Today, we find Dick Cheney comfortably ensconced in the Executive Branch, which offers him the advantage of being able to assert executive privilege in the face of congressional subpoenas. (The specter of Cheney raising executive privilege came in this letter from the Vice President’s counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT). This, of course, is in contrast to Cheney’s position a few weeks ago that he was part of the Legislative Branch and thus not subject to an Executive Order on the handling of classified documents.
I used to think that Cheney’s undisclosed location was an underground bunker somewhere in the wilds of Maryland. Perhaps it was really this strange new netherworld between the Executive and Legislative branches, an imaginary place of the Vice President’s own making.
