Fourthbranch Gets To Keep His Office

Although it was quite an amusing debate, with one Republican legislator wondering "whether Cheney would get a 'Katrina trailer' in place of his official residence," the bid to take Fourthbranch's office off the executive payroll failed by a vote of 217 to 209. Two Republicans, Ron Paul and Walter Jones, did cross the line to vote against Fourthbranch.

The vote was a bit of political theater. But there is real work to be done in the Congress about how the Vice President has acted outside and above the law from the day he came into office. 36 House Democrats from the Pacific Coast want hearings and investigations into Fourthbranch's imposition into the Klamath Falls dispute, chronicled in Part IV of Bart Gellman and Jo Becker's WaPo series. Fourthbranch basically trumped the science showing that re-routing water to Oregon farmers for irrigation would kill thousands of salmon, and got the Department of the Interior to reverse their decision. Predictably, 68,000 adult salmon died in the largest fish kill in US history, crippling the fishing industry in the Northwest and damaging the ecological balance of the region. House Democrats are angered by Fourthbranch's inserting himself into the policy debate.

“According to today’s article, the Vice President called Sue Ellen Wooldridge, deputy chief of staff to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, to pressure her into a policy for the Klamath River Basin that would benefit some farmers, over the protection of federally threatened fish – all to win votes in Oregon,” the letter stated. “His political interference resulted in a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River that has been unanimously ruled ‘arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the Endangered Species Act,’ by three courts.”

“Moreover,” the letter continued, “his action resulted in the largest fish kill in the history of the west. The ramifications of that salmon kill are still felt today, as returns to the Klamath River are so low that commercial, sport and tribal fishing season have been curtailed for the past three years. In fact, last year’s commercial fishing season for all of California and Oregon was cut by over 90 percent, and was the largest commercial fishing closure in the history of the country, causing over $60 million in damages to coastal economies.”

And oversight really is the least of Fourthbranch's worries. Outrage about his manipulation of the levers of governmental power and his acting as something of an imperial figure have led many to join Dennis Kucinich's call for impeachment, including Ronald Reagan's former deputy attorney general:

In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Read the whole stinging rebuke. There are three more cosponsors for Kucinich's impeachment bill, which I doubt will get a fair hearing, but in the wake of seeing the near-dictatorial powers Fourthbranch has assumed for himself, I'd say is worth exploring.