There's also this: No American elected official - not even Richard Nixon - had such contemptuous disregard for the charter that makes this country this country. It's as if Cheney was dumped off a passing asteroid... he's just that foreign, that remote from traditional, lawful American approaches to administrative office. That this country has survived him without machinegun nests on every streetcorner is testament to its stubborn vitality.

Oliver North was just a Lt. for Vice President Bush. The shadow government of the 80's never died, though it was strengthened when Cheney selected himself as Vice President.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOAk-7F1EVU

The most striking thing about Cheney remains that he successfully created his own organization within the federal government, on a greater scale than the state within a state that Oliver North constructed in the basement of the White House during the Reagan presidency.

Osama bin Laden pulled off 9/11 at a cost of 19 lives and $500,000 on his side. The US has lost the 3,000 lives on 9/11, almost 5000 more in Afghanistan and Iraq, countless Iraqi and Afghani civilian lives, and spent $572,418,000,000+ without even catching the ONE guy that we know was responsible and Cheney was still able to amass all of this power? And there are people in one of Paul's posts coming over here to defend the man, to boot.

I will never understand conservatives. (And just for added charm it turns out they are no better at running businesses than they are governments.)

I'd like to see a serious constitutional lawyer join this discussion. Because from my layman's perspective, it sure looks like Dick Cheney arrogated to himself powers that were not granted him by either statute or the constitution. And it's also not clear to me that all of those exercises of power were explicitly or implicitly delegated to him by the president. And if they were delegated, that in itself raises troubling questions about a breakdown in the rule of law and our constitutional system of government, since Cheney did not hold any official position that would authorize him to receive such a delegation of power.

In our system of government, the Vice President is assigned exactly zero executive branch power. His one job is to take the oath of office should the President be incapacitated. When it comes to the "powers inherent in the office of the Vice President", there aren't many. The Vice President is not part of the President's Staff; he is not a department head reporting to the President; he is not part of any executive chain of command. For anybody working in the executive branch under the President, the knowledge that "the Vice President wants this" should in itself carry zero administrative weight. They are not constitutionally authorized to take orders from the Vice President. They only people taking orders from the vice president should be those working in the Office of the Vice President.

I take it that Cheney was understood by many in the executive branch to be some kind of an unofficial appointment to the Office of the President. Granted, such appointments don't have to be approved by the Senate. But for the sake of the rule of law, shouldn't they at least have to be made? Shouldn't there be a job description which spells out the scope and limits of that person's powers, and where he fits in the administrative flow chart? Before someone starts taking orders from the Vice President, shouldn't they at least have something official to rely on that lets them know whether the Vice President also possesses some other executive branch position, and is authorized to issue those orders? And if he isn't, shouldn't the people receiving those presumed directives have said, "I'm sorry Mr. Vice President, but as I understand it, you are not my boss."

I'm a little put off by the admiration for Cheney that I'm hearing from both his supporters on the right and even some of his critics on the left and in the center. This admiration seems like little more than a primitive awe in the presence of those who "take charge", who wield the tools of violence, and who exercise power and force.

This is an unbecoming attitude for citizens in a democratic republic. Instead of getting all weak-kneed over the Awesome Dick, and smearing themselves in his man-juice, I'd like to see these admirers more directly address the question of whether Cheney is a criminal usurper of power, who deserves jail more than admiration.