Cheney: Poster Boy For Corruption

Cheney: Neither Here Nor There? By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com

The House Oversight Committee is demanding that Vice President Cheney explain himself. Is his office part of the executive branch? Part of the legislative branch? Or is Cheney suggesting that as far as federal rules are concerned, his office essentially doesn’t exist?The issue at hand is Cheney’s insistence that his office is exempt from an executive order issued by President Bush in 2003 requiring all federal agencies or “any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information” to report annually on its activities regarding the classification, safeguarding and declassification of national security information.

As Mark Silva reported in the Chicago Tribune in April 2006, Cheney’s office maintains that its dual executive and legislative duties (the vice president also serves as president of the Senate) make it uniquely exempt from such rules.

Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the Oversight Committee, begs to differ, and wrote a letter to Cheney this morning saying so.

“Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information,” Waxman wrote, noting the recent conviction of former vice presidential chief of staff I Lewis “Scooter” Libby for obstructing justice by lying about his role in disclosing the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

“Given this record, serious questions can be raised about both the legality and the advisability of exempting your office from the rules that apply to all other executive branch officials.”

The Vice President’s staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President’s executive order.”

WOW! If you don’t like a law, why not just abolish it?

This may explain why Cheney has been LOW PROFILE for the past few weeks.

Waxman sent Cheney a questionaire, do you really think it will be answered?

A ” fact sheet” prepared by the committee describes other instances in which the vice president’s office has sought to avoid oversight and accountability. Those efforts include challenging the right of the Government Accountability Office to examine the activities of the Cheney’s energy task force and refusing to disclose basic facts about the operations of his office, such as the identity of his staffers and the individuals who visit his residence.

“The color of blood, the color of resistance, the color of Iraq”
By Mike Whitney  Online Journal Contributing Writer

I wonder what goes through Cheney’s mind when he visits Baghdad. Does he ever look out the window of his armor-plated limmo and see the wasteland he’s created — the burned out buildings, the pock-marked streets, the wretched orphans sorting through the garbage for something to eat?

Al Arabiya news says that there may be as many as 100,000 orphans in Baghdad now. These are Cheney’s kids, aren’t they — the vice president’s gift to the “New Middle East”? The next generation of terrorists?

What a horrible legacy. What a horrible man.