Dick Cheney: Unplugged and Unglued - Jeff Schweitzer

Whatever the president does during war is legal, according to Cheney. Has this man never actually read the constitution, or the Federalist Papers or notes from the Constitutional Congress? One of the greatest concerns that our Founding Fathers wrestled with was an expanding executive power unchecked by a weak Judicial or Legislative Branch. The folks who drafted the constitution specifically, clearly, deliberately sought to limit the powers of the executive as a founding principle. What Cheney claims is precisely the notion the Founding Fathers feared the most. In spite of Cheney's extraordinarily bizarre claim, no president is above the law. Yet in the next breath, after openly declaring himself above the law, with no hint of irony, Cheney boasted that he and Bush have acted in ways completely consistent with the constitution.

Worse, though, than Cheney's gross ignorance of our history are the obscene consequences of his twisted views. If we take his words even partially seriously, he means quite clearly that the president can, during this endless war on terror, authorize against American citizens such heinous crimes such as beatings, torture, murder, property confiscation, indefinite detention with no representation, and unlimited warrantless spying, if the president alone decides such actions advance the cause of war. We now have Moscow on the Potomac. If you are a victim of the president's wrath, you would have no appeal, because by definition the president's acts are legal. Welcome to hell.