Is the Office of the Vice President part of the Executive Branch?

[gonzomax]

Ben’s Guide To the U.S. Government He is in the executive. He is weaseling.

[Alan_Smithee]

Here’s what I don’t get–this is all over the interpretation of an Executive Order, right? An Executive Order, as understand it, is simply a Presidential fiat. It may have been issued by a previous president, but the current president can surely clarify the mater, by issuing a new Order, if necessary. In fact, it seems that it would be his duty to do so, as head of the Executive Branch. Why should the AG be involved at all (except in an advisory capacity)?

[Mr.Moto]

I don’t think Cheney has leg one to stand on here.

Certainly there are some constitutional responsibilities that properly belong to the Vice-President, and him alone. But to the extent that he is included in functions of the Executive Branch such as even being provided access to classified material, he has to play by Executive Branch rules.

Furthermore, the further he pushes this, the less support he will have. I don’t see a tremendous swell of support for this novel theory among most conservative commentators.

This ought to be hauled off and left to die.

[Galena]

So, the President isn’t supposed to be “affected” by the EO either?

From the LA Times article:
*An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. 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.
*

I mean, really? Am I just missing something here?
LilShieste

[pool]

Bush apparently meant to exempt himself but forgot :smack:

[LilShieste]

<sigh> Sorry (again) - that was me, not Galena.

Anyway, I forgot to comment on this part:

From the LA Times article:
“We don’t dispute that the ISOO has a different opinion. But let’s be very clear: This executive order was issued by the president, and he knows what his intentions were,” Fratto said. “He is in compliance with his executive order.”

Well, as long as he knows what he was talking about; that’s what counts. Does he realize that he doesn’t actually live inside of a bubble?
LilShieste

[BrainGlutton]

@LilShieste

Does he realize that he doesn’t actually live inside of a bubble?

Well, in a sense he does live inside a bubble . . .

[Agnostic_Pagan]

I would make the argument that if the Office is part of both branches, then it should be subject to the rules of both branches, not exempt from them. When the VP acts in an executive role (which I believe he is in this matter), he is subject to Executive branch policies such as the EO. And when he acts in a legislative role (which I believe only occurs when he physically presides over the Senate and has to cast a tie-breaker) then he is subject to Legislative branch policies.

Basically, I think on a day-to-day basis he is part of the Executive branch exempt when he is actually performing his constitutional roles in the Senate. He doesnt get to decide to ‘bill’ this hour to the White House, and that hour to the Congress, based on whatever is convenient for him at the moment.

Can we please impeach these guys already? While they at least still acknowledge the Constitution? And when we do, can we stick them in Guantanomo while they await trial? Pretty please!

[RTFirefly]

In this morning’s WaPo, Barton Gellman has the first installment of a four-part series about Cheney and how he wielded power in this Administration.

[RTFirefly]

If you’re interested in Cheney’s role in the Administration, you’ll really want to read the story at the above link. It’s quite a description of how Cheney and his proxies, particularly David Addington, managed to act in a bunch of different places and roles within the Executive Branch, making decisions, blocking other decisions, without ever leaving their names on a piece of paper anywhere.

For instance, here’s John Yoo, nominally then-AG Ashcroft’s subordinate, effectively working for Addington:

To pave the way for the military commissions, Yoo wrote an opinion on Nov. 6, 2001, declaring that Bush did not need approval from Congress or federal courts. Yoo said in an interview that he saw no need to inform the State Department, which hosts the archives of the Geneva Conventions and the government’s leading experts on the law of war. “The issue we dealt with was: Can the president do it constitutionally?” Yoo said. “State – they wouldn’t have views on that.”

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, was astonished to learn that the draft gave the Justice Department no role in choosing which alleged terrorists would be tried in military commissions. Over Veterans Day weekend, on Nov. 10, he took his objections to the White House.

The attorney general found Cheney, not Bush, at the broad conference table in the Roosevelt Room. According to participants, Ashcroft said that he was the president’s senior law enforcement officer, supervised the FBI and oversaw terrorism prosecutions nationwide. The Justice Department, he said, had to have a voice in the tribunal process. He was enraged to discover that Yoo, his subordinate, had recommended otherwise – as part of a strategy to deny jurisdiction to U.S. courts.

Raising his voice, participants said, Ashcroft talked over Addington and brushed aside interjections from Cheney. “The thing I remember about it is how rude, there’s no other word for it, the attorney general was to the vice president,” said one of those in the room. Asked recently about the confrontation, Ashcroft replied curtly: “I’m just not prepared to comment on that.”

Hell, I’d have been rude too.

Addington acting through Gonzales:

Powell asked for a meeting with Bush. The same day, Jan. 25, 2002, Cheney’s office struck a preemptive blow. It appeared to come from Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed “Fredo.” Hours after Powell made his request, Gonzales signed his name to a memo that anticipated and undermined the State Department’s talking points. The true author has long been a subject of speculation, for reasons including its unorthodox format and a subtly mocking tone that is not a Gonzales hallmark.

A White House lawyer with direct knowledge said Cheney’s lawyer, Addington, wrote the memo. Flanigan passed it to Gonzales, and Gonzales sent it as “my judgment” to Bush [Read the memo]. If Bush consulted Cheney after that, the vice president became a sounding board for advice he originated himself.

Addington, under Gonzales’s name, appealed to the president by quoting Bush’s own declaration that “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war.” Addington described the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” casting Powell as a defender of “obsolete” rules devised for another time. If Bush followed Powell’s lead, Addington suggested, U.S. forces would be obliged to provide athletic gear and commissary privileges to captured terrorists.

