Letters to the Editor
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Enron..smartest guys in the room
Don't forget that Enron and its energy traders were directly involved in the shutting down of power plants and trading to create an artificial scarcity in California at that time.
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Not necessarily
After all, it's pretty clear that the Unitary Executive Theory only exists as a means to cover up illegal, unethical or unconstitutional acts.
Not necessarily. It also exists to cover up politically damaging and unpopular acts. And it keeps your options open to commit illegal, unethical or unconstitutional acts. It's good to have options.
Regarding a "Republican unitary executive": dictatorships are great! When you're the dictator...
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Why else indeed
Welcome Digby. And congratulations.
Is this a poll for assessing Salon readers' familiarity with Carl Schmit's (sp) - Hitler's Crown Jurist - theory on the Unitary Executive.
I would submit that the use of a Unitary Executive for the subversion of a soverign democratic nation poses a greater threat than the use of a Unitary Executive to advance corporate corruption at the level of individual corporations. And yet these days the one and the other are more symbiotic now than they were then.
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Fuck Cheney
Dickhead Cheney belongs hanging on a fucking meathook in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue
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And it might have been a trial balloon.
Coming as it did, early in the Bush Admin, I wonder if Cheney wasn't trying out the concept of keeping info from Congress just to see if it worked. When it did it paved the way for other, greater coverups.
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Lie ALL the time.
Obviously if you're going to need to 'cover up' and you know you're going to need to 'cover up' it makes sense to cover up everything or it becomes obvious when you're up to no good.
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Does anybody remember the California crisis?
I'm amazed that this does not often come up as a criticism of Bush. I remember how I felt when I heard that Bush was not going to require the FERC to enforce the law regarding energy price manipulation. Bush essentially chose to allow Texas energy companies to fleece Californians. Any fury was limited, because the media never reported very well on the story and everything got drowned out by 9/11, but it was a disaster for California. Davis took the fall, but he really never had many good options. How can you enforce the law when the police commissionar is telling his officers not to interfere with the crimes?
I have no trouble believing that Cheney was involved in this up to his neck, and that the people who met with him during the crisis weren't simply discussing future energy policy but were also setting current policy.
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Sauce fot the Goose ...
I'll repeat an oft-heard Republican slogan: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear". Granted, that was used to justify an increase in government surveillance on the citizenry, but I'd say it's equally apt for citizen surveillance of the administration.
Note that I said "apt", not "true". But then, I figure that an administration that doesn't trust me can't be trusted itself.
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Cheney covered it up
because he's a prick. Plain and simple. Nonetheless, he is often seen autographing photos of himself flipping the bird with his "right" hand and holding a shotgun in the other, while grinning that grimace-laced smirk that makes him the heart throb of all the neocon's wives, lovers, and prostitutes. However, he signs them using the alias, "Thorn Patch" and then, only for $20,000 luncheon donors and, of course, his K-Street cronies.
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"Inherent Contempt"
Last used in 1934 against the Postmaster General, this procedure is needed again against Cheney! Can be initiated by either the House or Senate, subject is immediately arrested and subject to immediate trial before the "body" (House or Senate).
Being proffered by John Dean (findlaw.com) and is heating up the wires of every communications device like I haven't seen since Watergate! This can be used with real jail consequences against these slippery so-and-so's!
Pass it on.......
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Compared with torture and such...
This does not seem like such a big deal now. But back then, Uncle Kenny Lay was poison. And this still IS a big deal. We just have bigger fish to fry now. Huge fish.
Why do we get this info now? Is this meant as a distraction from them huge fish? I fear that our entire national nightmare (tm) will turn out to be just as banal as this story.
Will it turn out that there never has been any big, evil plot? Will we puke, finally, when we learn that all of our gigantic sea-monster national and international fish-to-fry came from stupid, nasty, incompetent, arrogant little guys just bumbling along day-to-day, without any clue?
Barf.
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Now, now geltleman and Ladies, we musn't hurry...
all legal things tied to a trial and ultimate conviction of Darth Cheney must be timed to eliminate the possibility of a bone crushing Pardon from his sock puppet, Bush.
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I know this bit has already been quoted but . . .
This:
After all, it's pretty clear that the unitary executive theory exists only as a means to cover up illegal, unethical or unconstitutional acts. Why else would they need it?
-- Digby
Really just sums it all up for me about Dick Cheney. It's been a criminal enterprise from the start. Get elected, open up the Governmental cupboards to Big Business of every stripe and industry, start a never-ending war and then out-source it to your former company; As a follow-up, contaminate every level of the Justice Department ---at the very least by politicising the election and civil rights divisions but certainly also by installing political proxies, cronys and Regent lawyers throughout.
It is awful to behold.
It truly makes me weep for our Country and our Constitution.
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Cheney is covering up a rip-off of California.
I'm not surprised at all that Cheney stone-walled giving the list of energy execs he met with. I've been convinced for a long time that they conspired to rip-off California during the 2001 energy crisis. The list of executives may not be earth-shaking, but it is a first step toward finding out the truth about what happened, the last thing Cheney wants.
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unitary executive...and something else, maybe
I don't doubt for a moment that Cheney kept the task force minutes secret as part of a strategy to accrete power for the Executive Branch. That seems self-evident.
But, there were likely many very delicate matters discussed as part of that task force. One was probably Peak-Oil. And Peak-Oil is absolutely something our government does not want to talk about. Not now. Not ever. And when the inevitable consequences of the decline of world production of fossil-fuels become obvious, our government STILL won't talk about peak-oil. Our government will likely just blame it on the someone or something. Anything to avoid responsibility for NOT planning for the single greatest clusterfuck in human history.
We have a government that thrives on ad-hoc management. That way, you always have deniability. The last thing anyone on that energy task-force wanted to have to explain was just what Peak-Oil is, and why it's important. That'd completely destroy all their deniablity.
Mark these words folks. They've all been said, and better than I say them. But mark them well, because you will see the truth of them, likely within three years. Our major oil suppliers are experiencing drastic declines in their production capacity, right at this moment, and the entire thing could come crashing down at any time. When? No way to tell for sure, especially when major producers consistently lie about their reserves.
When the shortages begin, take note of the way in which our government will do a perfect imitation of Claude Raines in Casablanca "I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find that our oil suppliers have been lying for 20 years about their reserves. Why, we had NO idea.."
See http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary21.html for a succinct precis of the problem.