If you've been following the latest attempt of the Bush administration to weasel out of charges of gross illegality for mishandling classified documents, you know that Vice President Cheney virtually created his own branch of government by declaring himself exempt from executive orders by virtue of actually being a part of the legislative branch. (The Vice President is a member of the executive branch, and also has some peripheral legislative functions when serving as president of the Senate. This information is not classified and can be found in high school American government textbooks, but the Vice President is busy with other matters, and is not a fact-checker anyway. However, he might have checked even with The Christian Science Monitor.)
I am finding it extremely appropriate that several Democrats have now suggested that Dick Cheney's office cannot receive funding as a part of the executive branch unless he admits to being a part of the executive branch. That seems fair to me. If I were hired to work for the microbiology department of the University of California at Berkeley and then ceased to do some part of my job, responding that I do not have to because I once edited some English papers and therefore actually work for the English department of the University of California at Los Angeles, I would expect a reexamination of my eligibility for the payroll at the very least.
Alberto Gonzalez, asked to rule on this issue last January, has mysteriously not said anything at all about the matter. I would imagine if he could say anything in defense of Cheney he would have by now.
What's yet more ridiculous is that this is probably not a particularly damaging piece of information that Cheney has just voluntarily given up his payroll to conceal. The crucial piece of information, apparently, is the number of classified documents relating to detentions that have passed through the Vice President's office. Not the documents themselves, nor yet even a list of their subject headings, but how many there are.
Can this really be true, or am I living in The Onion? |
