Too Good Not to Post

Check out this music video/editorial cartoon from Nick Anderson at the Houston Chronicle (Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan). It's too good not to post. It's also a bit disturbing, so be warned.

Rahm Emanuel's attempt to defund Cheney defeated

Sadly, Rahm Emanuel's attempt to defund Dick Cheney's executive expenses (based on the logic that, hey, if he's not enough a part of the executive branch to be governed by executive branch regulations, he's not enough a part of it to receive funding, either) has gone down to defeat. From Reuters:

By a vote of 217-209, the House defeated legislation designed to rebuke Cheney for refusing, over objections by the National Archives, to comply with an executive order that set government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information.

Debate on the measure also gave Democrats another chance to mock Cheney's recent contention that he was exempt from the rule on executive-branch documents because he also serves as president of the Senate, part of legislative branch. He has since stepped back from that argument.

"The vice president must know that no matter what branch of government he may consider himself a part of on any given day or week, he is not above the law," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat who wrote the amendment to a bill funding White House salaries and expenses next year.

Further needling Cheney, the amendment would have provided money for him to operate his office in the Senate while denying the nearly $5 million for running the vice president's office and home in Washington.

Heh. Anyway, although the voting was mostly along partisan lines, 24 Democrats voted against it. These Democratic Representatives must have felt that cutting the VP's funding was just something that Very Serious congresspeople shouldn't do, no matter how many times Dick Cheney makes a mockery of the concept of government oversight. Only two Republicans voted for the amendment. One of them, of course, was Ron Paul.

David Broder sees the light on Cheney. Joshua Marshall unimpressed

The Washington Post's David Broder sees the light on Cheney:

Years ago Lamar Alexander, the senator from Tennessee, told me of a lesson he had learned as a young man on the White House staff: It is always useful for the president to have at least one aide who has had a successful career already, who does not need the job, and who therefore can offer candid advice. When he was governor of Tennessee, Alexander made sure he had such a person on his staff.

Later, when presidential candidate George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney as his running mate, I applauded the choice, thinking that Cheney would fill the role Alexander had outlined. Boy, was I wrong.

The role model for Alexander was Bryce Harlow, the diminutive, modest and universally trusted White House player in the Eisenhower and Nixon years. Cheney, as described in a breathtakingly detailed series in The Post this week by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, is something else.

What they discovered, in a year of work that reveals more about the inner workings of this
White House than any previous reporting, is a vice president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends and purposes, often overriding Cabinet officers and other executive branch officials along the way.

But Joshua Marshall is less than impressed:

Yesterday David Broder wrote a column which one TPM Reader, more or less fairly, described as Broder's expression of shock, shock at just what Dick Cheney has been up to over the last six-plus years. And this is a good opportunity to say that the Post's 'Angler' series seems to be becoming the trigger for that transition moment where consensus establishment opinion goes from seeing the vice president as the powerful administration heavy with a sometimes creepy but largely comic penchant for secrecy to an altogether more nefarious force who has used his unprecedented power as vice president to advance an agenda of official secrecy, non-accountability, untrammeled executive power, legitmized torture and general degradation of the rule of law.

But this is far too easy. Because the simple fact is that we've known almost all of this for years.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking the series, which is quite good. In journalism, details, the specifics are all. But the story in general has been out there for years, as well as a good number of the specifics, strewn over hundreds, probably thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, online and off.

In other words, when it comes to recognizing Cheney's profoundly damaging effect on American constitutionalism as well as his guiding role in essentially all of the administration's most disastrous policies, the train already left the station some time ago.

Sorry.

He's right. Yes, the Post's series is excellent, and it's good that the opinion of the Washington establishment has finally turned against Cheney. But it's too bad it took so long for them to realize something that was quite obvious as far back as the last presidential election.

Cheney's office backpedals from claim that Vice President isn't a part of the executive branch

From the Washington Post:

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. But spokeswoman Lee Anne McBride said the intent of the order, as expressed by White House officials in recent days, was "not for the VP to be separated from the president on this reporting requirement."

Dick Cheney's office is furiously backpedaling away from the whole "Vice President isn't enough a part of the executive branch to have to comply with executive branch regulations" argument:

Addington did not repeat a separate argument that has been previously advanced by Cheney's office: that it is not strictly an executive branch agency but also shares legislative functions because the vice president presides over the Senate. That argument has drawn ridicule in recent days from Democrats and on late-night television.

Addington suggested in his letter that it was not necessary to rehash that dispute. "Given that the executive order treats the Vice President like the President rather than like an 'agency,' " he wrote, "it is not necessary in these circumstances to address the subject of any alternative reasoning, based on the law and the legislative functions of the vice presidency. . . ."

