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.

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: