Do Not Question 'The Cheney'

Jon Carroll
Tuesday, June 26, 2007


The phrase that will always be associated with Vice President Dick Cheney is "undisclosed location." Whenever there is a crisis in government, that's where Cheney is. Whenever anyone in Congress needs Cheney to answer questions, he is out at Rancho Undisclosed. Apparently, the undisclosed location is often just his official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, but he reflexively does not want that fact revealed.
He doesn't want any facts revealed. He wants to avoid at all costs the notion that he is working for the American people and is thus accountable to them in any way. At a time when governmental transparency is all the rage, he seeks governmental opacity. He's trying for the perks of dictatorship without the requisite infrastructure -- and, most of the time, he's getting those perks. He rules with an iron fist in an iron glove.

His mania for secrecy is unsurpassed. In 2001, he headed a task force to develop energy policy for the then-new Bush administration. The Government Accountability Office sought to know the names of the members of the task force. The vice president said no. His office has refused to comply with ethics laws requiring disclosure of travel paid for by special interests. In 2004, he refused to provide Congress with the names of the people who worked for him. He refused to provide a list of visitors to his official residence.

And now, he has unilaterally exempted his office from rules regarding the safeguarding of classified documents. His justification is that the vice president's office is not an "entity within the executive branch." His reasoning: Because the vice president presides over the Senate when he wants to and breaks ties when he has to, he is really a member of legislative branch -- not that he follows the rules of that branch either. In essence, he is now the fourth branch of government.

Soon, civics classes will be taught a revised version of our precious system of checks and balances. There's the administrative, the legislative, the judicial and the cheney. The exact function and duties of the cheney are unknown. The cheney does not report to the president because that would be a violation of the separation of powers. The cheney just does what it does because it is what it is.
And you'd best not ask questions. When the Information Security Oversight Committee of the National Archives made the initial request for information, the cheney tried to have the committee abolished. The cheney sounds more like a department at Hogwarts than an agency of government. Inside the cheney, all is darkness.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/26/DDGB7QKF6K1.DTL

about governments that are not operating tranparently just before invading Iraq? Why the double standard now? Huh, what's that, the crickets are drowning you out, say again. I can't hear you, Beuhler, Beuhler.