Impeach Vader?
In Slate, credentialed conservative Bruce Fein makes the case for impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney. Fein's been a consistent critic of the Bush administration's power grabs for some time, so as far as the "ideological allies jumping ship" hook goes, this isn't exactly news. But this paragraph jumped out at me, if only for the the way it properly elucidates Cheney's absurd attempt to duck disclosure laws last week:
Take the vice president's preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney's bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue.
Back in the good ol' days, conservatives took hacks at President Clinton's preposterous claim that his role as commander in chief made him part of the U.S. military, and therefore not compelled to testify in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Given the stakes there (blowjobs!), and here (illegal, warrantless spying on U.S. citizens), in retrospect, Clinton's legal chicanery seems almost quaint, doesn't it?
