Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.
I put that one sentence in bold because, frankly, it's the scariest sentence of all. It can be a little tricky to describe the full potential ramifications of that sentence, as we're so used to thinking within the constraints of the constitution that it's hard to imagine what a government agency could do if it suddenly found itself without them. Perhaps it's become important to start thinking about those possibilities, as one government is now claiming that it's outside the circumscribed boundaries of the constitution, holding as much executive power as it pleases but answerable to no one. That means that Cheney believes that there is no government entity with the power to reign him in or prevent him from acting out his whims. Except perhaps the president, who is virtually a dictator in Cheney's mind, and yet intellectually subservient to him in reality. It's like we have 2 dictators!
No comments:
Post a Comment