Dick gives ’em hell.
Vice President Cheney mocked Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s grasp of the Constitution, defended former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and said President Bush “doesn’t have to check with anybody” before launching a nuclear attack.
In a blunt, unapologetic interview on “FOX News Sunday,” Cheney fired back at Biden for declaring in October that “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”
“He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution,” Cheney said in a interview that was conducted on Friday. “Well, they’re not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch.”
“Joe’s been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can’t keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think I’d write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don’t take it seriously.”
Cheney, who is often called the most powerful vice president in history, also challenged Biden’s claim that the Bush administration has amassed too much executive authority, a trend Biden reportedly plans to reverse.
“If he wants to diminish the office of the vice president, that’s obviously his call,” Cheney shrugged. “President-elect Obama will decide what he wants in a vice president and apparently, from the way they’re talking about it, he does not expect him to have as consequential a role as I have had during my time.”
OUCH.
……Cheney defended the administration’s aggressive prosecution of the War on Terror, which he said was a major reason the nation hasn’t been attacked in seven years. He said the 1973 War Powers Act is a violation of the Constitution because Congress does not have the right by statute to alter presidential constitutional power.
“That it is an infringement on the president’s authority as the commander-in-chief,” Cheney said. “It has never been resolved, but I think it’s a very good example of a way in which Congress has tried to limit the president’s authority and, frankly, can’t.
The anti-terrorism policies of the Bush administration helped catch muslim radicals both in the Midlde East and here in America. The expanded use of FISA and FBI assets has resulted in the capture and prosecution of operatives who would have otherwise succeeded in carrying out more catastrophic attacks in this country.
……Cheney also was unapologetic about using an expletive in 2004 to tell Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy what to do to himself. The incident occurred after Cheney heard that Leahy had suggested the vice president used his position in the White House to get contracts for his former firm, Halliburton.
“I thought he merited it at the time, and we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now,” Cheney said in the interview.
Leahy deserved more than just ‘go fuck yourself’, especially since some Democrats had no problem with getting money from Halliburton. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0107/2474.html) It’s just a few compared to the Republicans, but tainted money is tainted money, right?
But, only if it’s GOP cash, though.
With all the screaming over ‘profiteering’ you’d think the Dems would stop taking money from ‘big oil’ (http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obamas_oil_spill.html) and sell their Exxon stock (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/dems-willing-to-criticize-oil-despite-holding-stock-2008-07-01.html).
Thanks to the Democrat’s hypocritical hostility toward big business, Halliburton is just one of the major corporations that have decided to shop for business outside the country. (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=19962)
In the next four years we will suffer with a corrupt charlatan, a scatterbrained gaffemeister, and a Democrat leftwingnut majority in Congress and Senate.
Oh, boy.