Midtopia

Midtopia

Monday, June 25, 2007

Cheney the legislator update

I had planned a roundup of (informed) reaction to Dick Cheney's assertion that the Office of the Vice President isn't part of the executive branch, But Joe Gandleman beat me to it.

He links to Captain's Quarters and Glenn Reynolds -- both conservatives, both unimpressed.

And he also notes the hay that Rahm Emanuel is making with it, including a move to strip funding for the OVP from the funding bill currently before the House.

Meanwhile, Newsweek notes that one reason Alberto Gonzales has not responded to the National Archives letter requesting his opinion on the matter could be because, five months later, Justice still hasn't looked into it.

The L.A. Times had a story on Friday saying the White House was exempting itself from the EO as well, something that contradicts reporting in other stories as well as the letters from the National Archives to Cheney and Gonzales. If true, it doesn't make Cheney's "not part of the executive branch" argument any less silly. But it would mean the OVP is no longer acting differently from the White House itself, isn't openly flouting an EO and that the main focus of criticism shifts from Cheney to Bush.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's the President's E.O. He should know what he meant it to be. It's intended for agencies within the Executive branch---so that they can keep tabs on how the Classified materials are being handled. If he had meant for the VP's office to be a part of that, he would have said so.

I'll tell ya----it's something new almost every day from the witch hunting Democrats! I guess it's why their approval rating is about 20%.

JP5

Sean Aqui said...

JP5: Legality aside, I've asked you several times to comment on the wisdom of exempting the OVP from any sort of checkup on how it is handling classified information. Do you think that's a good idea? And if so, why?

And if the EO was so clear, why did the VP resort to the "not part of the executive branch" defense? Do you support that argument, too?