Earlier this year, bloggers and legal experts were alarmed to discover that Vice President Cheney's office was using a unique legal theory to declare that since "the Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," his office could somehow exempt itself from reporting its staff size and budget, among other things.
Now there are new concerns being raised about the role of such hybrid institutions in our nation's government.
One lawyer put it this way: "The nature of the 'establishment' is somewhat unclear in the law... [it] is part of the United States but it is not part of the executive branch." Quoting case law, he went on to note that "'the unique, hybrid nature of the [office] requires that its legal or governmental status must be assessed from the particular standpoint of the constitutional, statutory, or regulatory scheme in which questions arise and that broad generalizations regarding [its] status are inappropriate.'"
Whose legal mind is raising these concerns? That would be David Addington, Vice President Cheney's counsel, offering these comments on the Smithsonian Institution in a letter to an independent committee investigating former Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small. (See page 3 of this PDF file.)
Mr. Addington's argument seems to suggest that institutions (or offices) that have their feet in two camps need extra scrutiny in order to prevent "broad generalizations" from impairing their "legal or governmental status." Does this new outlook (the letter is dated May 18th) mean we can look forward to a new period of openness from the Vice President?