Richard B. Cheney, I Am Calling You Out

The Vice President of the United States is saying, with a straight face, that he doesn't have to comply with an executive order (number 12958) requiring him to report on his handling of classified information because, get this, his duties as President of the Senate mean that he's not technically part of the Executive Branch.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, because the most flagrant abuser of executive privilege in modern times has just stated that it is his official legal opinion that he is not subject to the rules and regulations governing the executive branch of the U.S. federal government. It's so on. We now get to find out, courtesy of Mr. Addington's slip-up, everything that was previously denied to us under the protections afforded the Office of the Vice President by the (aggressively interpreted) notion of executive privilege.

Oh wait. Nevermind. We don't, because Dick Cheney believes himself to be above the law, and anyone who tries to remind him that he is, in fact, a public servant and thus subject to the rules and regulations governing public servants just can't seem to find a way to hold him to account. Here's an idea: CALL THE POLICE! Isn't that what you do when someone breaks the law? You call the cops? Well, it seems that someone already did. The agency responsible for monitoring compliance with the executive order in question attempted to conduct a floor-check on Cheney's office, but they were blocked by Cheney's staff. With what, tear gas and tasers? They were acting on an executive order, how were they blocked? Well, they didn't take that lying down, they called the top cop in the country, the Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. You know where this is going. They still have not received a response. The Department of Justice didn't, um, you know, call them back.

Those of you who support the right to bear arms on the theory that at some point you might have to defend yourself against the abuse of power by despots foreign or domestic, YOU SHOULD BE CLEANING YOUR BARRELS RIGHT ABOUT NOW. Seriously, what's it going to take? Does Dick Cheney have to dress up like the Hamburglar and scuttle around carrying a sack labeled "Your Rights & Freedoms" before you say to yourself "Golly, I wonder if that guy should be running the country?" Here's the kicker: Cheney's office, upon noticing that there was an official government entity trying to make sure that they were obeying the law, attempted to abolish that entity. They tried to eliminate that office. Oh. My. God. How stupid do you have to be not to understand what's going on here?

Just to recap: The Vice President of the United States, Richard Bruce Cheney, is a crook. For anyone who didn't get that. He's breaking the law. Not a minor law, either, he's breaking a law that is supposed to keep him from breaking EVERY OTHER LAW ON THE BOOKS, because it governs, directly, whether he has to tell anyone what he's doing.

Now, I can't be the only person who is up in arms about this. Apparently everybody in a position to bring the hammer down is afraid of this guy. Well I'll lay it out for you pigeon-livered sons of bitches in Congress: Dick Cheney asserts the right to abduct me, send me to Syria, torture me indefinitely, and have me beaten to death and forgotten about, BUT I'M CALLING HIM OUT. What the hell are you doing about it?