cheney decides that he is above the law

Cheney exempts himself from legal privacy rules

We know that when it comes to protecting national security secrets, Dick Cheney and his office are hardly diligent. What’s less clear is how, exactly, the Office of the Vice President has gotten away with so much of this, given that executive orders are in place that govern White House conduct and which prohibit the very things Cheney has done.

Three years ago, a fairly obscure federal office responsible for enforcing these orders sought answers about the OVP’s policies. What happened? Well, as House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman explained, it’s a funny story.

The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information. The Vice President asserts that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

As described in a letter from Chairman Waxman to the Vice President, the National Archives protested the Vice President’s position in letters written in June 2006 and August 2006. When these letters were ignored, the National Archives wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2007 to seek a resolution of the impasse. The Vice President’s staff responded by seeking to abolish the agency within the Archives that is responsible for implementing the President’s executive order.

Got that? First, Cheney’s office blocked a legal investigation, declaring itself some kind of fourth branch of the government. (It’s legislative, it’s executive, it’s accountable to no one … it’s the super branch!) Second, when the government agency responsible for enforcing executive-branch rules on classified information went to the Justice Department, Cheney sought to resolve the problem by eliminating the agency’s existence.

It’s almost as if the Vice President is the head of some kind of organized crime family. (”It’s a nice office at the National Archives you have there; it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”)

(The Carpetbagger Report)
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It boggles the mind that these maniacs continual to get away with this shit. Doesn't anyone in the US care about their freakin' leaders breaking every law imaginable and declaring themselves immune to prosecution?
Freakin' disgusting...