Where does it fit?

[pecunium]

Dick Cheney's Vice-presidency has been one of the strangest things in the history of our Gov't.

The received wisdom is that it's a dead-end job. The mission of the VP is to show the flag, go places the Pres is too busy to (or bored) to deal with.

The VP isn't allowed to have an opinion of his own, and is usually selected in the hope that his home state will vote for him come the election.

But Cheney has set up a sort of shadow White House, parallel structures for collecting intel, driving issues of policy, and; so it seems, at critical junctures, actually making the call on things which had to be decided now, even though Bush has never been incapacitated.

So it's interestig to know that his office falls, so his staff asserts, completely outside the bounds of the Constitution.

His office told the House Oversight Committee that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

Wow.

Back when Mrs. Pagniatta made me copy out the US Constitution, in the seventh grade, I must have missed the Article which explained that part, because I thought it was covered Article II

But that explains all of these things the Office of the Vice President has refused to do.

See, his office isn't part of the Executive, and since it's not part of the Legislative or Judicial, it's just not covered. He can do anything he wants.

Unless, of course, he's just lying to cover his ass.

Comments

[davidkevin.livejournal.com]

> The mission of the VP is to show the flag, go places the Pres is
> too busy to (or bored) to deal with.


Particularly funerals. Except that Bush went to John Paul II's funeral, not Cheney.

That's because Cheney would have burst into flame if he'd set foot in Vatican City.

My personal theory is that the reason the lloigor Yog-Sothoth didn't escape imprisonment when the airliner broke the wall of the Pentagon on 9/11 is that It had already been transferred out, and is now possessing and animating the long-ago heart-attack-killed dead body of Cheney, which is also why his body disappears to Undisclosed Locations from time to time...after all, Yog-Sothoth has to feed....

[clownburner.livejournal.com]

I sort of suspect that if the full documentation from the VPs office under Cheney was ever released to the public, he'd be tried as a war criminal and/or traitor. Can't have that.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

This appears to be the use of an ancient technique, probably dating well into prehistory and possibly prior to the evolution of hominids. "Claim much more than you think you can possibly get, and maybe, after the dust has settled, you'll end up with a bit more than you had before."

It seems to me that if the Vice-President's Office is not within the Executive branch, and cannot be convincingly argued to be within either the Judicial or the the Legislative branch, the taxpayers' money should not be budgeted to support it.

As usually understood, the Constitutution clearly divides all of our Government into these three parts, and claiming otherwise calls for an unconscionable amount of gall. Perhaps we could begin charging Mr. Cheney and his employees for the office-space they use in our public buildings.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just...wow. This inspires me to think the kinds of thoughts that would probably earn me a visit from the men in black if I ever actually voiced them.

[bsdcat.livejournal.com]

The only official duties of the Vice President are to succeed the President if necessary, and to be the President of the Senate. Note that Congress gets to set the law for who succeeds the President after the Vice President; the law as it stands today puts the Speaker of the House, definitely a member of the legislative branch, in that position. So I'm not sure you can argue that the Vice President's ability to succeed the President puts him in the executive branch.

No, his only job in the Constitution is legislative, so there is an argument to be made there.

There's substantial inertia to overcome in making the change, like making Cheney subject to the rules and regulations of the legislative branch (rules and regulations a Democratic Congress can change...), but there is a kernel of an argument.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

His offices are in the White House.

His staffing is paid for in the executive budget.

His legislative duties are barely more than pro-forma, and honored more in the breach.

Further, Cheney has spent no small amount of time, and money, arguing that the reason he doesn't have to tell the Legislative Branch what he's doing (say with the Energy Task Force) is that he has an Executive Privilege of no lesser (and from the evidence, greater standing) than the Office of the President.

If he's part of the Legislative, then he has 1: no privilege, and 2: the Legislative can limit his role in policy.

TK

[bsdcat.livejournal.com]

Budgeting... now that's the kind of sticky wicket from which there are few loopholes. :-)

You make a lot of excellent points, I'm simply pointing out the details of the argument I think he is making.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

The VP is also, in a sense, selected by the President, and elected as part of an Executive Team. It seems to me that this, in addition to the budgetary flow-chart, places him solidly in the Executive Branch, and probably sufficiently subsidiary that he wouldn't qualify for the Immunity & Privilege a President might claim.

But it will be interesting to see if the journalistic meda ask the right questions and investigate this thoroughly.

(In an unrelated quibble... I don't see how it's more honorable for him not to preside over the Senate than to do it. Something like "a custom more often breached than observed" might be a more accurate way of putting it. The quote from Shakespeare can be misleading.)

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Section 4 (the impeachment bit) lists the President, Vice-President, and "all civil officers of the United States". Whatever those civil officers are, neither Bush nor Cheney are in the category, or their posts wouldn't need to be seperately specified.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

The difference between the Prez and VP and the "civil officers" is that the "civil officers" are appointed.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

He's also part of the President's Cabinet.

Which is why I said it the way I did.

The intimate role the VP plays/can play, in the way policy is shaped, and laws are written (since a lot of them are crafted in the White House, and then sponsored by someone else to the floor), means there is a collection of power/interest in the person of the VP, in the role of Senate President.

The parliamentary rules of the Senate mean he can, when presiding decide who gets to speak.

He can be the swing vote in cases (as we've had of late) of an evenly divided senate.

In effect he gives the executive a lever on the legislative; which is, I think, something less than good.

TK