Cheney's office issued subpoena

[HoyaNyr320]

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19461815/

The Democrats timed this perfectly. I can't wait for the Vice President to invoke "Executive Privledge" when it was just revealed that he claimed to be part of the Legislative branch in order to evade an Executive Order. Dick Cheney is probably the most disgraceful Vice President since Spiro Agnew. With Cheney's political involvment during THAT catastrophic abuse of executive power, it is quite clear that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

[bubbrubbhoya]

Um, the White House was also issued subpoenas, so claiming executive privilege probably wouldn't get him too far in this case.

It seems that the 2-year tour-de-revenge is just hitting its stride. Three cheers for ignoring giant legislative issues but pursuing every investigation under the sun!

[hilltopper2000]

Agnew?....try Burr. I'd take Agnew any day over Cheney. I'm just glad we finally have a third branch of government again. But the stuff that has gone on in this administration really shocks the conscience, and I'm no civil libertarian. The damage done to the executive agencies will take years to repair. And Lord knows just how many laws Cheney and crew violated in the past six. I can't think of any legislative matter that is more important than rooting out the lawless behavior of the chief executive and, in some small sense, returning American to its core values of the rule of law, checks and balance, freedom from illegal search and seizure, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments, to name a few. When it is only high school students who have the guts to call out the president for instituting and executing a policy of torture--in clear contravention of U.S. and international law--we have a big big problem in this country. (Oh, and of course, Bush lied to them about it. If only, like Clinton, a lack of truthfulness were his most serious vice.)

[Coast2CoastHoya]

bubbrubbhoya said:

It seems that the 2-year tour-de-revenge is just hitting its stride. Three cheers for ignoring giant legislative issues but pursuing every investigation under the sun!

Um, surely you're kidding?

I'm not affiliated with any political party and believe that both major parties have serious issues, but c'mon, "tour-de-revenge" and "ignorning giant legislative issues"? Wasn't the risk of abuse of executive power one of the primary reasons our nation was founded the way it was? Isn't honesty, integrity, and state's rights supposed to be the backbone of the Republican party's ideology? Or does that only exist in the Rebubblican party? Isn't one of Congress' most important function to check and balance the actions of the Executive Branch?

Perhaps the 110th Congress wouldn't have to do so much investigating if the Bush Presidency wasn't so full of actions and individuals worthy of investigation!

P.S. well said, hilltopper

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

What I love about the Cheney is part of the legislative branch argument is that it misses the point. How does he have the power to classify materials as President of the Senate? Its such a BS argument and the administration can trot out a spokesperson to say "this is an issue for Constitutional scholars." That takes balls.

[The Stig]

On the tour-de-revenge topic, I actually quite like the current arrangement of one party holding Congress and the other holding the Presidency. Compromise is a great American political tradition, and having both parties hold significant power forces them to compromise.

If given the power to do whatever they wanted, both the Democrats and Republicans would quickly run the country into the ground. We saw that with the 4 years of unrestrained Republican rule, and I doubt the Dems could do much better. Having some effective checks and balances means that each party is able to weed out the other's worst ideas and prevent a lot of damage.

[hilltopper2000]

Interestingly, Bruce Fein, President Reagan's associate deputy attorney general, made the case yesterday for Dick Cheney's impeachment: slate.com/id/2169292
It is a pretty impressive compilation of Cheney's abuses of power and violations of law.

[bubbrubbhoya]

stpetersburghoya said:

That takes balls.

That's what she said.

[SaxaCD]

Amazing -- many of the same lemmings frothing at the mouth to impeach Cheney for abuses of power actually want to vote for Hillary Clinton. Talk about a boatload of irony there!

[hilltopper2000]

Lemmings?! Who are they following? Who are they? Certainly not the Democrats. Most people who are really upset right now are lawyers who understand just how radical the departures from our system of law and government are and libertarians on the right and the left. This is not a large group and I have no idea whether or not they support Hillary (or how that is relevant). I certainly don't support her, for the record--although I do think the support for her is very lemming-like, or it may just be based on her superior name recognition at this point.

[The Stig]

When Hillary goes on a power trip she doesn't violate the Constitution. The Clintons may not be shining examples of law-abiding citizens, but their excesses pale in comparison to what we're seeing from the current Executive Branch.

On a sidenote, I've yet to meet anybody who actually wants to vote for Hillary Clinton. I've talked to a lot of people who might end up doing so in the process of casting a vote against another candidate, but even the most hardcore Democrats I know don't like her at all.

[hilltopper2000]

Stig -- I totally hear you on that. I really think that her current support in the polls is going to collapse if, at any point, it appears that she won't be the nominee. Her entire campaign is premised on inevitability and name recognition. I hope that Democrats look at the national polls during the primaries like they did with Howard Dean and recognize that she is foolish bet in an election they should win without difficulty.

[AustinHoya03]

thestig said:

On the tour-de-revenge topic, I actually quite like the current arrangement of one party holding Congress and the other holding the Presidency. Compromise is a great American political tradition, and having both parties hold significant power forces them to compromise.

I assume you're not referring to the immigration bill here.

[The Stig]

I wasn't, although I think I wrote that before the bill fell down.

That's the natural downside to a separation of power system - when the two sides don't agree, nothing happens. I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

[AustinHoya03]

thestig said:

Compromise is a great American political tradition, and having both parties hold significant power forces them to compromise.

thestig said:

when the two sides don't agree, nothing happens.

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't these two contradictory statements?

[Coast2CoastHoya]

austinhoya03 said:

thestig said:

Compromise is a great American political tradition, and having both parties hold significant power forces them to compromise.

thestig said:

when the two sides don't agree, nothing happens.

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't these two contradictory statements?

So are democracy and capitalism, but that seems to be working out pretty well

[The Stig]

austinhoya03 said:

thestig said:

Compromise is a great American political tradition, and having both parties hold significant power forces them to compromise.

thestig said:

when the two sides don't agree, nothing happens.

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't these two contradictory statements?

The former is the ideal, the latter is what happened to the immigration bill. We've seen more of the former in the past than we see today, and hopefully something like the immigraiton bill's failure will cause both sides to wake up and see that we need more compromise in the future.

[bubbrubbhoya]

300 investigations in 100 days. Yep, that's the business of the nation, alright.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070705/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_subpoenas_6

[dajuan]

bubbrubbhoya said:

300 investigations in 100 days. Yep, that's the business of the nation, alright.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070705/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_subpoenas_6

Everybody had better get ready to hear this argument repeated over and over again for the next 17 months. The Democrats take control of the House and Senate in 2006. They can't get anything done because they don't have enough seats in the Senate to get an up or down vote on anything controversial or they get something overwhelmingly popular through (like the Stem Cell bill) and the President vetoes it.

Now when congressional and Senate elections roll around, the Republican candidate in every state and district in the country can say, "You Democrats had control of the House and the Senate for two years and what did you accomplish? All you did was waste the American tax-payers' money on investigations that never got anywhere [largely because the Executive branch refused to testify]"

So that's the game plan. It's actually not a bad play when you consider the alternatives. The bummer about it is that it will probably work to some degree.

[albertogonzales]

Be forewarned, Citizens: this thread is being monitored.

You cannot make a Revolution with silk gloves.