Cheney, Cheney, Cheney....

We have all discussed the unprecedented power of Dick Cheney in this administration ad nauseum, but this post from David Kurtz at TPM introduced a whole new element I hadn't been aware of. I assumed that Cheney believed the power of the Vice President (such as it is) derived from the executive branch. Apparently, however, he believes the office of the Vice President has power of its own that derives from both the legislative and executive branch:

I've gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d'etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President.Last week, in trying to break the lock on who actually works in the OVP--which the Vice President refuses to reveal--the guys at Muckraker stumbled across this entry from a government directory known as the "Plum Book":

The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).


It appears that Cheney's office submitted this entry in lieu of a list of its employees, as federal agencies must do. It sounds like something Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, might have written. Cheney and Addington have been the among the most powerful proponents of the theory of a "unitary executive," but there are indications that they have also advanced, though less publicly, a theory of a constitutionally distinct and independent vice presidency.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_digbysblog_archive.html#117061501925411641