I'm not going to get into the latest implausible excuse offered by Cheney's office. Instead, I'd like to draw your attention to this sentence:

That argument has drawn ridicule in recent days from Democrats and on late-night television.

Those are weasel words. The whole "Republicans says this, and Democrats say that" formulation is a lazy substitute for truly balanced coverage. What about the merits of the argument? Cheney's claim is presented as just another debatable issue. The fact that it has been roundly rejected by just about everyone as patently absurd is not mentioned. It's not just Democrats and the Daily Show saying that. Take Jonah Goldberg, about as true-blue a conservative as you can get, and his editorial in the LA Times:

The vice president is famously concerned with two things: restoring the prerogatives of the executive branch, lost in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and defeating our enemies in the war on terror. Both are admirable goals. But seemingly countless sources inside the Bush administration tell the Post that he has a contempt for bureaucratic and legislative consensus-building that rivals his contempt for cultivating public support through the media. As a result, he often succeeds in bulldozing policies — on enemy interrogations, etc. — all the way to the president's desk. But he's isolated when it comes time to defend these policies in Congress and the public.

Take the current argument over Cheney's self-exemption from the rules on how classified documents should be handled. Instead of getting a waiver from the president, Cheney argued that he's immune to executive orders because he's also the president of the Senate and hence a member of the legislative branch too. Not only is this a goofy argument on its face, it does nothing to restore executive authority. It's not like the vice presidency was an outpost of the legislative branch before Watergate. Cheney's argument amounts to a convenient rationalization for his own secretive style.

Read the whole thing. It's not just "Democrats and late-night television" criticizing Cheney.

UPDATE: I don't mean to pick on the Washington Post here; our whole media establishment falls into this trap with depressing regularity. The WP's recent Dick Cheney series (here, here, here, and here) is a textbook example of what good journalism should be.

The best response to Cheney's "I'm not part of the executive branch!" claim

... goes to Rep. Rahm Emanuel:

If Vice President Cheney believes his office is not an "entity within the executive branch," then a House Democratic leader says taxpayers shouldn't have to finance his executive expenses.

Cheney's office has claimed his constitutional role as president of the Senate also makes him part of the legislative branch and therefore is not covered by a presidential order requiring executive branch workers to report their numbers of classified and declassified government documents.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Sunday that a court should decide whether the vice president belongs to the executive or legislative branch. "The vice president needs to make a decision," he said.

But wait! Couldn't we just ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to rule on this issue? After all, he's the country's top lawyer! Oh wait, he already was. BrandonIsADork is all over it:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked in January to resolve the legal dispute, but he has not yet ruled on the issue.

Mr. Gonzales didn't rule on this issue? Jeez...I can't imagine him doing anything suspicious, illegal, or deteriorating to the integrity of the Judicial branch. This whole administration makes me want to bash my head off a stack of Constitution posters until it bleeds.

Wait, is Brandon impugning the ironclad integrity of our esteemed Attorney General? This is the man described by the Washington Post as

a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed "Fredo."

If that doesn't give you confidence in Gonzales, I don't know what would. Check out this Youtube video, which plays on Gonzales's classy nighttime visit to his friend John Ashcroft:

Dick Cheney claims Vice Presidency isn't part of the executive branch

What can you say to Cheney's recent assertion that he is not part of the executive branch?

Dick Cheney, who has wielded extraordinary executive power as he transformed the image of the vice presidency, is asserting that his office is not actually part of the executive branch.

In a simmering dispute with the National Archives that heated up yesterday, Cheney has long maintained that he does not have to comply with an executive order on safeguarding classified information because his office is part of the Legislature.

You can be shocked like Digby:

I had always known that Cheney was running the show, but I assumed he did it purely by using the power of the executive branch and manipulation of the presdient. I had no idea that he might have secretly carved out a previously unenumerated institution that derives its power from both the legislative and executive branches. What in the hell has really been going on in this administration?

You can attempt to rationalize it, like Glenn Reynolds:

The argument that the Vice President is a legislative official isn't inherently absurd. The Constitution gives the Vice President no executive powers: The VP's only duties are to preside over the Senate, and to become President if the serving President dies or leaves office. The Vice President really isn't an Executive official, and isn't part of the President's administration the way that other officials are -- for one thing, the VP can't be fired by the President: As an independently elected officeholder, he can be removed only by Congress, via impeachment. (In various separation of powers cases, the Supreme Court has placed a lot of weight on this who-can-fire-you test).

(Although even he is forced to admit that this is a bad argument.)

