Cheney berated over 'imperial presidency'

[sabra]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17653196%255E2703,00.html

Cheney berated over 'imperial presidency'

NEW YORK: In an editorial entitled "Mr Cheney's imperial presidency", The New York Times savaged US Vice-President Dick Cheney yesterday, accusing him of spearheading an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency.

"George W.Bush has quipped several times during his political career that it would be so much easier to govern in a dictatorship," the editorial begins. "Apparently he never told his Vice-President that this was a joke."

The editorial says the expansion of the President's power included "writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives, abrogating longstanding treaties and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and spy on American citizens".

"It was a chance Mr Cheney seems to have been dreaming about for decades," it continues. "Most Americans looked at wrenching events like the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iran-Contra debacles and worried that the presidency had become too powerful, secretive and dismissive.

[unblock]

1. while cheney pines about the 'imperial presidency'

let's keep in mind that cheney is probably the most powerful VICE-president this country has ever seen.

[woodsprite]

2. And also the most "vice" vice-Pres. we've ever seen too. n/t

[Spinzonner]

7. So ...

Dick Cheney put the Vice in Vice-President

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. While they go marauding over the globe looking for dictators to

take down. Anyone see the hypocrisy?? I see the hypocrisy.

www.chris-floyd.com/fallujah/

[EFerrari]

4. NYT: All the CYA Fit to Print.

It is interesting, tho, that the Plame investigate seems to have opened a crack between the Bush camp and the Cheney camp.

[janx]

5. How so? n/t

[EFerrari]

6. Wasn't there a tussle over who would be fed to Fitzy?

Remember the tension between those two offices the week that Libby was indicted? I can't imagine that it's any better now. And over time, it would make sense that it gets worse.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

8. K&R. Nice to see the word getting around.