Cheney aide is screening legislation
Adviser seeks to protect Bush power
Quote- The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former White House and Justice Department officials.
The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington , is the Bush administration's leading architect of the ``signing statements" the president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution. -endquote
We are surprised? I don't think so. Cheney has been minding the ranch while Bush chopped mesquite for the past 5 1/2 years.
A nice commentary and discussion going on over at Firedoglake on the article, so I won't go into it more here.
I also ran across this interesting piece on the OVP earlier today: Vice Squad by Robert Dreyfuss (04.17.06 American Prospect Online) which tells about the OVP team (names affiliations, etc.) in pretty fair depth. I thought it was a good read, though I don't know much about the source.
So many potential diary topics, so little time...
I'm also keeping my eye on these two stories for walking back the cat/ Iran tie ins-
Germans should stop feeling Holocaust guilt: Ahmadinejad this one set my Psy Ops detector off as soon as I saw it, how about yours? A German magazine interviews an Iranian and we hear about it in English at second hand. What language was the interview done in and could we please get a transcript? Or is this another "Iranian badges for Jews "story""?
and then a little possible foreshadow of an Iranian terrorist strike perhaps?
Terror alert as Caspian oil pipeline opens
"Georgia's interior ministry is taking no chances. Original plans to patrol the BTC route with unmanned reconnaissance aircraft were dropped in favour of small, roving anti-terrorist squads. Yet even these might not be able to prevent an attack, as another guard admitted: 'Iran may try to strike it with a missile and we shouldn't forget that Russia is the primary expert for techniques in blowing up pipelines,' he said"
oh, and then there's the whole Neocon/Dem thing which I'm following with interest as well, but that's been diaried already.
More of the same old s***. Is anyone else as tired as I am?