Fun with Draft Dodger Dick

This whole refusal of our creepy veep to hand over information to the national archives because he is supposedly not bound by the rules of the executive branch has led to quite a bit of fun on the many blogs I read.

Perhaps my favorite quip comes from Kevin Drum who poses an interesting question: "By the way, back in February when this story was first reported, Cheney wasn't arguing that the VP's office wasn't executive. He was arguing that the VP's office was both legislative and executive, and thus could ignore the rules of either branch whenever it suited him. So here's my question: If a quantum superposition of a dead cat and a live cat is Schrödinger's Cat, is a quantum superposition of legislative Cheney and executive Cheney Schrödinger's Dick?"

Thanks for making my day, K.D.!!

Power Behind the Throne

While we can have a few chuckles, mocking Dick Cheney's self- appointed position as his own fourth branch of government, (see Friday's post) there is a serious story to be told about the Veep's unprecedented power and influence.

And now, it seems, the mainstream press is finally starting to tell at least some of that story. Here is an excerpt from a piece (the first part of a four-part series) by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, staff writers for the Washington Post.

"Cheney preferred, and Bush approved, a mandate that gave him access to "every table and every meeting," making his voice heard in "whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in," Bolten said.
Cheney has used that mandate with singular force of will. Other recent vice presidents have enjoyed a standing invitation to join the president at "policy time." But Cheney's interventions have also come in the president's absence, at Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels where his predecessors were seldom seen. He found pressure points and changed the course of events by "reaching down," a phrase that recurs often in interviews with current and former aides.
Mary Matalin, who was counselor to the vice president until 2003 and remains an informal adviser, described Cheney's portfolio as "the iron issues" -- a list that, as she defined it, comprises most of the core concerns of every recent president. Cheney took on "the economic issues, the security issues . . . the energy issues" -- and the White House legislative agenda, Matalin said, because he became "the go-to guy on the Hill." Other close aides noted, as well, a major role for Cheney in nominations and appointments.
As constitutional understudy, with no direct authority in the executive branch, Cheney has often worked through surrogates. Many of them owed their jobs to him….

Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."
Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance." You can read the rest of this first installment here.

Taking Back Our Constitution

Many of us will never forgive some of the current Supreme Court Justices-- for effectively installing Dubya as President against the will of a majority of voters. Those Justices that Dubya nominated have largely lived up to liberal expectations, that they would use their power to roll back gains our nation had achieved in the last century. Indeed, our very future as a representative democracy hangs by a slender thread. Fortunately this thread was not snapped in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, and Kennedy managed to defend our constitutional system of checks and balances against the promoters of tyranny, or the euphemism for tyrannical power known as the unitary executive theory.

Justice Stephens:

Far from making the requisite substantial showing, the Government has failed even to offer a “merely colorable” case for inclusion of conspiracy among those offenses cognizable by law-of-war military commission. Cf. Quirin, 317 U. S., at 36. Because the charge does not support the commission’s jurisdiction, the commission lacks authority to try Hamdan. The charge’s shortcomings are not merely formal, but are indicative of a broader inability on the Executive’s part here to satisfy the most basic precondition—at least in the absence of specific congressional authorization—for establishment of military commissions: military necessity. Hamdan’s tribunal was appointed not by a military commander in the field of battle, but by a retired major general stationed away from any active hostilities. Cf. Rasul v. Bush, 542 U. S., at 487 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment) (observing that “Guantanamo Bay is . . . far removed from any
hostilities”). Hamdan is charged not with an overt act for which he was caught redhanded in a theater of war and which military efficiency demands be tried expeditiously, but with an agreement the inception of which long predated the attacks of September 11, 2001and the AUMF. That may well be a crime,41 but it is not an offense that “by the law of war may be tried by military commissio[n].” 10 U. S. C. §821. None of the overt acts alleged to have been committed in furtherance of the agreement is itself a war crime, or even necessarily occurred
during time of, or in a theater of, war. Any urgent need for imposition or execution of judgment is utterly belied by the record; Hamdan was arrested in November 2001 and he was not charged until mid-2004. These simply are not the circumstances in which, by any stretch of the historical evidence or this Court’s precedents, a military commission established by Executive Order under the authority of Article 21 of the UCMJ may lawfully try a person and subject
him to punishment.

Justice Breyer:

The Court’s conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a “blank check.” Cf. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, 536 (2004) (plurality opinion). Indeed, Congress has denied the President the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the President from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.
Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation’s ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation’s ability to determine—through democratic means—how best to do so. The Constitution places its faith in those democratic means. Our Court today simply does the same.

This language is what we should reasonably expect from our Supreme Court. It is not "liberal," by any means, it is merely a calm appeal to the core principles of government that guided our republic from its inception.

We as citizens cannot fail to use the democratic means available to us as voters to prevent any more apologists for tyranny like Scalia, Thomas, or Alito from being appointed to the Highest Court of the land.