Steve Benen..Talking Points Memo....
The fact that Dick Cheney considers his office distinct from the executive branch seems to have captured the political world's attention this week, and given the bizarre nature of the story, that's undoubtedly an encouraging development. Consider the lede from a piece in yesterday's LA Times:
For the last four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has made the controversial claim that his office is not fully part of the Bush administration in order to exempt it from a presidential order regulating federal agencies' handling of classified national security information, officials said Thursday.
Cheney has held that his office is not fully part of the executive branch of government despite the continued objections of the National Archives, which says his office's failure to demonstrate that it has proper security safeguards in place could jeopardize the government's top secrets.One of the angles that's gone largely unnoticed about all of this is that it's actually old news. Cheney started holding himself out as some kind of unaccountable, pseudo-fourth branch of government way back in February.
The blogs noticed, and explained how crazy the argument is, but the media yawned. No one pushed the White House to explain, the Republican-led Congress barely lifted an eyebrow, and everyone just moved on, satisfied that Dick Cheney had established his own superbranch.
It's interesting -- and if anyone can explain the reasoning, I'm all ears -- but the same important story that was ignored in February is suddenly fascinating in June. The same questions that bloggers asked then are unexpectedly interesting to everyone else now.More of a good read with link to Digby's comments at........
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014787.php
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