Someone Explain This One To Me (Really)
While I do try to avoid waxing political too much, this one I’ve just got to put out there, if for no other reason than there appears to have been no public debate about it (unless I slept-in on the day that this was the scandal dujor). This from an article at Salon.com:
“On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president…
“By his extraordinary order, he [Bush] elevated Cheney to his level, an acknowledgment that the vice president was already the de facto executive in national security. Never before has any president diminished and divided his power in this manner. Now the unitary executive inherently includes the unitary vice president.“
Now Salon is hardly a bastion of independent reporting. In fact, I’ve largely quit reading them because I don’t find them any more trustworthy in their bias than Fox News. But this strikes me as unbelievably significant for something I’ve not seen reported once in mainstream news sources.
Given that I’m far from an expert mind in understanding the ramifications of this amendment to an existing executive order, I put it to you dear readers (or at least those of you who may have a deeper understanding of these matters than I do): Is this a gross overreaction by Salon or a legit concern that the chief executive has unilaterally granted undprecedented power to the office of the vice president?
This isnt’ a political axe-grinding post. I want a better understanding of this one.
February 23rd, 2006 at 11:41 pm
Really, this is a silly story. Apparently someone at Salon thinks that the President personally reads and classifies thousands of documents every day about such vital national issues as contingency planning for power plants in Podunk, ND.
Hundreds of government officials have the authority to classify and declassify documents. Some Assistant Secretary for paper-pushing in the DOT can do it, and what’s more she can designate deputies of her own with the same authority. I mean isn’t that what the Vice President is supposed to do… you know be the, uh, deputy to the President. ‘Cause if we’re paying him just to reduce the grouse population of Texas we might want to hire someone with better aim.