BOVARD

My Cheney Tribute is now online

2:42 pm | Attention Deficit Democracy | Cheney | Rule of Law | Surveillance | Wiretapping | wool

The American Conservative has posted my piece on Cheney’s revelation that he is exempt from federal law regarding national security secrets. Here are a few paragraphs from the piece:

The “my wish is the law’s commandâ€? attitude towards disclosure and secrecy has permeated the Bush administration. From shortly after 9/11, the Bush team sought to drop an Iron Curtain around the federal government. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a ruling severely weakening the Freedom of Information Act in October 2001. The following month, Bush issued an executive order that makes it far more difficult for the public to gain access to presidential papers. The administration took an extreme position in the confidentiality of Cheney’s Energy Task Force, and the Supreme Court swallowed the argument. Jay Leno lampooned the Bush administration’s view of separation of powers: “That means that people who don’t have any power shouldn’t be allowed to find out what the people who do have power are doing.â€? ….

From his endless false claims about a meeting in Prague between 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi government officials to his brazen and false denial that he had ever met John Edwards before their vice-presidential debate to his assertions that all those locked up at Guantanamo are “bad people� (despite U.S. government findings to the contrary), Cheney has never let facts stand in the way of political aggrandizement. Extreme secrecy gives him a right to trample the truth and then hide the corpse.

The more information the government withholds, the easier it becomes to manipulate public opinion with whatever “facts� government does release. The government tilts the playing field in favor of ignorance and then, with well-timed revelations, stampedes the media in the direction it wants them to go.

If Cheney’s interpretation of the law is correct, then there is no limit to the amount of mischief he could inflict. Here we have the most powerful vice president in American history and someone full of venom for critics and anyone who does not support his warmongering. The federal government is vacuuming up far more personal information on Americans than ever before. If Cheney is entitled to leak the identify of an undercover CIA agent, there is no reason he could not leak information about other critics of his policy—regardless of whether such leaks violate privacy laws or other prohibitions. …..

Perhaps it is time for someone to ask Cheney what, if any, laws still apply to the vice president…. Does the rule of law, 2006, now mean that whatever rules the president or vice president proclaim are the law of the land