghorn
Could you imagine an American parliamentary system? Like Canada but with guns and duels? With prime ministers like W., Reagan or Nixon facing question time every week? I would think CSPAN might be a lot more interesting, even if we went through more governments than Italy.
George B.
9/11 changed everything.
Rome Again
It was a conspiracy, I tell you. They planted righties in our party, just like they planted activist Evangelical Christian lawyers in the government to tear it apart from the inside.
HyperIon
the stoopid comments of PaulL have a way of derailing the discussion. he is the current resident rightwing apologist. and like all the others (Stormy, SCS, Darrell, MacBuckets, and that lambchop guy) is a fucking moron.
Randolph Fritz
“From now on, I am just voting with the smelly dirty hippies.”
Welcome. Swimmin’ hole’s over there (we really don’t smell that bad), the music’s good, and the chicks are friendly. :-)
Bruce Moomaw
For the record on North Korea: Clinton did just kick the can farther down the road by trying to bribe NK into ceasing (for the time being) their manufacture of plutonium (and thus the development of their Bomb), but at least he did that minimal amount. Bush — incredibly — cut off the bribe (which the North Koreans were apparently actually following) WITHOUT replacing it with any threat whatsoever, and then simply sat there inertly for years while the North Koreans restarted their reactor and started mass-producing plutonium.
For the record on Congress: That latest poll shows Congress’ unpopularity at surprisingly even levels among Republicans, Democrats and Independents — but for different reasons. Republican voters are mad at it for opposing Bush too much; Democratic voters are mad at it for not opposing him ENOUGH. This has been the standard behavior pattern of Americans from the very beginning when polled on Congress, and it explains why the institution always gets such low popualarity ratings compared to the President. (As for our Independents, who now comprise about 1/3 of the electorate, they doubtless contain a mixture of both types of Congress-haters — but, given that every recent poll of Independents right through yesterday has shown them with about a 70-30 negative opinion of Bush, it’s a safe bet that there are a lot more of them agreeing with the Democratic voters that Congress hasn’t done enough to step on the bastard.)
Perry Como
So Cheney is Schrodinger’s Veep?
jake
UK Parliament r o c k s. Alas, surviving QT requires a bit of self-effacement, an abilitly to think on one’s feet and intellect. But this is America where it looks like we’re supposed to pick our president based on the width of his shoulders, the way he smells and/or whether we’d like to have a drink with him. I think the best we could hope for is some sort of weekly beauty contest.
raj
Simple solution: in the next budget, congress should refuse to fund the “office of the vice president.” All of it. Including the vice president. The constitution only requires that the incomes of the judiciary not be reduced.
Zifnab
But it gets better…
~link