Tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann,
Former Nixon White House council called for the impeachment of Dick Cheney stating that Speaker Pelosi should reconsider her resistance.The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney: The Vice President's Record of Willfully Violating the Law, And Wrongly Claiming Authority
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2007-06-28 23:30. Media
By JOHN W. DEAN
Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.
In fact,
it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration. For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk.
There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.............
Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush in not "the decider," for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow,
Cheney decides what the decider will decide.more at:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/24097
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