But here's the thing: Whatever executive power a VP exercises is exercised because it's delegated by the President, not because the VP has it already. So to the extent the President delegates actual power (as opposed to just taking recommendations for action) the VP is exercising executive authority delegated by the President, but unlike everyone else who does so he/she isn't subject to removal from office by the President (though the President could always withdraw the delegation, of course). However -- and here's where the claim that Cheney is really a legislative official creates problems for the White House -- it seems pretty clear that the President isn't allowed to delegate executive power to a legislative official, as that would be a separation of powers violation. So to the extent that this is what's going on, the "Cheney is a legislative official" argument is one that opens a big can of worms.

Or you can look at the Constitution (Article II, to be exact) which seems to make it pretty clear which branch of government the VP is a part of:

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...

UPDATE: The Daily Show treats Cheney's claim with all the respect it deserves:

To bomb or not to bomb: the administration debates starting a war with Iran

An article in the New York Times makes clear that the debate over whether to start a war with Iran is alive and well in the White House:

A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.

The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

...

But conservatives inside the administration have continued in private to press for a tougher line, making arguments that their allies outside government are voicing publicly. “Regime change or the use of force are the only available options to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability, if they want it,” said John R. Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations.

Only a few weeks ago, one of Mr. Cheney’s top aides, David Wurmser, told conservative research groups and consulting firms in Washington that Mr. Cheney believed that Ms. Rice’s diplomatic strategy was failing, and that by next spring Mr. Bush might have to decide whether to take military action.

It's good to know that Condoleezza appears to be winning this debate right now. But the fact that Cheney & Co. are just itching to pull the trigger on another war is downright disturbing. Glenn Greenwald points out that we've been down this road before:

The narrative is identical, of course, to the pre-Iraq-war "debate" which the media so vocally dramatized, with Secretary Rice in the role of reluctant warrior formerly played by Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney reprising his role of unabashed warmonger. It is true that there have been some personnel changes since then (most notably, Robert Gates in the place of Donald Rumsfeld), but George W. Bush is still the Decider, and he has not exactly been ambiguous about his views on the proper resolution of such "debates." As he told a group of right-wing pundits in October 2006: "I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions."

I don't think Bush is willing to sacrifice Iraq to strike Iran, which starting another war would essentially entail. (It's hard to imagine the chaos that would ensure if Iran got its Iraqi Shiite allies to fight an all-out war against our troops.) But no one can deny that the similarities of the Iraq debate to the Iran debate certainly are striking, right down to Joe Lieberman falling all over himself to endorse another preemptive war:

“I think we have to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. Host Bob Schieffer followed-up: “Let’s just stop right there. Because I think you probably made some news here, Senator Lieberman. You’re saying that if the Iranians don’t let up, that the United States should take military action?” “I am,” Lieberman responded.

Now, how much does Cheney want a war with Iran? Well, check out this Washington Note article from May 27:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

...

The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.

At least this supports the notion that President Bush is leaning towards the diplomatic option (aka the "not insane" option). But the rest of it is chilling to say the least. I think the lesson from all this is that it's not enough to just concentrate on the election in 2008. It's clear that the Republican administration has more than enough time left in office to make a gigantic mistake, like start another war.

Hate crimes

GJ in the comments:

Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little L Ron. At least he didn't say Dianetics. Imagine the response if he had picked that great American novel.

By the way DC, this article doesn't have to do with your post, but let me know your opinion on Bush threatening to veto this:
http://www.abpnews.com/2130.article

The article is about how Bush plans to veto an extension of hate crime protection to gays. I basically take the Andrew Sullivan position on this issue. I don't think we should have hate crime laws, but as long as we DO have them, the only reason not to include gay people in them is bigotry. He explains more eloquently than I could here.

As for Bush, it's pretty clear that he's doing this to throw a bone the base. Everything I've read suggests that Bush, like Dick Cheney, is personally very tolerant and accepting of gays, which makes his pandering on the matter even worse.

Former CIA director blasts Cheney in new book

From the New York Times:

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

A copy of the book was purchased at retail price in advance of publication by a reporter for The New York Times. Mr. Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of “Meet the Press” last September in which Mr. Cheney twice referred to Mr. Tenet’s “slam dunk” remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

“I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ ” Mr. Tenet writes.

This is huge. Interestingly, Tenet appears to admire Bush and focuses his vitriol on Cheney. I'm not sure I can absolve Tenet to the degree that he wants. I don't doubt that Bush and Cheney had other reasons for getting rid of Saddam, but what Tenet told Bush made the invasion all the more inevitable. It appears that prior to invasion Bush and Cheney had assumed, like many people inside and outside the government, that Iraq just had to have some WMD lying around somewhere. After all, Saddam had used them in the past. An assumption, though, is not a slam dunk, and Tenet had an obligation to say so. I don't find his distinction, that he made the "slam dunk" comment about strengthening a presentation making the case for the existence of WMD, to be particularly exculpatory.