Home again: The Politico is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney has dropped his novel — and weird — argument that his office is not subject to an executive order regarding classified documents and is, after all, part of the executive branch of our fine government. Want to know why the sudden change of mind?
The decision follows a threat by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the No. 3 House Democrat, to try to cut off the office’s $4.8 million in executive-branch funding.
Man, you gotta love Rahm. First he engineers the Dems’ take-back of Congress and then he figures out a way to get Cheney to slither home from Mordor to the executive branch — threaten to turn off the bling-bling faucet. But what’s still not clear is, well, everything:
David S. Addington, Cheney’s chief of staff and counsel, wrote in a three-paragraph letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Tuesday that the executive order on classified national security information does not give the archivists authority over the president or vice president. Addington said that therefore it “is not necessary in these circumstances to address the subject of any alternative reasoning.”
That amounted to throwing in the towel, according to administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The White House has no plans to reassert the argument there is any vice presidential distinction from the executive branch, the officials said.
Two senior Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.
White House spokespeople have been struggling to answer questions about the argument without repeating, amplifying or embracing it. Blogs, comics and pundits feasted on the neither-fish-nor-fowl argument, with Jon Stewart joking on “The Daily Show” Tuesday night that the vice president may be “half she-wolf.”
Emanuel has scheduled a vote on the veep office’s funding schedule for tomorrow and says the vote will still be held, despite the capitulation by Cheney’s evil minions.
Rahm Emanuel should present his case for de-funding the office of Vice President simply as an accounting correction, and then proceed to vote on funding for the fourth branch of government that Cheney actually heads- The SUBVERSIVE branch.
Might as well tell it like it is.