http://rawstory.com/news/2007/ExReagan_Deputy_Attorney_General_Impeach_Cheney_0628.html Ex-Reagan Associate Deputy Attorney General: Impeach Cheney Bruce Fein, who served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, in a scathing editorial today called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. "Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III," he writes. This is not the first time that Fein has taken on the Bush administration. In March 2006, Fein appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on Senate Resolution 398, which called for the censure of George Bush over the warrantless wiretap program. Fein said in his 2006 testimony that by authorizing the domestic spying program, President Bush sought to "cripple the Constitution’s checks and balances and political accountability." In October 2006, Fein ripped into Bush for his "alarming usurpations of legislative prerogatives," and into the then-Republican controlled Congress for sitting idly by and "placing party loyalty above institutional loyalty, contrary to the expectations of the Founding Fathers." With the wiretap program back in the news following this week's congressional subpoenas of the White House and the office of the Vice President, and a subsequent refusal to cooperate, Fein unleashed his highly critical philippic. Fein details "multiple crimes against the Constitution" committed by Cheney, including the creation of military commissions, the "kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists," the advocation of "signing statements" to ignore pieces of legislation, and the encouragement of the use of torture. "The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield," writes Fein, saying the vice president has used the bugaboo of terrorism to justify a shoot first, ask questions later approach to dealing with suspected terrorists, even when that includes American citizens. Fein also touches on the hot-button warrantless wiretapping program, over which he has butted heads with the administration in the past. He argues that Cheney engineered the program and has "orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege" to conceal information about it from Congress. In the end, Fein makes the case that "Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney," in violation of the US Constitution. "President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president," he concludes. "Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law." http://slate.com/id/2169292 Impeach CheneyThe vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped. Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify. Take the vice president's preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney's bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue. The nation's first vice president, John Adams, bemoaned: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet common fate." Vice President John Nance Garner, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, lamented: "The vice presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." In modern times, vice presidents have generally been confined to attending state funerals or to distributing blankets after earthquakes. Then President George W. Bush outsourced the lion's share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president's commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism. Let's review the record of his abuses and excesses: The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies. The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla's then-suspected ties to international terrorism. Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties. He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional, for example, a requirement to obtain a judicial warrant before opening mail or a prohibition on employing military force to fight narco-terrorists in Colombia. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998 case Clinton v. New York. The vice president engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations. As a reflection of his power in this arena, today the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Cheney's office, as well as the White House, for documents that relate to the warrantless eavesdropping. The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys. Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney's claim that he is not part of the executive branch.) The Constitution does not expressly forbid the president from abandoning his chief powers to the vice president. But President Bush's tacit delegation to Cheney and Cheney's eager acceptance tortures the Constitution's provision for an acting president. The presidency and vice presidency are discrete constitutional offices. The 12th Amendment provides for their separate elections. The sole constitutionally enumerated function of the vice president is to serve as president of the Senate without a vote except to break ties. In contrast, Article II enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the president, including the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. A special presidential oath is prescribed. Section 3 of the 25th Amendment provides a method for the president to yield his office to the vice president, when "he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." There is no other constitutional provision for transferring presidential powers to the vice president. Yet without making a written transmittal to Congress, President Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney by mutual understanding that circumvents the 25th Amendment. This constitutional provision assures that the public and Congress know who is exercising the powers of the presidency and who should be held responsible for successes or failures. The Bush-Cheney dispensation blurs political accountability by continually hiding the real decision-maker under presidential skirts. The Washington Post has thoroughly documented the vice president's dominance in a four-part series running this week. It is quite a read. In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.
Bruce Fein calling for it, just shows how bad Cheney is doing. That is amazing. He has always been pretty hard core.
AN interview with Vice-President Richard Cheney: July 2009 ------------------------- The Historian (interviewer): Mr. Vice-President, you've now had six months to observe the new Democratic president and administration. Give us your views. Cheney: They're totally out of control. The Historian: Out of control? In what way? Cheney: Pretty obvious. They're abusing power. They're operating totally outside the Constitution. The Historian: Can you give some specifics? Cheney: Of course. Yesterday the president issued a "signing statement" declaring her intention not to enforce Congressional restrictions on children's health care. That follows those other so-called "signing statements" that refuse to uphold the laws Congress passed on wiretap and surveillance of our enemies and on unlimited detention of enemy combatants. The Historian: Forgive me, Mr. Vice-President, but didn't your administration make wholesale use of these "signing statements"? Cheney: That, of course, was entirely different. We were protecting the country. Our country was under attack. We needed to unify executive authority to protect national security. The Historian: But this administration has said it is merely continuing your theory of the "unitary executive," that you merely laid the groundwork for a new powerful executive. Cheney: Big difference. We knew what we were doing. This crowd doesn't. We knew how to use power. They're totally out of control, as I said. The Historian: With due respect, Mr. Vice President, your lawyers, particularly Mr. Addington and Mr. Yoo, said that the Constitution permitted aggregation of power in the presidency, that anything not specifically denied by the Constitution could be done by the president and his administration and neither the Congress nor the Courts could do anything about it. Cheney: Look. Don't try to twist things. That was then. This is now. Everything is different. The Historian: Mr. Cheney, what is different is a new president and new administration. Cheney: Are you seriously arguing that this crowd is entitled to the same powers we had? The Historian: Seems only fair. The precedent..... Cheney: We created no precedent. Our lawyers laid down theories that applied to us, not to every liberal, lefty administration that manages to get elected Besides, the Supreme Court is going to fix this. Heritage and AEI have filed suits against this liberal abuse of power and we have no doubt that the Court we empowered, Roberts and Alito and that other one, are going to crush this nonsense in its crib. The Historian: Those other executive powers--ignoring regulatory mandates, financing military operations off-budget, search and seizure, suspending habeas corpus, covert operations in Iran, and many others--shouldn't they be available to this new administration? Cheney: Are you kidding? I wouldn't trust this crowd with the keys to the White House restrooms. The Historian: So, it seems to me you are saying that a "strong" president, one who can be trusted with extra-Constitutional powers, must automatically be a Republican. Cheney: You still don't get it, do you? We've got our Constitutional weenies too. We're talking about a special kind of leader. Do want just anybody off the street having the powers we had? You only give those powers to serious neoconservatives, men who've experienced the battlefield, heroes who understand good and evil, trusted and tested patriots who understand what we're up against. You don't just hand out our authority to whatever politicians come along. [OK, I'm going off the record here. Understood. Turn that tape off. We're meeting. We're planning. Just like we did after '74. We're coming back. We have plans. Unlike those limp-wristed liberals, we are patient. Our hour will come. We'll be back. And when we are, you're going to see real power. Got it?] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/interview-with-vicepresi_b_67726.html
