http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070708/REPOSITORY/707080307/1028/OPINION02Dick Cheney's secrets are anything but silly July 08. 2007 10:00AM
We're heading into what used to be called the "silly season" in the news business: sultry summer days when hard news was in short supply and quirky, if not downright idiotic, stuff captivated headline writers. Today there's no absence of hard news in any season, but the syndrome lingers.
The tearful-heiress-dragged-off-to-the-Big-House saga of Paris Hilton was a perfect example of the genre. And when, after her 23 whole days in durance vile were at an end, she naturally wanted to display her grit, her discovery of God and, above all, her brand-new makeup and hair extenders to the world via the Larry King show.
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So when in the midst of all this it came out that Dick Cheney - he with the title of vice president, as in, you know, the second in command in the executive branch of government - had decided that, because he presides over the U.S. Senate, he's not really part of the executive branch, it just seemed another example of seasonal idiocy. And it was just so Cheney. This is a guy who mistook an elderly Texas lawyer for a quail and shot him in the face. The same Cheney who slithered across the floor of the U.S. Senate and told Vermont's Patrick Leahy to . . . well, perform a biologically impossible exercise.
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He releases no public schedule. The Secret Service is under orders to destroy logs of his visitors. Even the number and names of his employees are kept from the American public who pay their salary.
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Cheney has also been at the center of the administration's legally dubious justifications for denying due process - the centuries-old bedrock protection of habeas corpus - to people, non-citizens and citizens alike, it seemingly intends to hold, without charges, indefinitely. And he's been an effective proponent of the administration's penchant for such extralegal activities as warrantless wiretaps.
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