Hello:

THIS administration gets curiouser and curiouser...

You got to give the guy an A for chutzpah. You know... I think he's been the pres all along...

excon

He doesn't care about the people in this country, only how much can he take, and take, and take. He is in this for himself.

IMPEACH CHENEY! AND HIS BUDDY BUSH TOO!

I'll get back to you . I'm still trying to absorb the Constitutional logic that VP Cheney is applying to see if there is any merit to it .

Digg is having fun with it:
Digg - Calling Cheney's Bluff

Yes all his power is derived from whatever the President chooses to delegate. That is President Bush's purgative. It is a trend ;Al Gore had far more power than GHW Bush and it seems the VP office has evolved beyond that proverbial "warm bucket of spit" as VP John Nance Garner so eloquently described it.

I was talking about his argument about being a part of the legislature and therefore under no requirement to hand over classified documents to the National Archives. It seems to me that he is acting as a member of the Executive Branch and should comply with an executive order signed by President Bush regarding the inspection of the documents. Cheney has invoked executive privilege a number of times His principle constitutional role is to be around if the President croaks . Historically his Senate role is to break a tie. Rep. Rahm Emanuel makes an interesting case by saying that if Cheney isn't of the Executive Branch then his office funding should be cut from the Executive budget.

Well, I was a bit taken aback by this story this morning myself. But (you know there's always a 'but' from me), the office of VP has been redefined and evolving from the beginning, even though constitutionally he is part of the legislative branch. I agree with tom though that if he has been acting as part of the executive branch he is subject to the order. This is going to get ugly, but what else is new?

Steve

Yeah , except I think I intentionally went off the direction that Excon want to go with this . I'm sure he is commenting on the Washington Compost's 4 part expose on Cheney which so far has concentrated on detainees and Cheney's apparent authorship of a Presidential directive that Bush signed without input from Powell and Condi Rice.

washingtonpost.com - nation, world, technology and Washington area news and headlines

A GOP Plan To Oust Cheney

The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office.

You may be right, but what the President wants is becoming less and less relevant as time goes on. At some point, the rats (no disrespect intended) may stop abandoning the sinking ship and stage a mutiny to man the pumps to try and save it.
LOL. I think you may have meant "prerogative"? Then again, maybe not.

I think Washington as a whole could use a good 'purgative.' :D

The cartoonists are having a field day:

Opinions: Tom Toles Cartoons - (washingtonpost.com)

Comics and Editorial Cartoons: Pat Oliphant on Yahoo! News

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: David Horsey

John Deering on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent

Rex Babin Cartoons - sacbee.com

newsobserver.com | Powell

First of all, I want to make it very clear that I don't buy Cheney's argument that the office of the VP is a legislative position. Historically, it clearly is not, and has always been part of the Executive Branch. I think he's wrong on this one.

That said, I don't get why everyone is claiming that Cheney is pulling Bush's strings.

First people say that Bush is a Machiavellian schemer who lied to the American people and manipulated the government into doing his bidding. Then they claim that Bush is an idiot who is disconnected with reality. Then they claim that Karl Rove is pulling Bush's strings. They follow that by making the claim that Cheney is pulling Bush's strings. And then they claim that Bush manipulates the system to always get his way, bringing it full circle.

So which is it? It can't be all of them. Bush can't be a master schemer and an idiot. The strings can't be pulled by both Rove and Cheney. And if either Rove o Cheney are pulling Bush's strings then Bush can't be a master schemer.

Please, folks, make up your minds.

Elliot

Hello again, Elliot:

I'm not folks. I'm me. I never said that he lied. I never said that he is a schemer. I never said that he's Machaivellian.

What I said, and what I believe is that Bush is a weak and not too bright president who let the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove and to a lesser extent, Meyers and Gonzales, have waaaaay too much power.

You might call it delegating. I call it the tail wagging the dog….

excon

As a believer in a small but strong federal government, I happen to disagree, excon. I think that the problem with Gonzalez is that he was too weak, and didn't really do his job the way he should have. Rove and Cheney and Rumsfeld are disliked because they did their jobs exactly the way they were supposed to... without compromising with the opposition. I may not agree with everything Rummy did. In fact, I believe that he was wrong to assume that supperior technology meant that we would need fewer boots on the ground. But he did what he was supposed to, ran the war without asking the Dems for permission. Ditto for Rove and Cheney.

Elliot