No Checks, No Balances -- No Supervision?

Aug. 14, 2006: "By insinuating that the sizeable majority of American voters who oppose the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy, Vice President Cheney on Wednesday may have crossed the line that separates legitimate political discourse from hysteria."

Jan. 29: "It's becoming increasingly unclear whether anyone outside the White House believes a word he says. Inside the West Wing, Cheney's influence remains considerable. . . . But as his astonishing interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer laid bare last week, Cheney is increasingly out of touch with reality. He seems to think that by asserting things that are simply untrue, he can make others believe they are so."

Feb. 7: "Another memorable scene of the inner workings of the Bush White House unfolded yesterday in the federal courthouse where former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby is on trial. This one is particularly significant because it gives credence to the widespread view that Vice President Cheney oversees his own intensely secretive, highly defensive and sometimes ruthless operation within the White House -- and that he does so with President Bush's approval, but often outside the view of Bush's top aides."

April 6: "Faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even President Bush has backed off his earlier inflammatory assertions about links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. But Vice President Cheney yesterday, in an interview with right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, continued to stick to his delusional guns."

May 29: "Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby."

The Fourth Branch?

Peter Baker writes in Saturday's Washington Post: "The White House defended Vice President Cheney yesterday in a dispute over his office's refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified information as Democrats and other critics assailed him for disregarding rules that others follow.

"White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an 'entity within the executive branch.'

"'This is a little bit of a nonissue,' Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, 'because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should.'

"Democratic critics said Cheney is distorting the plain meaning of the executive order. 'Vice President Cheney is expanding the administration's policy on torture to include tortured logic,' said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). 'In the end, neither Mr. Cheney or his staff is above the law or the Constitution.'"

Josh Meyer writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto "conceded that the lengthy directive, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, did not specifically exempt the president's or vice president's offices. Instead, it refers to 'agencies' as being subject to the requirements, which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. 'It does take a little bit of inference,' Fratto said.

Fratto apparently couldn't explain why Cheney's office followed the rules until 2003 -- or why the National Security Council, among other White House offices, complies to this day.