Cheney cutting himself in on other Administration players’ communications:

At the White House, Bellinger sent Rice a blunt – and, he thought, private – legal warning. The Cheney-Rumsfeld position would place the president indisputably in breach of international law and would undermine cooperation from allied governments. Faxes had been pouring in at the State Department since the order for military commissions was signed, with even British authorities warning that they could not hand over suspects if the U.S. government withdrew from accepted legal norms.

One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and “was concerned” about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were “routed outside the formal process” to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.

I’ve left out stuff that’s as good as what I’ve quoted. Josh Marshall’s also had excerpts up today. Go read.

[MovieMogul]

Andrew Sullivan comments:

This, we now know, is how the U.S. came to endorse the torture of military and CIA detainees. It was done by stealth, with none of the customary legal and constitutional safeguards. It was done by vice-president Dick Cheney in what may by historians be regarded as an internal coup - against the country, and against the law:

Three days after the Ashcroft meeting, Cheney brought the order for military commissions to Bush. No one told Bellinger, Rice or Powell, who continued to think that Prosper’s working group was at the helm.

After leaving Bush’s private dining room, the vice president took no chances on a last-minute objection. He sent the order on a swift path to execution that left no sign of his role. After Addington and Flanigan, the text passed to Berenson, the associate White House counsel. Cheney’s link to the document broke there: Berenson was not told of its provenance.

Berenson rushed the order to deputy staff secretary Stuart W. Bowen Jr., bearing instructions to prepare it for signature immediately - without advance distribution to the president’s top advisers. Bowen objected, he told colleagues later, saying he had handled thousands of presidential documents without ever bypassing strict procedures of coordination and review. He relented, one White House official said, only after “rapid, urgent persuasion” that Bush was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay.

And so the US effectively withdrew from the Geneva Conventions. Enemy combatants would never have been granted full POW Geneva status, but they would have been assured minimal Article 3 protection, which would have safeguarded them from the torture Cheney was clearly determined to conduct. As it happened, of course, the torture did not only occur at Gitmo, and it did not only occur to those detained in Afghanistan. It spread throughout the theater of war, in Iraq and beyond - in part because torture, once approved, always spreads, and in part because of the anonymous and unaccountable way in which it was initiated.

No vice-president has the right to do this, to change the basic morality of the United States, to undermine its laws, withdraw from its treaty obligations, and do so without even consulting other individuals within the executive branch, let alone the Congress.

And yet Cheney, in a vice-presidential power-grab unparalleled in U.S. history, didn’t only do it; he did it in such a way as to deny his own accountability and responsibility.

Stealth is among Cheney’s most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped “Treated As: Top Secret/SCI.” Experts in and out of government said Cheney’s office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to “sensitive compartmented information,” the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words “treated as,” they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause “exceptionally grave damage to national security.”

The phrase “law unto himself” comes to mind.

[MovieMogul]

Salon has a nice little Top 10 synopsis as well:

1. The vice president’s “understanding” with the boss. Just after Cheney took office, former Vice President Dan Quayle warned him about the ceremonial nature of the job. Cheney smirked and told Quayle: “I have a different understanding with the president.” Quayle says Cheney saw himself as what Quayle calls a “surrogate chief of staff.” Bush’s actual chief of staff, Josh Bolten, says Cheney’s deal with Bush guarantees him a seat at “every table and every meeting” and the right to make his voice heard in “whatever area the vice president feels he wants to be active in.”

[Acsenray]

While Cheney’s argument posts a genuine, interesting question, his conclusion is entirely disingenuous. Yes, perhaps it is interesting that the vice presidency has elements of the executive and the legislative branch, so you might legitimately argue that it is an executive position or a legislative position or both, but there is nothing in the constitution that justifies concluding that it is neither.

[Bricker]

Can’t have his cake and eat it too, as the confusing proverb goes.

Cheney is happy to claim executive privilege when it suits him and happy to accept funding out of the executive pool of funds. He should not use this flimsy argument to duck away from the executive branch whenever it pleases him and return whenever the water temperature is more to his liking. I agree with the commentary from Rahm Emanuel when he says, “At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent.”

[BobLibDem]

For perhaps the first time, I’m in 100% agreement with bricker .

If Cheney wants to be part of the Legislative Branch, I’m all for it as long as that means Nancy Pelosi gets unfettered access to his files.

[BrainGlutton]

@ArchiveGuy

Salon has a nice little Top 10 synopsis as well:

Regarding No. 3, “Secrecy,” here’s a pic of a document-shredding company’s truck parked outside Cheney’s house.

[BrainGlutton]

@BobLibDem

If Cheney wants to be part of the Legislative Branch, I’m all for it as long as that means Nancy Pelosi gets unfettered access to his files.

Does she get unfettered access to any Congresscritter’s files?

[BrainGlutton]

@ArchiveGuy

Salon has a nice little Top 10 synopsis as well:

10. Guantánamo. Last week’s talk of a high-level meeting and an impending decision to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba? The Post says Cheney is actually in favor of expanding the facility. He’s almost alone in that view, the Post says, but he has succeeded so far in keeping Gitmo open.

He might well be worried about what would come out if all the detainees were released or got a court date.

[BobLibDem]

@BrainGlutton

Does she get unfettered access to any Congresscritter’s files?

Well no but it is a happy thought.

[Gangster_Octopus]

It is called the Vice President. I know that is simplistic, but I think it is telling. Since “vice” means “in place of” it seems to me that the Vice President would be seen as an executive meant to serve in stead of the President, under certain conditions.