Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill) may make good on his threat to push a House vote on whether to freeze Vice President Dick Cheney's $4.4 million budget until Congress determines whether Cheney is part of the executive or legislative branch of government. (The Hill).
In 2003, Cheney began refusing to follow an Executive Order that set up rules for handling classified-information by executive offices. Cheney claimed that his office is not part of the executive branch (because vice presidents are also Senate presidents, which are in the legislative branch); thus, the rules didn't apply to him (Washington Post).
Well, which branch paid the creative lawyer who crafted Cheney's claim?
Yesterday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill), chairman of the subcommittee that handles executive-office funding, seemed to consider a move similar to Emanuel's (The Hill). Some Republicans called Emanuel's move a political stunt. Emanuel admitted that it is.
But is it any more stunt-like than Cheney's argument or Bush's claim that he never intended the Executive Order to apply to Cheney? Oddly, the Order's text does not spell out such intent.
In January 2007, an official from the National Archives Administration asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to look into Cheney's refusal to follow the Executive Order (House Oversight Committee). Reportedly, Gonzales never got around to making a legal determination (CREW citing Newsweek).
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, requested Justice Department documents on the Cheney issue and got no response. Aftergood told Newsweek:
“The overriding fact to me is that the attorney general has not acted in the past five months.... That raises the question of whether he’s somehow covering for the vice president or yielding to him.'” (The Hill).
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