WHY VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY IS A DICK

From the Boston Globe courtesy of AlterNet:

Dick Cheney's mission to expand
-- or 'restore' --
the powers of the presidency

A close look at key moments in Cheney's career -- from his political apprenticeship in the Nixon and Ford administrations to his decade in Congress and his tenure as secretary of defense under the first President Bush -- suggests that the newly empowered Democrats in Congress should not expect the White House to cooperate when they demand classified information or attempt to exert oversight in areas such as domestic surveillance or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

Peter Shane, an Ohio State University law professor, predicted that Cheney's long career of consistently pushing against restrictions on presidential power is likely to culminate in a series of uncompromising battles with Congress.

"Cheney has made this a matter of principle," Shane said. "For that reason, you are likely to hear the words 'executive privilege' over and over again during the next two years."

Cheney declined to comment for this article. But he has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back "unwise" limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

"In 34 years, I have repeatedly seen an erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job," Cheney said on ABC in January 2002. "I feel an obligation...to pass on our offices in better shape than we found them to our successors."

Cheney's ideal of presidential power is the level of power the office briefly achieved in the late 1960s, the era of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the "imperial presidency."

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In short, Cheney is an anti-democratic fascist who, in his intense opposition to the delicate balance of powers between the three branches of government explicitly stated in the Constitution, wants to turn the Presidency into a dictatorship. Those "fullest powers" of the Presidency were always an aberration, which grew out of necessity during WWII, and then grew into an uncontrollable nightmare during the Cold War. Only the excesses of the Nixon administration, of which Cheney was a part, were able to shock the country into tipping the scales back to normal. Our nation simply cannot be the America that we understand with the executive branch that Cheney envisions. Every American should understand from their high school civics class that should any one branch of the federal government become too powerful, it is only a matter of time before our democracy is finished: that's why there is such a thing as balance of powers.

And that's why Cheney is a big huge DICK.

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